The work you put in at the gym sets your ceiling of potential in the field.
Unfortunately, deadlifting 500 pounds in the gym doesn’t translate directly to the capability of lifting 500 pounds in the field.
Why?
Because the gym is an extremely controlled environment.
You grab your favorite bar, have the weights evenly distributed on each side, and have a solid grip on the bar to achieve that lift.
But real life isn’t a controlled environment.
Real life is chaos.
Lifting a 500-pound person from the floor is a lot different. You don’t get a good grip because of the soft tissue and there’s uneven weight distribution.
You are being challenged with sensory chaos.
When lifting awkward loads like a heavy person, there is an increased demand on one sensory system in particular- your somatosensory system.
This system allows you to know your joint and muscle positioning, and if your grip is slipping.
It sends this information to your brain to quickly process and create reactions to maintain your positioning and grip.
The goal is to continue to put in work in the gym to constantly be elevating your output potential. But you also want to improve your ability to maintain that capability in the field.
To do this you have to incorporate training your sensory systems.
Your sensory systems performing at a high level translates that work in the gym, to real life execution.
Deadlifting sandbags is a great way to train this capability.
Start light. Change up your grip. Create uneven weight distributions.
Just ensure that the mechanics of your movement doesn’t fall apart.
Incorporating training of the sensory systems prepares you to translate the gains in the gym to the ability to execute during the chaos of life.