Hook grip as symbol of the rebellion

The kid is maybe five-eight, around a buck fifty, real quiet. He comes late to class sometimes, he always lifts on the corner rack, out of sight. Doesn’t play sports. Has never asked for help.

I’m watching him the other day as he sets up for a deadlift (which is currently trendy to hate, despite its ability to train postural and emotional strength like nothing else), and he chalks up and grabs the bar. From behind I see him wrap his fingers around his thumb and from there I just know: he’s got it. I snap a quick photo.

I don’t care what his other grades are, what his middle school teachers might say about him or what his college or work plans might be. He’s now measurably different than he was when he arrived on campus. We have at long last developed the culture we are seeking.

The weight goes up.

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It looks like exercise, but the weights and barbells are just the tools we have available. What we are actually after is a shift.

I’m a high school athletic director, which means that from the outside my calendar is frenetic and random with the increasing business of extracurricular athletics. In the quiet of our office I can explain that in fact my job is straightforward: hire exceptional coaches. Do that, and they steer their programs with a sense of ownership and purpose to a place that develops real global citizens. That’s our goal, simply stated. We have a few exceptional coaches already on staff. And in moments of fatigue or exasperation, they all tell me the same thing: our larger culture is broken.

It is by now cliche to complain about the lack of physical preparedness with which the average high school student arrives on campus. Yet our quality coaches mostly shrug this off. They have a plan for it: drills and progressions, parent-meeting-nutrition-talks aimed at fixing that issue. We know how to track strength gains in the weight room and speed improvements on the track. Our coaches implement these approaches already, and have an eye for physical performance metrics.

What we too often overlook are similar objective measurements with regard to behaviors and attitudes. “Team culture” is a nebulous phrase, with most coaches taking a you-know-it-when-you-see-it approach. Yet poor culture can cripple even the most competent of educators.

And based on profound struggles around hiring and retaining educators nationwide, we are failing.

Our best coaches share that their current groups, on average, lack frustration tolerance and too often blame external factors, such as officials, for their failures. (Officials are not coincidentally also in higher demand as more leave and fewer join their ranks). Students skip practices, take classes in which the teachers post work online with such consistency that attending class becomes optional, even go on vacations during the season and expect that decision to have no impact on playing time when they return. To build strong and healthy adults, coaches need to actively rebel against such low expectations.

We can identify many attributes of the cultures we are trying to build: athletes who show up early, who pay attention to lessons being delivered, who sacrifice something of themselves for the good of the team, who are grateful for the work others do on their behalf. (And so on).

But watching my PE student the other day, I realized that we need even more explicit metrics for the teams we hope to build. I’m constantly looking for the minimalist approach to assessment. What isolated item can I quickly evaluate in order to garner an understanding of the whole?

I frequently reference this story from David Lee Roth of Van Halen:

Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine 18-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.… So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say, “Article 148: There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes … ” This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was, “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error.

Where Van Halen was looking for attention to detail, we are looking for our version of weightlifting culture, which hinges heavily on work ethic and determination. The hook grip is the bowl of M&M’s.

• It’s painful. With your thumb compressed beneath your other fingers, your initial reaction will likely be panic. This is not a comfortable sensation. However, your ability to endure minor discomfort is in direct proportion to your dedication to other, more important goals.

• It’s invisible. Unlike other behaviors that might curry favor from a coach, the hook grip is mostly invisible to all but experienced lifters. It’s easy to sing “Happy Birthday” to a teammate while the coach is watching; it’s far more difficult to demand attention to excellence, from yourself or others, when almost no one else will even notice.

• It works. The hook grip is unequivocally a better way to grip a barbell for Olympic lifts than any other technique. This is in opposition to silly techniques involving speed ladders, Bosu-balls, or rubber-coated dumbbells. It is not glamorous, but it demonstrates a willingness to pursue genuine progress in the weight room.

Do you have a team of students who employ the hook grip without being reminded to do so? If so, you probably have the foundation of a solid team culture.

As we lose coaches and officials, and more importantly struggle to verbalize to students the traits they need to embody to become citizens, we need the small wins.

I recommend starting with the hook grip and going from there.

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One of my favorite sports stories of all time began last year; its conclusion has not yet been written.

It was spring, so high school sports were nearing their conclusion. A student of ours had already signed a D1 soccer scholarship, but when her future coach prescribed a weight room test as a practice requirement, she asked for some help preparing.

For several months we’d meet three or so times per week, drilling foundational weight room positions and moving toward some rudimentary strength standards. At some point her natural athleticism revealed itself, as happens with that level of player, so we introduced some Olympic lifting. She relentlessly asked for more coaching. If you have never had the opportunity of working with an athlete who absorbs every lesson with grit and a smile, I sincerely hope you experience it some day.

We began muscle snatches, then some power snatches, then hang cleans, and so on. She soaked it all up. Eventually her movements progressed to the point where her strength, and not her technique, became her limiting factor. My instinct then was to pause. Despite her anxiety about her upcoming test, I knew it was unlikely that she’d struggle in a college setting, such was her technical aptitude.

Still, I mentioned that a hook grip could allow her — eventually — to handle more weight in the snatch and clean with the same relative strength.

I don’t think her response was much more than, “Okay.”

She wrapped her fingers around her thumb and never looked back.

Nick Saban is famous for saying that being good is easy: it just takes what it takes. Find a student who understands this, and it’s pretty clear success is inevitable.

Fast forward a calendar year.

I am sitting in the stands of a college soccer stadium, watching a spring game. It’s a low-key affair, with mostly parents in the stands and nothing significant at stake.

For me, though, it’s a culmination of sorts. Our former student is playing with speed and aggression and more notable to me a sort of visible joy. The field is perfect, set against a picturesque hillside of flowers, a far cry from the urban high school at which she developed. She scores her first college goal and jogs over to us after the game.

She is considerate and thoughtful in her conversation, she talks about sportsmanship and work ethic more than results when asked about past efforts. She’s the type of young adult we hope our students can emulate.

I am not certain her callouses from weightlifting, visible or not, had anything to do with the person she’s become. But they remain a symbol and a worthwhile step along the way.