5 hill sprints done before 8 AM… chilly morning but a nice way to warm up before heading to farmer’s market. Sort of a dumb choice, as these were more like runs than sprints because my obliques and legs were pretty fatigued. Managed > 25k steps today.
Hey nice photos. Curious where they are? If you don’t wanna give clues about your location, it’s fine
Those are some beautiful photos.
Absolutely stunning pictures!
Wow, didn’t expect that much positive feedback on the photos. I’m fortunate that the quality of my phone camera is quite good. I do quite like photography and have a fancier camera as well, though I don’t use it too often.
@whang Yeah, not sure I want to mention specifics or not. But I have spent the majority of my life, including now, ping-ponging between cities in the midwest of the USA. One of the few good things about this region is how great autumn is here.
@Voxel Honestly, the second one might look better in black and white
Haha it’s alright. Thanks!
Hey, one piece of feedback on your squats, after looking at several iterations of it ( and the fact that it’s something I struggle with myself), is that you are tending to do a ‘squat-morning’. You may have had this pointed out to you before, but coming up from the hole, your butt starts rising first, and then your back has to good morning it up to catch up. A cue that works for me is to really drive your shoulders into the bar. Another thing that might help is doing front squats as a supplemental move. Front squats are the devil IMO, but they actually force you to keep your chest and shoulders up.
I’m also guessing that, like with me, it’s only a problem when you’re doing your top sets, but that’s only a guess since your top sets are all you’re posting video of. It might help to practice leading with your shoulders on your ramp-up sets as well. Use all your cues and treat your light sets like they’re heavy.
Appreciate your feedback, but trust me, I’ve known about the squat-morning for years and have neglected it until several months ago. I love front squats and had done them for years, but the reality is that I even cheat those and make them posterior chain dominant. JTS talks about this on YouTube a bit. Front squats don’t help me, and they’re already close to my back squats. Accordingly, I have resorted to trying out belt squats lately to improve weak quads. I not only have spent years ignoring this bad habit and hoping it would fix itself, but I also got really good at RDLs, which further emphasized pushing the knees back instead of letting them travel forward as I should.
I’ve posted videos of several FSL sets in the past, and some people here have said that they look okay. So, I now focus on the quad weakness and really try to keep the knees forward. I think some improvements have been made, as I finally feel my legs performing work during squats. But I imagine that due to years of bad habits and perhaps slightly due to my anatomy, this will take a long time to overcome.
Will you continue increasing your TM if you make your reps? Fail to recall if you’ve shared your thoughts on this.
I think so because after this cycle I think I want to be in a caloric surplus again, which in theory should help a little. I already reined back my squat TM twice in the past couple months… I want to do a program from Beyond where the top set is pushed for a PR. But if this continues to go poorly on squats, I could always revert those back to 5s PRO.
I approve of the choice. Whenever I reign myself in, weight wise, to clean up “form” I end up weaker. If the technique is there, I’ve come to learn that for me it’s best to continue adding weight until I can no longer progress or maintain proper technique. If the bar speed is okay, but I’m squat-morning it, and nothing is hurting, I keep at it.
My problem is that my previous, even worse squat mornings never caused me any pain either 
but they feel a bit better now, so will try to keep plunging forward
It takes some time, but let’s say you are doing a squat-morning at weight X. A few cycles later you are doing it at X+Y. If you record yourself at X does it look as bad as it did before, or better? If it looks better, continuing to load up doesn’t seem like a bad idea. That to me doesn’t indicate that the weakness is absolute but relative. That the squat-morning stems from a difference in how much the different muscles are able to contribute, and not from their absolute capabilities. If one discovers this to be true, selecting assistance work and activation work becomes trivial.
Yes, certainly that’s been my rationale. Totally get it. But I’m not so proud to say that, although I already gain strength at a snail’s pace, my squat has not budged at all over the past 3ish years despite varying intensities and adjusting the assistance movements (doing plenty of OR eliminating single leg work, goblet squats, and or front squats). I’m so hung up on this because I’m always stalling at the same TM, reeling back several cycles, climbing back up, rinse and repeat. So, that’s why I think now addressing my poor movement pattern is the remaining important variable. I’m hopeful that my form is now “okay enough” at the lighter weights that what is heavy for me now will be less squat morning-ish several cycles later.
5 minutes of wall squats in the morning every morning? 
I have the same movement pattern and I just have to remind my body all the time that I want it to use the quads.
Yeah, that’s why my descent is so controlled when I squat. I need to engrain the right habit with every single rep, and sometimes it’s still not enough… yet.
C1W1D3
6x6 pull ups
Squat
35x5
85x5
95x5
110x5
Press
35x5
45x5
47.5x14
Deadlift
125x5
145x5
165x14
More pull ups afterwards to reach 50
50 pushups
Lifting when hungry sucks. Had a refeed yesterday and didn’t wake up any heavier at least. Just trying to maintain strength here… think I’ll refrain from any conditioning on my next two off days.
I’m sorry, my memory isn’t good. Why are you losing weight right now? Looking at log title, becomes confused.
Noticed the k in your recent videos. Are we not too far removed in a global geographic sense (don’t share anything you don’t want to)
