reckonerRack pull
A deadlift from pins set near your knees. It cuts off the bottom of the pull, so you can hold and finish more weight than you deadlift from the floor1. That makes it a lift for overloading the top of the pull, not a replacement for the whole thing.
Bar from the pins, hips through.
- Pattern
- Hinge
- Trains
- Spinal erectors, traps, upper back, glutes
- Kit
- Barbell, rack
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Bar
- 20 kg
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- High
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Lower back, neck
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the pins near your knees
Set the rack pins so the bar sits a little below or a little above your knees, and keep that height for the block. Every inch of pin height changes how much you can pull, so the numbers only compare if the pins stay put.
Set your back before you grip
Stand close with the bar against your thighs or shins, hinge until your hands reach it, and grip a little outside your legs. Back flat, chest up, shoulders over the bar, so the pull starts from the same position as the top half of a deadlift.
Brace and stand up
Take a breath, brace hard, and take the slack out of the bar before it leaves the pins. Then drive your hips forward and stand tall. Pulling the slack out first is what keeps the back flat as the weight comes off the pins.
Lower it back to the pins
Hinge back down with the bar close to your legs and set it on the pins under control. Do not drop it, and do not bounce the next rep off them, because a bounce gives you the start the lift was meant to make you earn.
What goes wrong
Leaning back at the top
A big lean feels like a strong lockout. It is your lower back bending once the hips are already straight. Stand tall, squeeze the glutes, and stop.
Yanking the bar off the pins
A jerk feels like speed, and speed feels like strength. It lets the back round before you have braced. Pull the slack out first, then stand up.
Treating it as your deadlift
The rack pull number is much bigger, so it feels like a new best. Training through the full range built more strength and more leg muscle than partial range training across the trials2, so keep your deadlift from the floor.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 100 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 8 at 100 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 3 x 9 at 100 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 3 x 10 at 100 kg | More reps 10 → 11 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 3 x 11 at 100 kg | More reps 11 → 12 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 3 x 12 at 100 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 12 at 100 kg | Load up 100 kg → 105 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the bar goes up 5 kg to 105 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to ten. You are now working 8 to 12. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
Can rack pulls replace deadlifts?
No. In a review of sixteen trials, full range training built more strength and more lower body muscle than partial range training2. Use the rack pull beside a deadlift, for heavier work at the top.
How much more can I rack pull than deadlift?
More, and how much depends on pin height. With the bar about an inch above the kneecap, college wrestlers pulled about eighteen per cent more than their deadlift from the floor1.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. It is a partial deadlift for overloading a lockout, so the engine never chooses it for you. Choose it in the lift picker or as a swap, and it is loaded on the deadlift's heavy barbell steps. Lower back and neck are recorded against it.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Gillingham and colleagues, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2023. The Relationship Between Partial and Full Range of Motion Deadlift 1-Repetition Maximum: A Technical Note eighteen collegiate wrestlers whose partial range deadlift one rep max from a rack at about 2.54 cm above the patella was 226.0 kg against 191.7 kg from the floor
- Pallarés and colleagues, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, 2021. Effects of range of motion on resistance training adaptations: A systematic review and meta-analysis a systematic review and meta-analysis of sixteen studies, with full range training producing significantly greater gains than partial range in muscle strength and lower limb hypertrophy