The Best Way to Put On a Lifting Belt! (and a secret weapon)

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

A lifting belt is an extremely useful tool for your strength training, and within a month or two of starting to train, you should be using one regularly. Putting on a lifting belt, however, can be a bit tricky, so let’s sort this out.

How to Do It
There is one way - that’s right, just one - to put on a belt correctly, and it involves the upright of your squat rack. The photos here show a double-prong belt in use, but the method works just as well for single prong belts (in fact, it’s slightly easier). The steps are below, and to learn it even quicker and better, watch the included video.

  1. Put the nose of your belt through the buckle and wrap the nose of the belt around the upright.

  2. Lean away from the upright. Be sure to lean away so that your hips move away from the rack as well (Figure 1); don’t lean away like you’re trying to avoid a punch (Figure 2).

  3. Twist your body away from the rack. For example, if the nose of the belt came around the right side of your body, twist to your left (Figure 3). This will tighten up the belt.

  4. Put the prong(s) through the appropriate hole(s).

Taking off the belt is much the same as putting it on - wrap the nose around the rack, lean away, twist to loosen, and then remove the prong(s).

Squat Stands vs Squat Racks
If you have a squat stand (free-standing, two uprights) instead of a squat rack (anchored to the floor, four uprights), it may tip toward you when you lean away. This is bad. However, it’s an easy problem to solve. Simply place your foot down on the far side of the floor support, and you’ll be able to keep the squat stand anchored in place.

Secret Weapon
I told you there’s only one way to put on a belt, and this is true . . . mostly. If you’re at a meet, you might not have a squat rack handy when you’re about to step on the competition platform. Oh, you’ll have plenty of racks in the warm-up room, but there will quite possibly be none near the competition platform. Here’s what you do (and again, watch the video above to see this in action):

  1. Put the nose of your belt through the buckle.

  2. Place the sharp end of the screwdriver through one of the holes of the belt (Figure 4).

  3. Grab that end of the screwdriver (don’t impale yourself), and pull back, treating the screwdriver as a lever (Figure 5). This will get the belt as tight as you like.

How Tight Should Your Belt Be?
When you’re new to wearing a lifting belt, it should be uncomfortably tight. If it’s comfortable to wear and easy to wiggle around, it’s merely a fashion accessory. Don’t let your belt be a fashion accessory. With practice, what was uncomfortably tight at the beginning will simply feel correct.

Need to Buy a Belt? Watch This First.
If you’re getting ready to buy a lifting belt, I’d recommend watching the included video here to get a good sense of what to look for when purchasing one. You’ll also find some links below to a few belts we recommend to our members.

Belts
My belt is from Best Belts, and I’d love to recommend them to you, but as of May 2023, they're backlogged and aren't taking orders, so with that in mind, here are the belt options we typically recommend:

(Some links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, Testify earns from qualifying purchases.)

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

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How to Convert Kilograms to Pounds Fast - Easy Math Trick!

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Whether you're doing your physics homework, your chemistry homework, or you're lifting weights, you sometimes need to be able to convert from kilograms to pounds. Let's figure out how to do this fast - and by fast, I mean “in-your-head-faster-than-whipping-out-your-calculator” fast. Fast like you read about.

The common wisdom is to multiply by 2.2, but you don’t want to multiply by 2.2 in your head, and neither do I. The method you’re about to learn will get us to the same answer, and it’s quicker and easier. Using 35 kg for our example, here’s what you do:

  1. Double it. That gives you 70. No problem.

  2. Find 10% of that new number, and yes, that old gradeschool shortcut of moving the decimal over 1 place still works just fine. That gives you 7. Again, no problem.

  3. Add those two numbers together. That gives you 77.

There you have it: 35 kg is equal to 77 lb.

Now, your turn - albeit with a slightly harder example. Repeat the same steps, but this time with 95 kg, and try it out before reading ahead for the solution.

Got your answer? Let’s see how you did.

  1. Double it. That gives you 190.

  2. Find 10% of that new number. That gives you 19.

  3. Add those two numbers together. That gives you 209.

Thus, 95 kg converts to 209 lb.

It takes a little bit of practice, but not much. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s very accurate (within 0.2% of the true value). As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better . . . or at least stop struggling with cumbersome conversions.

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DISASTROUS Weight Lifting Accident | Don't Let This Happen!

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

It's easy to make mistakes in the weight room, but some are more disastrous than others. Phil explains and discusses how to avoid one particularly nasty error.

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The TRUTH About Breathing, Bracing, and Lifting Heavy

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Are you breathing like a buffoon when lifting? Don't. It's simple, so let's fix it fast.

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Save Time During Your Workouts!

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

(A Blast from the Past article originally posted on 03/05/21)

You like being at the gym, but you also like other things besides being at the gym, and people are often on a tight schedule, so if your workouts are taking longer than you would like (or can afford), we are going to give you two tactics to save time at the gym. These tactics both revolve around the warm-up, because the warm-up is the best place to save time when you train.

First, don’t rest between your warm-up sets. You need to change the weights as you warm-up, and the act of unloading and loading plates between warm-up sets will provide enough rest for the purpose of warming up. Remember, these are warm-up sets - they’re not terribly difficult - you don’t need a whole lot of rest. After your last warm-up set, you’ll want to rest a few minutes (perhaps 2-4 minutes) before performing your first work set, but if you’re resting 3-5 minutes between all of your warm-up sets and you’re wondering how to shorten your workout time, this is where you start.

Second, if you really need to speed things up, start warming up your next lift between the work sets of your current lift. Let’s say you’ve just done your first work set of squats, and bench press is your next lift - while you’re resting, go ahead and grab a barbell and do your empty bar warm-up for the bench (if it’s the press, you don’t even need a rack - you can just pick it up off the floor and press it). Then, sit down and rest until it’s time to squat again. After your second set of squats, go ahead and do your next bench warm-up set. You might still have some warming up to do on the bench press when you’re done squatting, but this method will certainly shave some time off the length of your training session.

Most importantly, don’t let this tactic tire you out for your current work sets. The squat/bench press example we’ve given here will not tire you out for squatting because the bench press warm-ups are light and because the bench press is unrelated to squatting, but warming up your deadlift between work sets of squats may not be the greatest idea.

Try these tactics the next time you train, and you’ll save yourself some valuable time. Of course, you could probably shorten those 15-minute-between-set-conversations you have with your lifting buddies as well.

As always, we hope this helps you get stronger and live better.

-Phil

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The TRUTH About Lifting (What No One Tells You!)

/ Testify Strength & Conditioning/

Phil briefly covers why lifting weights is pretty stupid and - more importantly - why it isn't. This is why we do what we do.

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