Isometric Deadlift Holds (for Climbing!)

Article Table of Contents

• Introduction
• My first experience of this particular exercise
• Photos and videos and timelapses of the exercise, for context
• Contrasting this strange lift/hold to a look-alike exercise, the deadlift (lifting a much lighter amount of weight from the ground)
• Where did the name come from?
• Why does this feel so transferrable to climbing
• Footnotes

alternative titles: yielding isometric mid-thigh pin pulls, isometric deadlift 'holds' for fun and climbing

Introduction #

A few months ago, I began some barefoot sprints up a hill at a local park, and discussed also adding heavy kettlebell swings.

My back started feeling great, along with my feet, my legs, the bones and connective tissues and muscles. Truly, i’m now four months in and this is all still part of my toolkit. It also feels great to walk my bare feet across grassy surfaces. The kettle bell swings transferred strongly to climbing.

After building skills and strengths around one-handed heavy kettlebell swings (and giggling to myself over how fun it was to feel so much stronger while climbing). I found myself wondering ‘what will I do when I max out the kettlebells’, also, ‘I do not currently have any interest in maxing out the kettlebells, but I am curious to perhaps incrementally practice some of the same general pattern’

I remembered how I’ve always appreciated things about the deadlift that I’ve never quite managed to embody, or make part of my training, and some of the core parts of the deadlift are pretty unappealing to me, too.

I appreciate the whole ‘strengthen the posterior chain’ thing, but I really, really, really do not care about having any particular deadlift “number”. And the few times I’ve spent a few sessions in a row deadlifting, I’d get to something around 200 lbs and then start getting anxious about how my back would be feeling, because of a prior injury/weakness. AND because of that weakness, I’ve long wanted to get a ‘strong(er) back’, to reduce the chances of an injury, but kept running into that weakness along the way. hm.

so anyway, my back has been feeling great, and I was sorta thinking about deadlifty type stuff again.

I was noticing how little portions of my back would move with the kettlebell swings, thinking about that hip hinge motion. I decided that I could replicate some of the motion simply by ‘pinning’ a bar with a bunch of weight on it close to the top of the deadlift position, and I could then pick it up and hold it.

My first experience of this particular exercise #

I had been thinking about the motion/exercise for a while, but not quite set it up, I’d never used the pins like this before, and a friend gave a helpful nudge while we were exercising together, and I got it set up right, fiddled with it, started adding weight, slowly, seeing how everything felt as I went.

AND I WAS SHOOK! The way the exercises felt while I was doing them and the ways my body felt fatigued, sore, later that day and the next day, the day after, and even three days later, was extremely thought provoking. I’m attuned to interestingness. these were interesting. From a proprioception point of view, there was lots of input and awareness throughout the lifts, AND for hours and days in the soreness and sensation generated by the strain and repair.

Photos and videos and timelapses of the exercise, for context #

Here’s a still from a video, showing the entire thing. It’s a mostly no-range-of-motion exercise, so I pick it up from close to this ‘finished’ position:

I will tell you about them, but first, it might be best to simply look at the video of the workout:

🎥 google photo album of the lifts

It’s a few short videos, one showing a single heavy-for-me lift. You might notice I hold the bar up for only maybe three seconds. The timelapses show how fast the whole workout can be, and how little time is spent doing anything, and how small the range of motion is.

I spent more than one session googling around, trying to find a useful name that described what I was doing, and finally, iteratively, with the help of two friends, walked into a title for it.

I was describing it:

Okay, so, you know the ‘top’ of the deadlift position? [shifts hands into this sorta stance] I’ll put the squat rack safety bars to this level [lowers two inches] and load a bar there, start with a single 45 plate on both sides… [more gesturing, miming]

… I kept adding 45s until I was quite a bit past my regular deadlift weight. It was so interesting to hold a heavy, heavy bar for 5-10 seconds, with almost zero movement. Based off the soreness and fatigue I felt immediately and the following day(s), I could tell the ‘transfer’ to climbing-specific strength was very high. Not 100%, but close.

This would be considered an isometric lift/hold.

Google told me that “traditional” barbell isometrics would be pinning the bar in place and then pulling up on on it, rather than lifing it and holding it in an raised position. So, this is a ‘yielding isometric’ hold, in that we are activating muscles to avoid yielding to the weight. This is opposed to an ‘overcoming isometric’, like pushing on a wall (or lifting a bar against a pin), where the entire load is delivered by the body trying to overcome the immovable force.

I’m so bad at counting weight plates, it takes a long time to figure out how much weight is on the bar, but I absolutely thought “well, I can easily hold my body weight with one arm hanging from a pull-up bar, so I wonder if I can do my body weight from each hand at the same time on this lift?”

and started adding weight towards 140 * 2, or 280 lbs. Turns out it’s pretty easy for me to hold 280 lbs up there. I was going slowly up in weight, but even on my very first day, I think I went to 320 lbs. (!!!). I always, always evaluate how a back thing feels the day after the exercise, so I eased into these gently.

But each time, the day after, things felt good. So I kept the lifting going, and very quickly saw wild numbers, all the way up into the very low 400s eventually. Mostly I stay at a lower weight, maybe 80% of a max, and aim for longer holds, and other forms of improved holding.

For example, I can find ease with my breathing (slow exhale vs fast exhale and hold) and many versions of trying to keep my shoulders “packed”, and “holding them up” instead of letting them get pulled down (in most of the footage in the album, I’m letting them sag more than I do now).

I’m not trying to get injured. For instance, breathing is difficult when holding this much weight, but if I’m holding it for a ‘longer time’ (>5 seconds) I can exhale and take a half-inhale. When I’m closer to my limit, there’s no way I can inhale under the tension.

Anyway, there is tons of good stuff out there about isometric exercises.

As a climber, nearly 100% of my finger flexor training is isometric, and I’ve noticed over the years more and more of my exercises tending towards isometrics. For example, I virtually never train pullups, but will do lots of holding a 135 degree arm position isometrically in various ways. It’s easy(ier) on the elbow tendons, etc.

I expect this exercise counts as elbow tendon pre-hab, as I appreciate the soreness I sometimes detect, in the elbow joints. Ditto re knee and ankle and foot tendons. I get tons of proprioceptive input from those places, after holding sufficiently heavy weights.

Contrasting this strange lift/hold to a look-alike exercise, the deadlift (lifting a much lighter amount of weight from the ground) #

Tons of obviously coherent, rooted-in-reasonableness ideas float around out there about why deadlifts are a nice thing to give to the human body, but again, I don’t deadlift, I’m not a gym person.

I don’t view this lift as even remotely related to a deadlift. There’s no ‘reps’, there’s no movement, it’s just holding it at the top of the position, stressing out the upper body more than a full range-of-motion deadlift ever would be able to do, noticing what I’m feeling as I hold the weight.

Even rock climbers sometimes talk about deadlifts, and some of the other ‘core’ barbell exercises. I’ve never cared for benching or squats, either. I’m not a gym person, though I love as much as anyone else the concept of ‘being strong’.

Years ago, I injured my back in a severe-to-me way. Ultimately found it was ‘just’ a pulled psoaz muscle and not a herneated disk! how nice. the effect on my life and mobility for a long time was that of a severe back injury. Possibly I’ve got a slight congenital back issue (someone thinks the bottom vertebra is maybe partially fused to my pelvis or something, but the x-ray was unclear). I’ve simply always had tightness in my lower back. It’s part of why sometimes I look like I stand up very strait, I think. Anyway, old back injury + legit sensitivity + proclivity to back pain.

I still don’t ‘run’ (besides those barefoot hill sprints I mentioned, and that’s been only a very recent addition), but things about that portion of my back is still a point of physical sensitivity, and emotional sensitivity, for me.

Every time I’ve tried deadlifting from the ground, I can see, feel, witness in video recordings, errors in form and technique, and could not generate for myself the collection of body queues I seem to need to get the form right. I’ll maybe hire a coach for IRL training someday.

Imagine how thrilled I was, then, to have stumbled across this thing that gets me more of the best parts of what I always wanted from the deadlift, and less of the parts I didn’t want, from the deadlift.

I’m thrilled to have discovered this vastly-more-relatable-to-rock-climbing, lower-risk-to-the-back, no-range-of-motion exercise.

Where did the name come from? #

I watched portions of a painful amount of youtube videos, trying to find a video of someone doing this exercise like this, and couldn’t find any. It’s not often I discover particularly novel things, and I’m pleased when I do. This feels like one of ‘em. ¹

It’s a no-range-of-motion isometric deadlift pin-pull.

Or yielding isometric mid-thigh pin-pull-and-hold

I don’t know how to signal in the name that the point of the motion is the holding, and not reps, per se.

I can find zero footage on youtube of anyone doing anything quite like this.

I’d like to emphasize, again, the point is not reps, the point is time under tension.

Here’s the videos I collected, again: google photo album of the lifts. Maybe I’ll make

Why does this feel so transferrable to climbing #

We’ve perhaps seen people doing the ‘no-hang’ tension block weighted pulls. I think of this exercise as a version of that. I’ve tried those exersises, I like them well enough. I don’t mind that the tension block is a one-handed thing. these yeilding isometric barbell pin pulls feel conveniently two-handed.

I can feel all the columns and structures and musculature and connective tissue of my upper body (and lower body) working, hard, to maintain the position throughout the hold. When I climb right after these exercises, I can feel lots of overlapping use. Or, I do these exercises after the climbing, and can feel it then, or in the soreness. The commonality of energy pathways is distinctive.

It becomes very apparent why this is an interesting exercise as one approaches ‘heavy’, whatever that is for you. Here’s a list of some of the priprioceptive interestingness:

• The ‘meaty’ parts of my hands are sore, again, in a delightful way, with the effort of holding the bar.
• the pad at the base of the thumb is sore, in a nice way
• the weight is very heavy, so I absolutely MUST have my hands on opposite sides of the bar. Either direction feels like a direct mimic of the ‘base’ climbing movement. An undercling or ‘regular’ palm-facing-away position
• I feel soreness in the intercostal muscles across the tops of my ribs, in a way that makes sense when you appreciate how much force is being carried with the the lungs acting like a balloon, rigidly working with the ribs, shoulder structures, to carry the load.
• delightful soreness all across the forearms, and the rest of the arm and shoulder
• i was having issues with callouses building (and tearing. ick. happened once. did not like it.) and found that if I set an intention of gripping the bar really really tightly, my skin sloshes around under the bar less, and skin that gets pulled at less tears less. Also, my hands get even more sore!
• the ways the specific shape of the bar transfers directly, directly to certain hand positions on the wall is wild. I never had considered this before. It feels like I can hold a ‘c’ shape in my hand more, and thus feel improved on crimps in different/better ways, especially roofy crimps. I can kinda curl my wrist and hooked hand + crimped finger more into a hold, and achieve an improved body position on it, as a result.
• To appreciate the above, perhaps hold your hand in front of you, rigidely, as if your hand and thumb were wrapped all the way around a bar bell. Flex the hand. flip the thumb over into a half-crimp position. I can now imagine stronger intercostals at the base of the knuckles, and stronger wrist flexors. Before a few months ago, it would have been hard for me to imagine how this little chain of pulling could be made independently stronger by pulling hard on a bar, and now that I’ve experienced it, it seems of obvious why these exact pulls make this complex of muscles and structures so much stronger. ²
• I can feel soreness in the bones and connective tissues in the a2 pulley region and pip joints, which obviously are frequently injured structures in the hands of climbers, and being able to systemically apply load in such controlled fashion feels great for prompting the whole tissue injury/repair cascade. tendon injuries are most likely during highly dynamic moves, or after a lot of wiggly back-and-forth sawing motion has already been applied to the tendons, these lifts are none of that.
• Theoretically, big early strength gains of some exercises are not the muscles getting any definition of stronger, it’s that the muscle fibers are becoming coordinated; it’s that the load is so high, they’re learning to all apply force at the same time. getting from 88% muscle fiber recruitment to, say, 95% muscle fiber recruitment, seems worthwhile, right? Lots of climbing-specific exercises talk about this principal. It’s sorta like ‘free strength’. “I don’t need more muscle to pull harder, nor do I need more force to be generated by any particular muscle fiber, I simply have some muscle fibers that are not trying at all when I am pulling really hard? And I can simply ask them to try alongside the other muscle fibers already trying? heck yeah.” I have no idea what sort of numbers anyone actually has, just that there are known ways of improving the coordinated activation of muscle fibers, and as I reflect on the way these exercises work, I note the same principle being applied.

Similar to the kettlebell swings, holding a round bar feels like an ‘active’ position for the palm and structures of the hand. I could easily feel an interesting and useful transfer to crimping holds, and being able to more easily hold a rounded palm when crimping, vs it flattening out into more of a drag.

Because the range of motion is tiny, this feels relatively easy on my metabolic system and muscles. Again, early gains are at least partially muscle fiber recruitment type things, perhaps, and I’m thrilled for it, and don’t mind at all when that is not an avenue of further improvement.

Please don’t get me wrong, my nervous system felt absolutely emptied of something I didn’t know I had, the first few sessions. The entire body is working so hard - The first time I had the weight of one of me, hanging from each arm was very interesting. I then had one-of-me plus a 25 lb dumbbell, hanging from each arm. this is difficult to me. ³

Over the last two years, I’ve had several friends go through heavy-duty surgical interventions for damaged tendons in the ankle and knee. What they have experienced, I would love to avoid. I am THRILLED to be providing stress to the whole system right now, in such safe ways. I can feel things like my achillies tendons, and lots of things inside my knees, expressing a perception of having been used, the day or two after an exercise like this.

For the next three days my entire body felt like I’d stretched in a way I didn’t know I could. It feels very useful from a climbing pov to be building capacity for this sort of energy output.

It’s become perceivably less effortful to hold certain body positions on the wall, now, in ways I didn’t even know I was struggling with, or realizing I could have a certain competency with. In certain moves, I kept feeling like I was “clicking”, like a magnet tile, into ideal body positions during/between moves, with the improved ease with which I could move all of my body around, because of my stronger shoulders and back. Climbing is a skill sport, and I’m pleased to use my stronger body to develop my skill. Guess what one can do more of, with a stronger body? More practicing-by-trying difficult, skillful moves!

I added the video to the photo album of the lifts. or click here to view it directly. It had been months since I’d tried that boulder problem, it was the first of the grade I’ve done on the tension board. I could tell my shoulders and back felt SO STRONG in ways that were not available to me from when I’d last tried it.

In the video, especially compared to earlier attempts, it’s obvious to me that I am feeling so solid in each body position throughout the climb. Sometimes it’s obvious that I’m barely holding various body positions, and in this video, it’s that obvious that each of these body positions is secure. This sensation keeps getting born out on ropes and bouldering in many different ways.

I keep telling people that I climb with that it feels like I’m playing a video game, and I cashed in accrued points for a character upgrade, and I just spent it on stronger shoulders and back. It’s like my joints and the holds I’m holding onto are more inclined to ‘snap into place’ once I grab them.

Fantastic, and delightful. Even if I was not climbing, though, I think I would really like these exercises.

If you’ve read this far, you’ve likely spent about 20 minutes on this piece and the videos, which means you’ve spent more time reading than I usually spend doing the entire isometric pin pull exercise.

So, next time you’re around a squat rack, maybe you’ll think of me and this idea and try it yourself. If you do, I’d love to hear your experience of it.

I subscribe to write it now philosophies, and this exercise is now pretty familiar to me, even as it’s still novel. I anticipate I’ll keep going with it, I’ll drop updates to this post now and again.

Footnotes #