WATCH: Table Talk with Dan Green — Limiting Factors for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Lifters
In the first installment of this special edition Table Talk with Dan Green, Dave and Dan discussed building a foundation for new lifters. Taking this concept further, in today's video they talk about the differences between what limits beginner lifters, what limits intermediate lifters, and what limits advanced lifters.
To begin, Dan says that there is a point for every lifter where the weight gets heavy enough that technique begins to break down. For beginners, this may happen as low as 70% of their max, but once adrenaline kicks in, they're able to complete the lift regardless of the poor technique. This doesn't happen for advanced lifters; advanced lifters can lift weight in high percentages of their maxes only if their technique stays in place. An intermediate is somewhere between these two.
Because of this, Dan says that beginners don't need much in terms of special or fancy exercises. They primarily need to work on building sound technique in the main lifts. Advanced lifters are similar, in that they must maintain nearly perfect technique, or they will be unable to move high-percentage lifts.
For intermediate lifters, things are a bit different. Dan says they need to focus on building strength in the secondary lifts and often don't require long peaking phases. If you take an intermediate lifter and put them through a strength phase, they do well. Once they begin training with heavy singles and doubles, they only need two weeks or so to really peak. Any more and you often see regression.
Dave responds to this by discussing the negative effects of reinforcing poor technique. If an intermediate lifter is working on heavy singles and doubles for many consecutive weeks, and their technique continually breaks down, they are learning to lift in improper positions, which will show on meet day. Furthermore, Dave says that no matter what methodology you want to follow in your training, you need to ensure that you're focusing on technique of the main lifts all year long. Whether beginner, intermediate, or advanced, and no matter what type of training system you use, you need to build and maintain the ability to have consistently good execution of the lifts. Once you do this, seeing where your technique breaks during a max attempt will tell you what your weaknesses are.
WATCH: Table Talk with Dan Green — Building a Base as a New Lifter
