Sometimes in weightlifting you have to take a step back in order to take two steps forward, and I seem to have reached one of those time. I deadlifted today and broke my personal record twice, first with 291 lbs., then with 311 lbs. My grip became an issue for the very first time with the latter weight. After the deadlifts, I did overhead presses followed by squat jerks, and in the setup for the 2nd set of jerks, all of the sudden the muscle just inside my left shoulder blade started hurting a lot. I'm guessing it was due to the combination of lots of weight from the deadlifts and lots of stretching of the same muscle while getting in to a clean rack position. At any rate, it hurts!

Over the next few weeks/months, I'm going to lay off heavy deadlifts, work on my grip, and do a lot of isometric work on that muscle and it's counterpart on the right side. I believe they are called rhomboids, but I'll have to check on that.

I could handle the grip issue by switching to an alternate grip, where one hand is overhand, the other underhand, but I don't trust it. It's not symetrical and I can't see how putting unbalanced loads on your body at max weights can be a good thing. I know that powerlifters use alternate grips and lift more than three times what I can do, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I'd much rather work on my grip strength than do something I believe to be unsafe.