I feel like my squat is off. For a little while there, about 3 months ago I was killing it every week setting PRs non-stop. Now I just get under the weight and it feels heavier. Best was 1x400 and 5x365 done middle of january. Videos for comparison
5x365
Today’s training
I feel like I’m sitting back too far and letting the weight get too far in front of my hips. I think I need to focus on pushing my knees out and sitting straight down more instead of back so much. Maybe bring my stance in a bit. Also I’m squatting with what feels like a fairly high bar position, maybe I should move to a lower bar position. Any advice?
I think your form looks fine too me…It could be just a mental thing, maybe you just need to take a little break or switch it up, maybe just put 315 on the bar and just hit tons of reps with it. You probably already know this, but not everyone is gonna have a great training day, especially with squat.
Not qualified to critique squat form. But, it looks to me like you lost weight.
(though it’s hard to tell because the angle is different, and you’re wearing black vs. white)
Yea, I’m about 10 lbs lighter now, that’s true. Maybe I’m just being unrealistic with my expectations. I’d been doing a bottoms up squat off the pins in the power rack the last month or so, this was my first week back to the free squat.
Form looks great man. Change nothing with that. This situation you are describing happens to everybody once in awhile. Deload to reload. You’ve got to change the batteries in your remote at some point because they die. Same thing happens to you if you go hard for a long time with no deloading. Have you been going this hard since January? Personally, if I don’t take a week off a month, by off I mean nothing over 50% on the main lifts, I feel like death and my weights go to shit.
Also, you can’t lose 10lbs in 2 months and expect it to not mess with your strength. I bet your bench has gone down too? An maybe your deadlifts have gone up a little? Unless youve gotten stale on that one too.
Keep the intensity down for a week, or even 2. You’ll come back wanting heavy weights and you’ll be able to start making gains again.
Your Explosiveness/Reactivity:Strength relationship is out of equilibrium.
You were more explosive in the first video than the rest, you could see that you were using the stretch reflex in the first video, but not much or not at all in the rest of the. You should do some lighter weight reactive/explosive lifts.
In the second video, you’re doing a good morning to get the weight out of the rack. Fix that.
Yeah I can’t remember the last time I deloaded. Funny story. Monday I had a shitty bench day and decided I should deload for the rest of the week at least. Came in on Tuesday and said “fuck this deload shit” and did a bunch of singles over 90%. I’m a moron, I know. Thursday I should be doing speed bench, friday speed deadlift. Should I just go ahead and do those, then go easy my next two ME days on monday/tuesday? Or should I go easy, skip the speed work and just do lots of accessories etc with light weight for the next week or 1.5 weeks.
edit: yea my deadlift has been stalled too. Last friday did 425 for a single, missed with 435. Previous best was 450 also in January. I think I’ve just been beating myself against a wall since I dropped some weight starting in February and too stubborn to take it easy for a week. Every time I decide I’m going to deload I never actually follow through with it. I’ve been doing heavy single/double/triples with max weight for about 6 months, Bench on Monday, Squat on Tuesday and Deadlift on Friday, all maxes, without every taking time off. I guess it’s time to stop being a dumbass?
[quote]Papashlapa wrote:
Yeah I can’t remember the last time I deloaded. Funny story. Monday I had a shitty bench day and decided I should deload for the rest of the week at least. Came in on Tuesday and said “fuck this deload shit” and did a bunch of singles over 90%. I’m a moron, I know. Thursday I should be doing speed bench, friday speed deadlift. Should I just go ahead and do those, then go easy my next two ME days on monday/tuesday? Or should I go easy, skip the speed work and just do lots of accessories etc with light weight for the next week or 1.5 weeks.
edit: yea my deadlift has been stalled too. Last friday did 425 for a single, missed with 435. Previous best was 450 also in January. I think I’ve just been beating myself against a wall since I dropped some weight starting in February and too stubborn to take it easy for a week. Every time I decide I’m going to deload I never actually follow through with it. I’ve been doing heavy single/double/triples with max weight for about 6 months, Bench on Monday, Squat on Tuesday and Deadlift on Friday, all maxes, without every taking time off. I guess it’s time to stop being a dumbass?[/quote]
Dude, I feel your pain. This has happened to me many a time before, and I attribute it to overtraining, particularly when weights that were once light feel heavy again, or missing old previous bests. i would take time off and then when you start again start at a lighter weight, not to failure, in a few weeks you may be back to hwere you were. This all reminds me there was a time I was benching heavy hitting doubles and stuff and I got up to 290 and hit it for a single. I’ve hit this for more reps in the past, i took like three weeks off from heavy stuff and focused on speed work. Sure enough three weeks later I hit 290x3.
[quote]Papashlapa wrote:
Yeah I can’t remember the last time I deloaded. Funny story. Monday I had a shitty bench day and decided I should deload for the rest of the week at least. Came in on Tuesday and said “fuck this deload shit” and did a bunch of singles over 90%. I’m a moron, I know. Thursday I should be doing speed bench, friday speed deadlift. Should I just go ahead and do those, then go easy my next two ME days on monday/tuesday? Or should I go easy, skip the speed work and just do lots of accessories etc with light weight for the next week or 1.5 weeks.
edit: yea my deadlift has been stalled too. Last friday did 425 for a single, missed with 435. Previous best was 450 also in January. I think I’ve just been beating myself against a wall since I dropped some weight starting in February and too stubborn to take it easy for a week. Every time I decide I’m going to deload I never actually follow through with it. I’ve been doing heavy single/double/triples with max weight for about 6 months, Bench on Monday, Squat on Tuesday and Deadlift on Friday, all maxes, without every taking time off. I guess it’s time to stop being a dumbass?[/quote]
what you should do is do speed work only, for the whole week, and do assistance work with 10 reps or higher, so you can deload. Its the best way to deload without being away from the gym.
I actually ended up deciding to take Thursday and Friday off completely. I’ll go back on monday and decide if I’m going to go heavy or do a week of speed/accessory/prehab work. By then it will have been 5 days with no lifting. I’m hoping by the time monday rolls around I’ll be ready to rip out people’s spinal cords and shit like fucking predator from not having lifted for so long.
i think you should take at least a week off of heavy lifting, and DO NOT do speed work in this time. go in, hit your main lifts for maybe 3x5 at 50-60%, no more. just focus on doing the lifts with good form. doing speed work the right way WILL tax your CNS, and that is specifically what you are trying to avoid during a deload.
you sound like its a real big problem for you to take a week off- why? did you go from squatting 135lbs to 400lbs in one week? dont think so. so why are you so worried to take a week off, as if youre going to have to start all over again or something. youre looking for the answer, and the answer is to take a proper deload, not a couple days off and “see how you feel on monday”. keep pushing hard and your weights and form will keep decreasing. your choice.
I was going to just go in and, if I feel like murdering shit, I know I’m good to go. If I’m still not feeling like an animal, I know to take a week off. You’re probably right, but by Monday that’s 5 whole days of not lifting any weights at all. Is that not a sufficient deload?
thats the thing, you dont know youre good to go just because you “feel like murdering shit” unless you have some sort of cyborg CNS recovery gauge on your forearm or something. take the last day you lifted heavy, and dont lift heavy again until that same weekday comes up again- thats the least you should wait. keep in mind, guys that are lifting hard and heavy are already doing this, you may actually need more than a week since youve been neglecting the deload. so no, 5 days is probably not a sufficient deload. whats a few more days? whats the big deal?
My 2 cents,
Not to argue with deloading and I am not sure what your training looks like. But it looks to me like you need to push up the Good Mornings and abs strength, 2 when your in the hole focus on driving back into the bar. The firts thing to move is your ass that is forcing you into a sort of goodmorning position the whole way up. I think if you work on those things you should be able smash through 400 in a couple of weeks.
I was squatting for several months straight, but it was after I took a break on about maybe one month that I made some shocking strength gains. I don’t even squat a lot anymore, and I still make more gains than I used to. I might even be able to hit 150kg for real.
Thanks to that article with Dave Tate. I’d suggest belt squats.
[quote]Papashlapa wrote:
Every time I decide I’m going to deload I never actually follow through with it. I’ve been doing heavy single/double/triples with max weight for about 6 months, Bench on Monday, Squat on Tuesday and Deadlift on Friday, all maxes, without every taking time off. I guess it’s time to stop being a dumbass!!![/quote]
I bolded and fixed your last sentence
Well I went heavy today. ME full range bench, haven’t done full range in a few weeks, had been doing floor presses instead. Previous best was 1x300. Did 225, 255, 275 and 295 all easy singles. Went for 315 and missed it barely. I think I actually called for the spotter to take it prematurely, I probably could have ground it out, but pussied out a bit. Attempted it again and I think I had it but the spotter grabbed the bar and helped without my call, while the bar was still moving. So, even though I missed two PR attempts, I’m actually happy with the day, because I think I could have gotten either of those attempts, and easily could have done 305(would have been a smarter attempt, instead of 315). Attached is both videos of me failing, full disclosure and all.
