We’ve taken a slight lean back too far and turned it into another rowing movement, especially if momentum is involved.
When we lean too far back, we change the movement from a vertical pull into a horizontal pull. It’s a fine line, but we often cross it.
Leaning up to 30degrees is fine, as long as we aren’t turning the exercise into a back extension with momentum.
A 2025 EMG study (Buonsenso et al., J. Funct. Morphol. Kinesiol.) directly tested this — 40 trained men, wide pronated grip upright vs. the same grip with a 30° back lean. There was no significant difference in lat activation between any of the grip or lean variations tested.
This is your breathing room, beyond that and you may as well do a seated row.
So keep a slight lean but don’t take it too far, if you can’t trust yourself, just keep upright and force better lat activity.
Sydney Strength Coach & Exercise Physiologist
Share
A Sydney based Strength Cosch and Exercise Physiologist specialising in Lifting & Athletic Performance, Metabolic Health and Rehabilitation.
I am an Aus Representative Powerlifter and International Coach passionate in providing evidence based results.
The reaction is always the same.
“More aggressive deficit = faster results”
This is wrong from two angles.
Firstly, adherence.
Aggressive deficits crash NEAT, tank training
quality, and you can’t sustain them long enough
to matter.
Secondly, metabolic adaptation
Cut too hard and your body fights back, the metabolism slows, hunger spikes, energy tanks. You end up burning less than
someone eating more.
Weight loss isn’t rocket science but there are principals to adhere to if you want to maximise results, maintain muscle mass and training performance.
DM me if you’re struggling with your cut and need support.
31/08/2026
You don’t need more motivation. You need fewer decisions.
Intention beats motivation every single time, just read the science.
In one two-week study, 248 people were split into three groups. One read motivational material about exercise. One got nothing. One wrote down a single sentence: when, where and how they’d train that week.
The motivation group did no better than the control group. 35% and 38%.
The group that wrote the sentence: 91%.
Same information. Same intention. The only difference was that one group had already made the decision.
The mechanism is simple. Motivation is a state — it moves with your sleep, your stress and whatever happened at work on Thursday. A plan is a cue. Once “Tuesday, 6am, gym” exists, showing up doesn’t require you to feel anything. It requires you to follow an instruction you already wrote.
Every session you haven’t scheduled is a decision you have to win at 5:45am. Tired, dark, warm bed, and a completely reasonable excuse sitting right there.
You won’t win that one every week. Nobody does.
So stop trying to. Move the decision out of the morning and into your calendar on Sunday.
Three sessions. Specific day, specific time, specific gym. Written down.
The guy still training in ten years isn’t more motivated than you. He made the decision once instead of a hundred and fifty times a year.
Powerlifting trains the lift. Technique is optimised to shorten the bar path and share load across as much muscle as possible to make the lift easier.
Bodybuilding trains the muscle. Technique is optimised to keep tension on one target often by making the lift harder.
Same bar. Opposite goals.
And here’s the part most guys need to hear: if you want to look strong, carry more muscle and keep your joints, you want the second one with a strength base underneath it.
Pick the outcome first. The program follows.
29/08/2026
Muscle isn’t just what you see. It’s your largest site of glucose disposal and a major driver of resting metabolic rate.
Rapid weight loss protocols burn fat and muscle — and the muscle doesn’t come back on its own. Strength training is the only stimulus that protects it.
Less muscle at 50 means less strength, less bone density, less metabolic reserve when you need it. More muscle now is capital you’re banking for decades out.
The floodgates have opened for GLP1s as it’s marketed as an “easy” route to weight loss and the closest thing to a magic pill, but if not managed correctly and paired with resistance training and a high protein intake, you could be paying for it at 50 and beyond.
Nothing easy comes without a price.
27/08/2026
The strongest powerlifter alive trains four days a week.
You’re not under-training. You’re under-recovering.
Adding sets works until it doesn’t. Past your recovery capacity, extra volume buys fatigue, not adaptation — and the line sits lower than most people assume.
Six sessions you can only half-attack produce less than four you can attack fully. The quality of the top sets is what drives strength.
Sleep, protein and time between hard sessions aren’t lifestyle extras. They set the size of the training dose you can actually absorb.
Save this before you add a fifth day. Then look at your sleep instead.
A 1200kg total. An all-time world record. And a training week that would disappoint you.
Squat. Bench. Deadlift. A handful of accessories. Repeated for years.
Strength is a skill attached to a tissue. The skill needs repetition, the same movement, practised under gradually heavier load. Novelty is the enemy of that, because every new exercise restarts the learning curve.
One honest note: Colton is an enhanced athlete and has spoken about it openly. That changes how much training he recovers from. It doesn’t change what’s in the program.
Same principles. Different dose.
Save this.
If you’re a lifter carrying extra muscle mass, there’s a decent chance you have undiagnosed sleep apnea.
Neck circumference and muscle mass are risk factors most people don’t associate with sleep apnea — they assume it’s an older or overweight person’s issue.
Red flags: snoring, waking unrefreshed after 8 hours, daytime fatigue despite “enough” sleep.
This could be affecting your performance or even affecting your brain.
Don’t sit on it, get it checked
21/08/2026
You’ve had your cholesterol checked. Your blood pressure. Never your largest organ.
Skeletal muscle is ~40% of your bodyweight and has no specialist. It runs your blood sugar, insulin and inflammation —it’s not decoration.
Skipping training is neglecting an organ.
Save this and train it.
Click here to claim your Sponsored Listing.
Location
Category
Website
Address
Summer Hill, NSW
2130