What I’m about to tell you is so simple, yet so overlooked.

It takes maybe a second or two to do and I missed it for years.

I’m not kidding, this simple cue is something that drastically changed the way I trained my body, with or without weights. 

Are you ready for it? 

Lean forward. 

That’s it. 

Like seriously, that’s it. 

Leaning forward when deadlifting completely changed the game for me.

For years I was told to lean backwards into my heels and then told others to lean backwards into their heels when lifting weights and training the body. 

And for all intensive purposes, YES you will lift MORE weight leaning backwards, but the question to ask is:

“What is actually doing the work the MOST leaning backwards?”

It’s a question of what is being loaded the MOST when we train with and without weights. And then how to manipulate the position of our body to augment what we’re trying to load.

In my lifting posts I'm lifting 135 often. 

Here’s the first deadlift I did trying to apply Flobility principles to it:

Doing my best to use my hips at the time. 

And it was a lot better than what I was doing  at the time. I could feel my glutes working, my lats were doing work and my hamstrings were doing more work as well. This is about capacity. I couldn’t lean more forward with that weight no matter how much I tried. It was the best I could do at the time. You won’t just wake up one day and be able to do all of this. It takes time. But just applying this simple principle, you will FEEL it more immediately. 

Here’s my most recent deadlift:

It’s been a benchmark weight when I started Flobility and I continue to use it to understand how my forward energy (leaning) is improving because what’s interesting about forward energy is that it makes lightweight feel heavy.

The red line basically just represents my center of gravity which will be explained more later. Just imagine, the more of my body that’s in front of that line, the more my glutes and hamstrings get loaded.

Comparing the two images, you can see how more of my body is in FRONT of the line in the after and more of my body is BEHIND the line in the before. 

Now hold up, I know I know, lift heavy lift heavy. 

I did that:

That’s 315. It ain’t “a lot” but for me, it was a lot. Having long arms and long legs made deadlifting always difficult for me.

Take a look at that red line again. You can see how much of my body is BEHIND that line. Look how far my glutes are behind that line in the before vs. the after. This has everything to do with hip extension like I talked about last week. If the weight is backwards in the heels, you can’t finish hip extension. 

Look where the weight is between the before and after:

The before was way more in my heels. This lift was loading my erectors, quads and hip flexors a ton. Of course my glutes and hamstrings did something (it’s impossible for them to be inactive). But they were doing so little in comparison to my erectors, quads and hip flexor muscles. I learned how strong my erectors and quads were in relation to my core, glutes and hamstrings through Flobility. Once I leaned foward more, it really showed me how much stronger I could actually get. It was exciting.

And you can see how my lower back is crunching a ton going into “hip extension” which was really a hyperextension of my lower back. 

Please please do not confuse what I’m saying with hate or shaming. 

I am NOT saying lifting with your weight in your heels is “wrong”.

No no no. 

I’ve already talked about morality when it comes to how to train the human body.

At the end of the day, if someone is moving, that’s already better than not. That’s already a win. So I’m not shaming anyone that lifts in their heels. I’m not saying it’s “bad” to do so. I am simply showing you a route that changed my life and the lives of my clients in a huge way. 

It’s an option. You can continue to do whatever you want. I am simply showing you a different way. And plus, I used to do it too… If I was talking crap about lifting weights in my heels I’d be a huge hypocrite.

Anyway, I was following a weight lifting program, applying progressive overload, counting macros religiously and nothing seemed to work because my glutes looked like this…

Then I started Flobility, began leaning forward and learning how to use my core and glutes together in my lifts better and they turned into this:

I was lifting lighter weight. Was NOT tracking macros and was doing mostly bodyweight training.

I’m not saying tracking macros isn’t important at all. It’s very important and is crucial for many reasons outside of weight training. But for the comparison component of this blog, I wanted it to be clear that all the things that I was using to TRY and grow my glutes, didn’t work. Then I did the opposite… and it worked. 

After I learned more about my sit bones, core stability and forward energy, things started to really make a lot more sense with lifting. 

Getting more of my bodyweight ahead of that red line was what made 135 feel like 315. Getting that weight forward was everything. 

This cue to lean forward is a serious addition to “mind-muscle” connection and further allows you to load the back of your leg (glutes and hamstrings) more when doing your lifts and during bodyweight exercises as well. 

Now it’s time for more of the scientific explanation for forward energy. I’ll let Jordan take over. 

Watch this entire highlight. Read it all. It helps so much as Jordan breaks it all down:

Biophysics Highlight

If you’d like to learn more about what we’re doing and learn how to apply Flobility to weight lifting the way I did, you gotta start with the app.

Step-by-step Jordan will show you exactly what to do to learn about all the components required to apply Flobility to weight lifting. I’ll also be in your corner helping you along the way with a live consultation call upon sign up, answering questions and analyzing your form in your videos (weightlifting included too!) I’ll help you like Jordan helped me. 

Find your Flo: Sign Up For Flobility

-Coach K

P.S If you try it, you'll need to lift lighter weight.