Moment of Inertia

In powerlifting, the game is: lift the most amount of weight possible for one single repetition across three different exercises.

One of those lifts is the deadlift.

Where you simply lift the weight off the ground.

If you’ve ever tried to lift your 1 rep max. It’s daunting. You get a little nervous.

Are you capable? Can you do it?

The risk of injury is high. The risk of failure is higher.

In powerlifting, Power = force x velocity.

Velocity, is the key to a great lift — how fast can you move the weight.

The more force/speed you apply to your lift the faster the weight will move from the ground and you’re able to leverage that momentum to extend through and complete the lift.

Without power {force x velocity} you are not moving anything heavy.

There’s a moment of inertia with powerlifting.

You set up for your deadlift, you exert the most amount of power possible, the bar begins to bend, but the weight is not moving from the ground.

Even after a good second or two the weight doesn’t move.

This is the moment of inertia in powerlifting.

Most inexperienced lifters quite there.

In most cases, IF you keep applying the same effort the weight will move from the ground.

In theory, because it is a one rep maximum, this is the heaviest weight you can possibly lift.

This means your lift will be slow. From start to finish could take you 5–10 seconds just for one single rep. Thats’a a long time to be applying absolute effort.

You can forgive inexperienced lifters for not knowing that during the lift, as your body becomes aware of the load it’s lifting it will recruit more muscle fibres, hence the delay. The weight lifting bar will bend, which causes slack and more delay.

All this together create a moment of inertia.

Now to my point…

This is not dissimilar to the founder journey.

You’re applying the most amount of effort as possible, but nothing is moving.

Girt your teeth and grind through it.

You still might fail, but that’s beside the point.

If you don’t get through that moment of inertia, you’ll never know.

Ryan