Walked into the gym feeling fine. I gave myself permission to jack-shit it today, but figured if I felt good enough I would do the deficits because I actually like them and feel they are paying off. Today’s effort was validation.
I was only supposed to work up to 355. My 3rd rep started to break form, but I wanted a 4th so I went for it tho the form wasn’t hot. I wanted to do more and on a whim opted to try Joker Sets. I hadn’t given it a thought prior to that moment, but went for it.
In short, Joker Sets are doing your normal workup, including still pushing for reps on the last set. Then, you add 5-10% and keep going with the reps for that week (e.g. 5 reps on the 5 week, singles on 5/3/1 week, etc.). Add another 5-10%, and just keep going until you can’t make the reps, tho you need to stop just short of failure. There’s a little more to it than that, but that’s the gist. Wendler covers it in his “Beyond 5/3/1” book.
I opted for 20# jumps because that was about right, and easy enough to just throw a dime on each side of the bar and keep going for singles. 375 wasn’t too bad. My PR at the time was 380×3, so going to 395 felt good. Screw it… that close to 4 wheels? Let’s go for it.
Pulled it. And it was awesome. 🙂
I took a video and compared it to how I felt during the lift. No, the form was not textbook pretty. It’s not the form I’ve been focusing on to help bring up my weak points. But the form really wasn’t all that bad and would be a “good lift”. I can say without a doubt that I would not have done this before my reset. My form them was so bad this would have been a struggle and I am not sure I would have broken the floor. But all the work I’ve been doing for stricter form, keeping the back proper and making it more of a push with the legs than a pull with the back, the deficit deadlifts, and probably even the pause squats and ensuring I break depth on squats… I think it all added up and paid off.
So, hell yeah! 🙂
I actually realized I went from 395 to 405, when the jump should have been to 415, but I was really focused on the 4 wheels and felt that was good enough. I’d rather make 405 than miss 415 anyways.
I’m thrilled! I’m still floating on the high from the success.
That said, I am not going to adjust my weights to use 405 as my max and recalc my numbers. I know I got here because of the focus on form, so I’ll stick with the sub-max work and stricter form to bring things up. There’s no question that paid off, and frankly that’s more important to me than a 1RM. But, I’ll still be happy with the lifetime PR!
Had a Basic Pistol 2 and Defensive Long Gun: Essentials class this past Saturday. Classes were mostly full, some no-shows for some reason. And we were down one assistant instructor due to sudden illness. But apart from the oppressive heat, everything went pretty well.
Basic Pistol 2 was like most, with students getting used to the notion of shooting “faster”. But it’s not just actually going faster, but learning to be more efficient and simultaneous in our actions (see here). It’s a paradigm shift for sure, but an important one.
Another fun thing that came up was grip. And in short, grip harder. Whatever you’re doing with your grip, grip harder. And yes, it will be a workout, and yes you will get tired. Still, grip harder. Get stronger, build the endurance. It will only help. And those grippers? Captains of Crush.
This was the first DLG-E I helped with. I’ve been wanting to be a part of that class for some time, but schedule just hasn’t worked out. I like working with the shotgun folk because they don’t get a lot of love. 🙂 Plus, I like bringing out my “grandpa gun” — all those black guns, and there’s my wood-stocked gun. 🙂 A few reminders for folks there.
First, for everyone, if you can make your stock shorter, try that. We get comfortable with longer stocks and a shorter stock thus a shorter length-of-pull feels weird. And yes, too short and you might end up kissing the gun. But try just going a notch or two shorter and see what it does for you. The issue here is going from something like the high ready to shouldering the gun. If you have to push the gun out then pull it back into your shoulder, that’s wasted movement, that’s inefficient. You should be able to hold the gun in the high-ready position, then just snap it up into your shoulder. A short stock helps with that. So if your stock is adjustable, try shortening it and see what that does for you. Go as short as you can and find how short you can get it before it becomes a problem (e.g. you end up kissing the gun). Plus, a shorter overall gun length helps maneuverability, manipulations, etc., which can matter more inside a building (house) than outside where walls don’t get in your way.
This is one reason I like my wood-stock shotgun: was able to saw and size it precisely to fit me. I’ve bought the synthetic shorter stocks, and they are still either too long or too short.
Second, for pump-shotgun folks, remember that the firing sequence is the “Tom Givens Waltz”: boom-chunk-chunk. You fire, then you must rack it, and THEN you are done with that shot and ready for the next. It’s not boom… and now wait, then chunk-chunk and boom. Be ready to go.
So on that note, third, when reloading, keep the gun loaded and ready to go. If there isn’t one in the chamber, getting one in the chamber is your first order of business. Then keep the gun in a firing position (e.g. holding/supporting with your firing hand), and feed the magazine from there. The point is, in a gunfight you don’t really have control over when you will need to “go”, so you need to keep the gun running and ready as much as possible. If nothing is in the chamber, you’re behind the curve. Get something in there first and be ready, because then you’ve at least got 1. Then if you keep the gun in a ready “firing” position, it’s not as much of a fumble and fiddle to get back into the fight, even if the gun gets only partially reloaded. You just have to remember we’re working with a limited-capacity firearm and one that’s slower to reload (vs. something magazine fed), so it’s important to keep it fed and running at all times.
Classes overall ran well. Good group of students. Only downside was the oppressive heat. Such is Texas in the middle of August. 🙂
Assistance – Band-assist pull-ups (superset with all pressing)
12 x 3 (8 on last set) x bw
Assistance – Seated cable rows
3 x 15 x 70
Today just felt awesome. Well, it didn’t start out that way. Drag-ass out of bed, and the first few sets felt really heavy. As I went along, something in my right wrist didn’t feel good, so I decided I would wrap my wrists for the last set. And when I hit that last set, cranked down the belt, wrapped the wrists tight, hit some ammonia (still experimenting with it), and cranked out 6 easily. I should have stopped there, but something just said to do more so I did. Yeah my butt lost contact with the bench, and rep 8 had to work for the lock-out, but I just felt like really going for it. Looking back over my logs, that ties a rep record @ 205, so that’s cool. I mean, last cycle I did 6 @ 200, so 8 at 205 was really cool. I just felt really awesome.
And it shows as I moved into assistance work, because usually cranking that hard during the work sets and my assistance work can’t crank so hard, but look… I hit the inclines fine and even AMRAP’d it on the last set. Only 12 but still. I also superset band-assisted pull-ups with every pressing set with AMRAP on the last set. I really am liking this and my shoulders are ok with it, so I’ll slowly increase this next cycle (4 reps per set, at least).
Last thing was seated cable rows. I’m searching for what to do for superset with my pressing sets. Sure, face pulls, but I want something a little heavier, more substantial, but also not something that will detract from the main lift. Rows make sense, but full on rows felt like it’d risk detracting. I thought why not, try the seated (cable) rows. I figured it wouldn’t hurt, but I didn’t realize how good it would be! The pull at the bottom actually did a nice number on my upper back and shoulder area, in terms of stretching and popping some stuff in my spine (in a good way). The squeeze, the constant tension, really pinching the shoulder blades together, yeah, I think this might work out better than expected. I’m sure I’ll drop the weight down around 50 and drop the reps to 10 max and see how it goes. But preliminary assessment is it’s worth a shot.
I like the refined approach I’m taking to my lifting.
I don’t know why things were so awesome today. Might be the diet change. I’m not strictly following CBL any more, but keeping the basic idea of no carbs for the most part, a refeed the night prior to a training session, but allowing myself to more freely eat carbs over the weekends. I am thinking the fuel is helping. Makes sense. If it means it makes my fat loss slower, but becomes a more solid eating program that I can stick with without much effort, then I’ll go with it.
As for the ammonia, I’m still playing with it. It’s interesting. I cannot shove it up my nose and inhale deeply like I see the pros do… but I get a fair shot of it. I think what’s changing for me is not feeling like I have to inhale then get into the lift “before it wears off”. No, let it wear off. Don’t rush into it. Inhale it, let it clear the mind, get the focus, but just let it be and get into the lift as normal. It’s interesting stuff for sure.
One day at the gym I saw this catalog atop the pile of magazines:
Apparently what matters most are pecs, abs, and boobs.
It reminded me of that Simpsons episode where Homer finds the overturned sugar truck and is sleeping in front of the sugar mound:
All I could hear in my head was “first you buy their supplements, then you get the abs, then you get the women”. 🙂
Flipping through the catalog, it was the same old thing of overhyped promises: promises to get h00g3, ripped, be better (and more legal!) than anabolics and other PED’s, and of other enhancement — if you just buy and take our expensive product. Oh yeah… and when you take our product, you’ll get the body you want, and the woman it belongs to (thank you Paul Stanley).
Of course, few of these products are proven to work; heck, even the bro-science is often weak. And when you have places like examine.com to give you the straight story well… you do realize how much of this stuff is just parting foolish you with your money.
But still… we dream. And still we throw our money away.
Yes, if there can be a short-cut that is proven to work, we will take it. Why? Because we are human. We want to bigger, better, faster, more, and we want it now. We also find it difficult to be patient. We also find it difficult to accept that this is going to take time… a lot of time. So if we can find a way to still get to the same place but do so in a faster or more effective or more direct manner, we’re going to do it. It doesn’t matter if it’s winning the Tour de France or just choosing to go straight down the street instead of around the block when driving — we’re going to do what it takes to accomplish things in the most expedient manner.
I have lifted weights on and off since I was a teenager. I never stuck with it, and looking back I can see why: I either got bored, or I didn’t see the results I wanted (bigger/stronger, and sooner rather than later). I think that’s why I’ve stuck with now for the past 2+ years: I’m far from bored, and I see awesome results.
But still, I think to myself… gee, over 2 years at this, and I’ve only come this far? I thought I’d be further!
Furthermore, when I think about where I want to be in terms of my strength levels and body appearance, I think it might take me another 3 years. The strength gains will not come like they did the first few months on Starting Strength. In fact, a simple calculation like on Wendler of having 4-week cycles thus 13 cycles per year, and if you go up 10# per cycle on squat/deadlift, that means you should gain 130# per year, right? No, if you get 50# you’re doing great, because you’ll go maybe 6-7 cycles, then reset, then another 6-7 and reset, and those resets take a large chunk out of your numbers, so looking year to year and it may only be a 50# increase. If you’re lucky.
Is that so bad? If I’m honest with myself, no it’s not. In fact, it’s quite realistic. It’s actually the way it is… just that no one tells you it’s going to take this long. Thankfully, that’s starting to change.
If he’s right that Andy Bolton started with a 600# deadlift and it took him 20 years before he pulled 1000#, that averages out to like 20# a year. I’m sure that wasn’t Andy’s actual increase, but it gives you some perspective. So next time you get mad because your lift isn’t going anywhere, you have to step back and really see if it’s not going anywhere or if it’s just going really slow.
Or just look at Paul’s own story. Two years before he could bench 135. But now he can close-grip 445. But it’s been 20+ years to get there. If anything, it makes me wish I was back as a teenager and knew then what I know now, so I could have stuck with it. I’m way behind the curve.
But, Paul teaches another thing:
It took me more than two decades of struggle to climb to those numbers. Regardless of how they compare to anyone else’s, they are mine, and I’m proud of them. I put in a lot of time and effort to reach them. I do not apologize for not “measuring up” to what someone else can do. The only person I need to measure up to each day, and get better than, is the competition I see in the mirror. That guy needs to be better today, than he was yesterday. And tomorrow, he needs to be a little bit better than he was today.
He’s quite right. It doesn’t really matter if your numbers aren’t killer next to someone else. Sure, to compare your numbers to charts/standards or to what a federation establishes for “raw elite” or just to someone else’s numbers… it is useful to a degree because it gives you some perspective about what’s achievable, what’s realistic, etc.. But in the end, it’s more about you improving yourself. I’ve found myself doing that too, telling people my numbers and minimizing them because I know compared to the big boys, my numbers are nothing. But I have to remember they’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I’ve been doing it for 2.
Those readers who have been engaged in serious bodybuilding for more than a year probably have realized that the growth of muscle tissue beyond normal levels is a relatively slow process. And while I have never seen the results of studies that might reveal exactly how many pounds the average bodybuilder gains in the course of one year of hard training, I think that most experienced bodybuilders would agree that a five-pound gain of pure muscle tissue – as opposed to give pounds of body weight, despite its composition – would be considered a considerable achievement.
Think about that. You read the bodybuilding magazines and are bombarded with how with this product or that technique you’ll put on 20# in 20 weeks, and get 20″ biceps in a matter of minutes. And here’s Mike Mentzer, one of the best bodybuilders ever, and he says if you can gain 5# in a year, that’s a “considerable achievement”. That implies in normal course you will probably gain less than 5# in a year! But then, Mike continues and puts it into perspective.
Five pounds of muscle tissue may not sound very impressive, but if a bodybuilder were able to sustain that rate of growth (5 pounds of pure muscle tissue per year) for five years, he would, at the end of that period, end up some 25 pounds heavier. If you could envision that much beefsteak laid out in front of you on the dinner table, you would then get some idea as to just how much “meat” 25 pounds of muscle is – enough to transform the average American male weighing 155 pounds into a veritable Hercules at 180 pounds of solid, cut-up muscle. It should also be remembered that of that average American male’s 155 pounds of body weight, the muscle weight component is roughly 20 pounds (the remainder being bone, water, fat, and waste materials). Given this fact, his muscle weight gain of 25 pound over five years would represent a transformation that would more than double his existing muscle mass!
Is 5 years that much to ask?
Well, yes it is. But what do you want?
I’ve been around now for long enough. I’ve done enough things that take time: 4 years of high school; 4 years of undergrad, 2 years of grad school, 4+ years to get a black belt. And yeah, you come to realize that you just have to put in that level of time before you can really understand. To ask 4-5 years of work under the bar really seems a minimum to not only get the strength levels or physique or whatever that you want, but also to have enough experience to know what you’re doing, to know what to keep doing, and to get somewhere satisfactory.
So really no, 5 years isn’t much to ask.
But that doesn’t mean we won’t get impatient. That doesn’t mean it won’t be easy. That doesn’t mean we won’t long for something “more”.
But I think about it. I can see if I stick to a good long-term diet strategy, I’ll be able to look in the mirror and see precisely what I want to see.
If say I can gain 50#/year on my deadlift and squat and 25# on my bench and press (as rough numbers), then 3 years from now that’s 150 and 75… and that will mean things like squatting in the mid-400’s, pulling low 500’s, benching maybe 3 wheels and pressing maybe 2. Hell, that’s damn respectable.
Yes I’d love to have those numbers now, but that means I should have started 5 years ago. There’s just no getting around having to put in the time.
Really, there aren’t any shortcuts here. No product in a catalog will get me the body I want (and thankfully I already have the woman). And I just can’t get around the limits of human reality – 5#/year might be all I pack on.
I just have to wait.
No, it’s not easy to accept (yet again), but it’s refreshing. It frees you from burden. It lifts off pressure. It helps you see clearer so you can know what’s useful and what’s useless towards helping you get there. Accepting the reality that it’s going to take time, that’s OK, because so far the journey’s been a good one, and I look forward to the road ahead.
I went in with a “jack shit” mentality. I wanted to put everything into the work set. I also felt a need to preserve myself because tomorrow I will be on my feet teaching, all day, in 100+ degree heat (with 110+ heat index), with guns. Yeah, I need to pace myself to ensure I can get through tomorrow ok. 🙂
But that’s all good. My cue for today was “depth”. I wanted to ensure every rep was parallel or just below. The work up actually was a little on the hard side. Still no belt. But I was determined to keep my back up, no “hinging” and “falling forward”, push with my legs, keep my head/neck/chin driven back into the bar, and hit depth.
I went down for 1 on the 280 did well. A slight bobble on the way up because I was excited I hit depth. 🙂 Lost focus a bit and lost tightness in my upper back. But still did well. Went for 2, and just didn’t have the upper back tightness… still happy. I was pleased tho overall with the form of everything. I opted to not go for a third because I was pretty sure if I did I would make it but would have to sacrifice form, would fall forward, and would be muscling it up. Not what I wanted, so screw it, rack it.
All in all, alright.
After I racked it, I actually felt like the pause squats would have been perfect to work me out, but again no… I have to save myself for tomorrow. Getting old sucks. 😉
I do think I will take a deload week, and I am thinking about going “carbless” the entire time. That should be interesting. 🙂
So anyways, I felt good about things. Just a really solid Press workout. Nothing much to say.
I am liking getting back to a proper Wendler approach, of doing a pulling set for every pressing set. Again, I am starting VERY light and trying to use a movement in the opposite plane to see if this makes for happier shoulders. So far so good. The face pulls were almost too light today… I didn’t really feel anything until towards the end, and then I did feel my traps peeding out while assistance pressing. So, all good I guess. But no question to up the weight there.
I also played around with hang cleans. Not full power cleans yet, just holding the empty bar, letting the bar hang down to my mid-thigh, then trying the movement out. This is how Rip starts off in the SS book, so I just played with it a bit. Most routines I see that incorporate power cleans are either full-body style things or tend to put cleans on squat or deadlift days. I think I’m going to try doing it on Press days and see how it does for me.
So my sessions will be something like:
squat, pause squat, abs
deadlift, deficit deadlifts, abs
bench press, incline db press, superset all pressing with pull-ups, kroc-style rows maybe superset with dips
press, more pressing, superset all pressing with face pulls or some sort of row, maybe some extra back work like lat pulldowns, then power cleans
So it puts more back work in due to the supersetting (like you should), but then simplifies things down to “3 movements” (main, 2 assistance) more or less, which gets back to simpler Wendler 5/3/1 approaches. I only added in a lot of that other stuff to make up for the lack of volume in some respects, but I think with what I’ll be doing here it’ll be more than enough once I find my groove and the right weights.
5, 100 yard trips, 45# plate in each hand, 10 breath rest between trips
Assistance – Crunches
1 x 20 x BW
Foam Rolling
I have to keep reminding myself that the “2 steps back” is good for me. I know it is. I can feel it. It wasn’t just a reset of weights, but also of technique… keeping my back flat, pushing with the legs. I repeat, I have never felt a leg workout like I have since I did this reset and worked to “push with my legs” instead of “pull with my back”. Yeah I can’t hit the numbers like I used to… but that’s the “3 steps forward” I’ll eventually get to after these 2 steps back. 🙂
and I have to say, I am growing to enjoy deficit deadlifts. It’s hard, but it pushes me.
As an aside, I’ve been doing more reading and thinking. There’s a lot swirling in my head, but in short I think I need to add some explosive work. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. If I did Prowler pushes, that’d probably fill the bill, but alas, no Prowler. But I have been thinking about power cleans for quite some time. I wasn’t able to do them in the past because of gym limitations, but now that I go at a different hour and the population is different, I can do some judicious rearranging and should be able to make the space to do them. I think with the evolution I’m taking to go for 6-week cycles (2 cycles, no deload in between, increase weights across cycles, deload on 7th week), adding more back work superset as you should; less overall exercises per session; etc… well… power cleans may well fit the bill for me. I need to figure out where and just how I want to work it in, but that’s my current thinking. I think it will do me good because well… I’m too slow and creaky and my body could use something explosive.
We all suffer from this at some point: the need to — but the inability to — stick with something and follow through with it.
Really, the only way we succeed in many things is to stick with it, to keep going long after you want to stop/quit/give-up. Of course, sometimes it is wise to stop because you realize it’s fruitless or not taking you towards your true goals. But sometimes it is precisely where you want to go, yet you can’t get there.
One place folks constantly fail on this is “diet and exercise”. We know we’re supposed to “eat better” and “exercise more”, and we try, but after a few weeks or a few months it fades. You see it in gyms every January when people decide to join up, then in February when they all fade away.
At a high level, there’s only one way to succeed at fitness. All fitness successes and failures can be explained using the following framework.
The only way to succeed at fitness is to create a positive feedback loop.
In laymen’s terms, that means engaging in fitness‐related activities, and then seeing enough results to motivate you to keep going.
When you decide to start any fitness regimen, there is a certain amount of friction or “pains” working against you – the pain of giving up your favorite foods, taking time to exercise, giving up alcohol, being constantly hungry, etc.
After some time has passed, you will have to determine (consciously or subconsciously) if the results are worth continuing. One week into a fitness regimen, you might ask yourself a few questions:
Did I lose enough weight? Do I look better in the mirror? Do I feel healthier and more energized?
If the rewards outweigh the pain, then the feedback loop is renewed. The strength of your feedback loop can be summed up below:
Creating this feedback loop is the only way to succeed in fitness. It’s the same way that a business must become profitable to exist. You must create this feedback loop to stick to a healthy lifestyle. There is no alternative.
If you’ve always struggled with maintaining a fitness regimen, it doesn’t mean that you’re a pathetic, weak-willed individual. It means there was a breakdown somewhere in creating this feedback loop: the pain of dieting was too high, you did not accumulate enough reward, or you didn’t measure your progress.
It’s quite right. I never thought about it before, but it is true.
I look at my own efforts. When I engaged in martial arts for purposes of fitness, I didn’t have a direct feedback loop regarding the fitness itself, but the martial arts program did because I would see myself climbing up the belt ranks. That gave positive feedback, and you kept coming back for more.
When I lifted weights in my prior years, I would see some level of positive feedback in the initial stages, but then it waned and I would too. Why have I stuck with it the past couple years? Because I see this positive feedback loop constantly. I may hit a rep PR, or this cycle sets a true PR. I can look in the mirror and see how my body is becoming something I like more than the body I had previously. The program I’m on (Wendler 5/3/1) is set up for constant positive feedback. And it does keep you coming back.
I really don’t care if people want to lift weights or jog for miles. You do whatever it takes to give you the positive feedback. I have a friend of mine that’s right now trying to lose weight and he’s just getting on the elliptical machine every day. It’s not what I care to do, but for him it works because seeing him post that post-workout picture of the elliptical’s readout to Facebook? Positive feedback gets created not only in seeing better numbers each time, but also because there are people liking the picture and encouraging him on. So it’s not really about the particular program, it’s just about keeping the positive feedback loop going in whatever way works for you that keeps you willingly and happily going back for more.
So whatever you goals are — fitness, health, or otherwise. Do you have a program? Do you have something actually laid out to help you along? And does it include some way of having a positive feedback loop? If not, see what you can do to remedy this. It may be just the thing to keep you going for the long haul.
All Pressing work superset with band-assisted pull-ups, 3 reps per set
Assistance – DB Rows (Kroc style)
3 x 10/10/25 x 50
Superset the DB rows with dips, 3 reps per set
This session felt really really good. Maybe it was all the pizza I ate last night and was just fired up. But I felt really good. By the end of things I felt worked, but not exhausted. In fact, I kinda wished I had worked a little more!
On the work set, I only did 6. I certainly left some in the tank and looking back I probably could have done 1-2 more and still not pushed it all the way. Oh well. I am trying to be conservative and leave enough in the tank now. But to that end, I then didn’t feel all that bad on inclines — I do think I should go up to 55’s. But I also changed form there a bit. I’ve been trying to be nice to my shoulder by letting my elbows come ina nd the dumbbells then turn a bit. I was reading something and I’m took more the approach of acting like the dumbbells were a barbell, in terms of keeping things oriented. That actually pushed my shoulder a little more, which I think it needed in a good way.
I mean, when I did the dips, that sort of bottom-position is precisely what I need for a stretch to my anterior delts, which I think is what they need right now to get over this issue.
But… what I really did that was different? More back work.
See, Wendler doesn’t spell it out, but he tells you that for every pressing set you need to do a pulling set (or two). I just don’t do that. The main reason was when I tried it long ago, my shoulders really hated it. I gave it up because I didn’t want to sacrifice the main lift. But I tried something different today.
First, I went really light. The pull-ups were band-assisted (cause I’m still too wussy to do so much volume unassisted), and I only did 3 reps per set. I will slowly work it up, sets across for now, so next session will get 4 reps, etc..
Second, I am going against the plane. That is, there’s something to be said for doing the push and pull in the same plane. So if you bench, you row. If you press, you pulldown/pull-up. That keeps the motion in the same plane. Well, in the past when I did it, that’s how I superset, and I don’t think my shoulders liked it. But now I’m going “perpendicular”. So my push was benching, so my pull was pull-ups. I’m thinking for my pressing days, then to do something like face-pulls. My shoulders didn’t complain today, but I also didn’t have them under heavy stress. So, we’ll see if this strategy pans out for my shoulders and back.
But also, one reason I chose to do extra work afterwards was for arm work. I mean, I didn’t get enoug bicep and forearm work, right? But now if I do this much extra back work, well, I’ll get a bunch. So I really didn’t bother doing any extra work. But I did think after I did my rows to superset in some dips… just because dips are cool, and I think that stretch may help my shoulder issues right now.
So there we go. Today felt awesome. I liked how it went. and I hope that as I ramp it up more that it’ll pay off more all around.
4 100 yard trips, 45# plate in each hand, 10 breath rest between trips
I’m a little disappointed that I only got 3 reps @ 265 today. I was hoping for at least 4 and preferably 5, but I got what I got. I think I know why.
First, I’ve been working so hard on keeping my back up and pressing with my legs. Both on squat and deadlift. I can really feel it, and I can tell that my legs are working much more, and there’s less “levering it up” with my back and hip-hinge. So this is good. I also videoed myself today and see that I’m going below parallel, which is also good. But then, it of course isn’t helping me move a lot of weight because I’m directly addressing my weak points. 🙂 So it all stands to reason. I think I could have gotten 4 but when I hit the hole on 3 I realized I had lost all upper-back tightness — I was so focused on keeping up and pressing with my legs, I just lost my upper back… got some slight levering on the way up, and figured to just rack it because the first sign of that sort of thing is my cue to stop because form is degrading. Well, I probably could have stood up, retightened, and hit a 4th, but didn’t really realize all that until I was out from the bar. Oh well.
Anyways tho, if ultimately I’m overcoming weak points, I’ll take it. I’d rather have 3 good reps than 5 sloppy.
And pause squats… damn. Those are killer. I like them because they really force me to be strict and good with my form. You can’t let momentum throw you into something sloppy or break your form. And shit, they are hard.
It was a good session. I really am hoping I am overcoming my weak points here. We shall see next squat session, I reckon. 🙂
Stuff From Hsoi 