By Shane Robert, July 10, 2026
The Problem With Rules
Years ago I watched someone criticize another lifter for doing rack pulls. "They don't count," they said. “How does that carry over to a full deadlift?” I’ve heard similar complaints about high-rep cleans. You see, Olympic lifts aren’t ‘supposed’ to be done like that, in the same way using your legs when you press is cheating.
If we're honest, a lot of strength training is just organized cheating. The funny thing about rules is that they're usually right. Until they aren't. Most training rules began as solutions to specific problems. Somewhere along the way, we forgot the problem and started worshipping the solution. Here's one I've learned after years under the bar:
The body does not know the rule book. It only knows stress.
RULE #1: Partial Range of Motion leads to partial gains
Full range of motion is great. Until It Isn't.
I like full squats. I like deep presses. I like pulling from the floor (or even a deficit!). In fact, if I write a program for the average person, full range of motion would probably be the default. But default doesn't mean mandatory. A rack pull lets you hold weights your hands, back, and nervous system would never experience from the floor, and depending on the person, do so in a way that is safer than many people’s lack of mobility and body awareness allows from a full ROM.
The body adapts to tension, force production, and exposure to load. If a movement allows you to safely handle substantially more weight than the full version, that creates a unique training stimulus, which means partials can be incredibly useful for hypertrophy. Muscles don't suddenly stop growing because a joint isn't traveling through its maximum range. Heavy partials often produce enormous mechanical tension in positions where muscles can generate the most force. Quarter squats let you expose your body to significantly heavier loads while emphasizing the strongest portion of the lift. Pin presses overload lockout strength while removing the stretch reflex.
Does this mean you should replace full ROM with quarter reps? Probably not. These lifts are not replacements. They're additions.
The body likes variety. The nervous system likes overload. Sometimes the shortest movement gives you the biggest lesson.
RULE #2: Olympic Lifts are for Olympic Lifters (and require low reps)
If you're preparing for the Olympics, ignore everything I'm about to say. The snatch and clean & jerk are highly technical competition lifts where precision matters. Fatigue changes technique, and sloppy habits can cost kilos on the platform. Every centimeter matters.
For everyone else? Relax. There are no sacred exercises that only the initiated are allowed to do. You won’t go to jail for using a different technique than what is considered optimal for one specific goal. For the average lifter, Olympic lift variations are simply another way to develop explosiveness, coordination, athleticism, work capacity, and muscle.
A set of eight cleans can be a wonderful exercise. So can power snatches, dumbbell cleans or high pulls for any number of reps. These and similar movements can be brutally effective conditioning and strength exercises. The technique won't look like it does on an international platform. Does it need to?
No.
Neither will cleaning an axle. Good luck trying to perform a beautiful Olympic clean with a two-inch-thick non-rotating bar. Strongman figured this out years ago.
The implement changes the technique.
The goal stays the same: move the object. Produce force. Become harder to kill.
Sometimes, I think we've confused "technical proficiency" with "training effect." Those are related ideas but they are not identical.
RULE #3: Never Use Momentum aka cheating
This might be the biggest myth of all.
People hear "strict form" and assume any body movement is automatically wrong, but many of the best exercises ever invented are, in a sense, organized cheating. What is a press where you deliberately use your legs to generate momentum? I think we call that a push press. Isn’t a dumbbell clean essentially a curl that recruits the hips because the dumbbell got heavy? If using violent hip extension to elevate a weight is cheating, then we need to rethink the entire sport of Olympic lifting.
The real question is not whether momentum is good or bad, rather it’s whether you're borrowing momentum to create more work or borrowing momentum because you can't do the work. Those are different conversations.
Watch experienced lifters. When they use body English, it's intentional. The weight still ends up where it should and the muscles still do the job. The movement still has purpose. Used correctly, it extends a set, allows greater loading, and exposes muscles to tensions that perfectly strict reps sometimes can't provide. Technique exists on a spectrum and not every exercise requires textbook perfection.
Conclusion
We've become so concerned with doing exercises correctly that we've forgotten why we do them. Exercises aren’t sacred. They're tools.
A carpenter doesn't argue whether a hammer is better than a screwdriver. They ask which one fits the job. Training should work the same way. Sometimes you need precision; sometimes you need overload; sometimes you need speed; sometimes you need to make an ugly object move from Point A to Point B.
The body adapts to all of it.
Maybe the best rule is this:
Know why the rule exists before you decide whether to follow it. Most of the time you'll keep it; sometimes you'll break it. Occasionally, breaking the rule is exactly what makes you stronger.
