WHY DO WE HAVE STICKING POINTS?

WHY DO WE HAVE STICKING POINTS?

By Shane Robert

In strength movements like the squat or bench press, a sticking or “dead” point is the part of the lift where the barbell seems to stall—usually around the middle of the movement, when joints like the knees or elbows form roughly 90-degree angles. It is because of these problematic right angles, we are traditionally told, that this sticking point occurs. But contrary to popular belief, it’s not the angle itself that causes the difficulty. It’s just a side effect of deeper mechanical and physiological factors. Let’s take a look at some of these causes.

For almost everyone who lifts, the beginning of a movement feels easier than the middle. There are three main reasons for this:

1. Muscle Freshness: At the start of a lift, your muscles are well-rested. As the movement continues, they tire and lose strength.
2. Pre-Stretch Energy: Many lifts begin with a quick stretch—think of the downward motion in a squat or bench press. This stretch stores elastic energy, giving your muscles a temporary boost.
3. Favorable Lever Length: Your bones act like levers. At the start of a lift, the combined lever (the distance from muscle attachment to joint to working point) is shorter, allowing muscles to produce more force efficiently.

As you push past the sticking point and approach lockout, the lift tends to get easier again. This is mostly due to human anatomy:

• Muscles wrap around bones like pulleys
• Extensor muscles, like the quadriceps and triceps, and tendons attach in a way that is positioned for optimal leverage after 90°, not at 90°. Mechanical advantage increases as the joint extends past 90 degrees.
• The geometry of joints (especially elbows and knees) works like a wedge, allowing small muscle efforts to generate large output forces near the end of the lift.

So why the difficulty at 90 degrees? The sticking point occurs where the advantages of the beginning of the lift fade but the mechanical benefits of joint geometry haven’t kicked in yet. Before 90° your muscles are fresh and stretched; after 90° your leverage improves; at 90° you get neither. It’s here that muscle force output is lowest, and mechanical disadvantage is greatest. This overlap creates the notorious sticking point.

While all of the above explains static muscle force, real lifts are dynamic. That means we need to add physics to this discussion to get the complete picture.

Newton’s Second Law of Physics states that the net force acting on an object is directly proportional to its acceleration and mass. In simpler terms, the more force applied to an object, the faster it accelerates, and the more massive the object, the slower it accelerates for the same force. We see this expressed with the famous equation F=ma, where F is the force, m is the mass and a is the acceleration. In our case, we need to modify this slightly for lifting to take the weight of barbell into account:

F(force) - mg (mass x gravity aka weight of the bar) = ma(barbell’s acceleration)

To move the barbell upward, F must be greater than mg or, said differently and as should be no surprise, you must generate more force than the weight of the barbell. Typically, at the start of the movement when you are fresh and have elastic energy on your side, you exert more force than the weight and the bar accelerates upward. As you reach the middle, or sticking point, force may drop due to fatigue and leverage changes and, if F=mg, the bar stops accelerating. If at this point, or at any point in the range of motion, F is less than mg, the bar will start to drop.

Right angles that mark the transition between two phases - the loss of early advantages (muscle freshness, stretch, short levers) and the onset of leverage benefits (from muscle and tendon placement). At this transitional point, there's a brief overlap where none of the advantages apply, creating a natural bottleneck, the "sticking" point. If your muscles can overcome the fatigue and poor leverage of this transition point, force increases again and the lift continues.

So, the sticking point isn't where force is lowest, but where speed is lowest and the barbell nearly stops.

The sticking point isn’t caused by a mystical property of 90-degree angles. It’s the result of muscle fatigue, biomechanics, and physics all interacting. Understanding this can help you train smarter by:

• Strengthening weak ranges of motion.
• Practicing speed and explosiveness.
• Using pauses or tempo work to improve through sticking points.

TL;DR

• Sticking points occur near 90° because that’s where you're least efficient.
• Early in the lift: muscles are strong and levers are short.
• Late in the lift: leverage improves thanks to tendon placement.
• At 90°, you lose both benefits—making it the hardest part of the lift.