aw, you are sweet. you can be impressed by my upper body strength in relation to my lower body strength, but my upper body strength objectively isn’t very good at all.
the idea of getting under pulls is alien to me. getting my legs involved in anything only ever makes the movement weaker. i can’t wait for the day that i can rely on my legs to help out my upper body. you know, for leg drive to actually help my pressing. for squatting under a pull to actually help me get the weight up there.
i’d imagine it is a very different feeling. being in a body like that. i want one.
managed to track the youtube clip. ripped off it wasn’t you :-p i’m not strong enough to do that yet. feels like my hammies are being ripped off. will try again with a stick, though. or maybe with a bench in front of me that i can pylo push up onto and off of. will sort this out, though. don’t want to use the leg curl - and don’t think i’ll need to.
aiming for 6x6 back squat (monday), front squat (wednesday), back squat (friday). was doing 5x5 6 days a week before. was making some progress with this but then collapsed once work started so took shoes in to get fixed. think i’ll have some serious mobility work to do before i will get back to what i was doing before…
will figure out how to fit in some leg pressing, deadlifting, glute ham raising, and leg extensions… can’t bring myself to do good girl / bad girl anymore than i can bring myself to do sky humps… sigh. i’ll get over it one day.
one day a week will probably be okay… can do those and chin ups and push ups. it can replace the upper body circuit that i was doing on saturday (before day off on sunday). will take extra protein afterwards lol.
Alexus, those cleans looked great! You have a good arch and really whip those elbows up! So jealous.
I love how you say it was only 40kg - only?! I wish I were working with that kind of weight.
As for “getting under the pull” being alien to you…i completely understand. And I guess since you feel that your legs are weaker than the rest of you, that might be intimidating to try. It is a mental hurdle and wish I could give you some sort of trick to get you to just get on with it and do it. lol! Technically you should get under the bar even if the bar isn’t loaded, so if its an issue of weight, perhaps you should just practice the movement with an empty bar, no? Ugh! who knows. You’ll get there when you’re ready!
3 days of squats sounds good! And the shoes will get to you - patience my dear.
[quote]alexus wrote:
But I want my legs to grow, dammit… need to read up on growing legs.
[/quote]
Forgive me for not reading your whole thread, although I am aware of the debilitating foot injuries that you’ve had. How comfortable are you with pulling a sled? If you follow Coach Thibaudeau, Dan John, Defranco and numerous other strength coaches, you will already know how they favor sled work for lower-body mass & strength gain. In your case, I suggest Thibaudeau’s method of slow pulling (read: http://www.T-Nation.com/strength-training-topics/438 I think you will find this to be beneficial for both the hypertrophy and mobility that you desire.
Don’t have a sled? No problem. Attached is a picture of the one I made for myself. It’s an old, junky wheelbarrow. I removed the wheel and handles, then put two eye bolts on one end. Instead of connecting the sled to a belt or harness, I use a soft rope threaded through the bolts to hold onto when pulling the sled. The costs were extremely minimal, and I used existing holes for the bolts. I found some old cinder blocks to use for the weights; they weigh 40 lbs apiece, but obviously any solid object will suffice.
Alexus - About legs, yes us shorties always notice long legs as a positive. :). Kinda like the girls with straight hair want curls!
You don’t look like out of balance, or top heavy to me in your videos at all. The comeback from your accident is just amazing.
As for a lack of kettle bells, I took some adjustable DBs at home and just made one side heavier so when I swing it, it has a more similar feel, with more of the weight on the bottom if that makes sense. I haven’t been doing this since I joined a gym since I’ve now got so many options I don’t know what to do with myself.
The outdoor stuff like the sleds, and rucking, and the prowlers have an appeal to me because I sooo prefer to be outside. Cool sled Elliotcorum.
elliott - you are indeed forgiven for not reading the whole thread. i’ll learn not to rant so much one day :-p great idea about the sled, too. it is something that i’ve wondered about. not sure that my feet are up to it - but only one way to find out. have a parking lot outside my window so i have a space to haul stuff around in. will try in the near future once my feet are adapted to work okay.
masch - i made a pact to myself over christmas that i was going to make myself squat clean or at least ride down into a squat and then stand up anything that i pulled (though maybe a couple pulls just to warm up). i can stand up 37.5kg for a clean - but 40kg simply won’t stand up (my max front squat). only reason i’ve broken it now is that i can’t squat (or get under anything) without my shoes. really need my shoes back… thats why i’m pulling from the blocks, too - though i’m fairly happy about that since i’ve been meaning to do some blocks work.
pp - thank you. yeah, i think there might be some of a ‘i want what i don’t have’ aspect to it. i wish i had shorter levers and was born to squat. that is fairly recent, though. actually, my obsession with big quads is fairly recent, too. my aesthetic aspirations have altered as i’ve got into lifting. fairly happy about that since my aesthetic aspirations are now things that i can positively work towards. i think more mass will fill out my levers a bit.
TRAINING:
EVA rolling / softball rolling
BLOCKS POWERSNATCH
went for a PB of 35kg and got it. then realized that i fucked up the math and it was actually 40kg (loaded up dinky little plates since the appropriate ones were taken). triple and quadruple checked. 40kg. i still can’t believe it… of course then i missed it twice. 35kg miss. psyched out. went back to 30kg and did a triple.
BLOCKS POWERCLEAN TO OVERHEAD
got each rep over my head. push pressing and discovered that i’m stronger with jerking (even though my technique is atrocious and my toes dig a bit painfully into the ground). can’t improve my technique without improving my toes. worked up to max of 40kg for a couple singles.
PUSH PRESSING
worked up to max double of 42.5kg.
i have decided i’ll aim to lift the most weight i can in the comp. that involves powersnatching / powercleaning and (since my feet won’t be ready to jerk properly) some weird push-press / jerky thing. i’ll get back to technique after the comp.
First Saturday in April, I think. Just a relatively informal club comp. We don’t have to catch the jerk with arms locked out (as you would have to in a comp). They will say whether the lift would be legal, though, and there will be a weigh in. Snatch, too.
They started a leader board thing on the wall. I see freestyle bench, paused bench, deadlift, clean and overhead. Don’t see squat or snatch, though, lol. I’m on the wall for clean and overhead. I guess it is kind of motivating
TRAINING:
EVA ROLLING. Spent quite some time stretching my spine back over a gym ball. Felt SO GOOD. That was what my back was needing.
WIDE AND HIGH STANCE LEG PRESS: 60kg 4x10. Going as low as the machine will let me go with the safeties and trying to really feel a stretch in my hip flexors / lumbar spine to mimic a squat as much as possible. Need to come up on my toes a little, but seems to be working out for me pretty good. Would need to come up on my toes a great deal for a narrow stance… Will play around with this at some point. Heel raise once I get my shoes back will help me a lot.
SINGLE LEG EXTENSION: pin 3 4x10 each leg.
GHR: Found something to stick my feet into. Can kinda sorta do it with some pylo push-up assistance. Will keep working at this.
BACK EXTENSION: 5kg med ball over stability ball. Wasn’t really working for me with the above set up. Will go back to the proper machine.
PYLO PUSHUPS: Got this from the ‘neural charge’ stuff. From standing holding core tight - falling onto bench landing on hands - explosively pushing until standing again. That was the aim, anyway. Not quite strong enough, but will persist.
[quote]alexus wrote:
PYLO PUSHUPS: Got this from the ‘neural charge’ stuff. From standing holding core tight - falling onto bench landing on hands - explosively pushing until standing again. That was the aim, anyway. Not quite strong enough, but will persist.[/quote]
Yeah, those plyo-pushups are harder than they look. Kevin makes them look deceivingly easy in the neural charge videos. I’ve been doing them for six weeks and I still lack explosiveness, and that’s even considering that my bench press has increased by 45 pounds over the past two months. I think they take a lot more CNS recruitment and strength than many realize.
Apparently, I know very little about competitions. How does your gym define a freestyle bench & paused bench, and how do they differ from the bench press that one would see at a sanctioned meet? Or do they not differ and I obviously don’t know anything.
[quote]alexus wrote:
i’ll learn not to rant so much one day
[/quote]
By all means, please rant. I’ve perfected the art of pretending to listen.
[quote]alexus wrote:
went for a PB of 35kg and got it. then realized that i fucked up the math and it was actually 40kg (loaded up dinky little plates since the appropriate ones were taken). triple and quadruple checked. 40kg. i still can’t believe it… of course then i missed it twice. 35kg miss. psyched out. [/quote]
And therein lies one of the beauties of this sport. The psychological aspect. The mental component is so damn strong. Especially where singles are concerned. I think that’s one of the reasons why I can’t imagine losing my obsession with powerlifting.
I really enjoyed the neural charge vids. Found them both informative and amusing. I was glad that the guy (Kevin?) was having a little trouble getting the hang of the jumps. That way I don’t feel like such a moron with that. Explosive movement (of not more than 3 reps) is what my body is most adapted to because of the Oly Lifting focus. My limit strength sucks.
I haven’t benched but my max reps for push-ups is a set of 10. Was curious at how I’d go with an upper body explosive movement for a single. I wonder if it is possible to fall from standing and explosively push oneself back to standing? That is my new goal for push-ups, anyway. Have a long way to go.
I’m making this up… But my understanding is that in a powerlifting comp one needs to pause with the weight lowered to ones chest until one gets told to lift the weight. I think that prevents people bouncing the weight off their chest. I guess the pause is also more time under tension that makes the lift harder? Dunno. Different powerlifting federations seem to have different rules… But I think the paused bench is meant to be competition ‘style’, at least, whereas the freestyle is less restrictive (but probably still involves bringing the bar all the way to ones chest).
[quote]alexus wrote:
i’ll learn not to rant so much one day
[/quote]
By all means, please rant. I’ve perfected the art of pretending to listen. [/quote]
I was just blown away by the mental component, Snapper. I mean intellectually I knew that it played a huge role… But a 7.5kg PB on something I’d only ever made very painstaking 2.5kg progress over months on!? Unbelievable!!! Beautiful, indeed.
I learned that part of the reason for the above PB is because usually I under-drive with the hips but this time I over-drove. The bar swung fairly far in front of me so I had to take a couple steps forward to catch it. That really isn’t good technique-wise. But still, not to take anything away from the fact that I managed to smash the fuck out of it with my hips to successfully drive that amount of weight high enough over my head for me to catch locked out.
TRAINING
I got my shoes back. They are perfect I can squat in them but need to work on my mobility since I’ve seized up a bit from not squatting for a couple weeks now. A fairly recent article at T Nation has got me thinking that I need to figure out what stance allows for my femurs to rotate the way they naturally want to rotate. Realized today that part of my problem with squatting is that I can feel my femurs impinging on my pelvis near the bottom because there is something off with my stance.
More heel raise = really hard to rediscover / discover the proper positions for Oly Lifting. Pull is considerably weaker now (imagine deadlifting in heels!) and need to rediscover hip drive for snatching.
I’ve also learned the bar should move back towards you from the floor. That means that my work on blocks started with the bar too far out in front of me. Helped me smash it with my hips to be sure - but got me over-smashing it in ways that would prevent my catching it / standing it up. Damn it that Oly Lifting is about leg strength more than upper body strength :-/
EVA rolling. Stretching spine back on ball.
Powersnatch. worked up to 27.5kg. 30kg wouldn’t go up. Need to work positions and get good hip drive.
Powerclean. worked up to 42.5kg. 45kg wouldn’tl go up. not quite as bad as the snatching.
Press / Push-Press. worked up to 37.5kg (single). 40kg wouldn’t go up.
Will sort out squatting and plan on getting back to the full (squat) lifts soon. Might take a couple weeks for my squat to come right, though.
Feet.
Making good progress.
Some broken glass feeling. I’m optimistic this will go away / reduce considerably as the joint fluid regularly moves around the joint with my new range of motion.
Woo hoo!! Congrats on the PR! That is awesome! And I love how it was totally accidental. Lol!
But, yeah, I was doing the same with my cleans - meeting the bar. But whatever, sometimes you just have to go for the increased weight, see if you can land it, and then back down and work on technique. You did splendid! And now with your shoes back, you have even more confidence! I’m happy for you!
Hm…the bar should move back towards you from the floor…I’ll have to think about what you mean by that…
Great work Alexus, you’re seriously representing! And working super hard. Everything is coming together slowly but surely, and its looking damn good
Alexus: After that wait, I’m so glad your shoes are back and perfect! A comp, your name on a leader board, a pr, and some increased feet mobility–you’ve got it going on. Glad things are on the upswing for you.
Congratulations on the snatch PR. Can’t wait to see what you can do when your leg strength catches up. And yea for shoes to lift in again. That will help. I’m sure some of the instability in that last video was due to the shoes. I agree with the shoulders to far in front of the bar conclusion, but more because the bar seemed to be stalling out when it hit your legs. It seemed like it was taking too long for your shoulders to get back in position for the second pull. Good work.
Yes, congrats on the PR! I do like the plyo pushups off of a bench myself. I saw a vid of Inkaddict doing the GHRs this evening and I need to get on those too. I think those might be the secret ingredient to me getting my hammies on. Oh, and the progress pics of my back are up this evening.
AM. went pretty easy since I trained the night before after shift work (on my feet) and needed to do another shift after training today.
EVA / Softball rolling.
Feet really are coming along pretty good.
Vibrams are better than barefeet because the individual toe pockets help separate and straighten each toe.
They create a space in which my feet need to grow / stretch to fill out, if that makes sense. They seem to be guiding my feet into the proper position.
Toes are getting straight enough for me to really focus on stretching my big toe back from the ball of my foot.
Once that gets better I’ll be able to work on stretching all my toes back from the ball of my foot.
Working hard on stretching the heel back from the ball of my foot, too.
Lots of clicking and crunching of the bones in my midfeet. They were / are kinda deformed from current dislocations but… The dislocations aren’t as prominent as they were. I think the bones are starting to settle how they are supposed to be.
Need to be very careful with this because I can’t afford to strain something / not be able to walk.
POWERSNATCH: Worked up to 27.5kg. 30kg wouldn’t go up. Was starting to think that my shoes are a bit too high, actually
SNATCH: Feels freaky without standing on heel plates. Like I have so much freedom I’m… Too free, or something. Odd. My shoes are a couple millimeters higher than the heel plates were. Squatting is… Comfortable! So freaking comfortable! Weak… But it feels much more natural somehow. LOVED jumping myself under the bar!!! I don’t care about figuring out where my feet are ‘supposed’ to be anymore. Just trying NOT to think about my feet and trying to let them do what they want to do naturally. Worked up to couple comfortable singles at 30kg then got distracted by some dude asking me questions… Think my bottom squat position might be a bit loose… But not worried at this stage. Just so happy about being able to get under.
POWERCLEAN: Just messing around up to 35kg.
CLEAN: Up to 35kg. 40kg wouldn’t go up. Laziness is all. Some push-pressing up to 40kg. 42kg is a bit much for me to press out.
Squats tomorrow, by gee. Not so worried about the weight but 6x6 it is!
