Beginners Gains

Training
1101

TRAINING

almost had a day off but decided to train instead. i’m used to thinking of ‘train 3x per week’ as ‘take a day between training sessions’ which means i get to train 4x a week every second week if i feel like it, heh.

Starting Strength B

Low Bar Back Squat
20kg 1x5
25kg 1x5
30kg 1x5

34.5kg 3x5 (1kg increase from last time)

feeling pretty easy, actually (as they bloody well should).
i have got the hang of sitting back. tempted to try these next time with shoes with a lower heel since my shins are looking pretty vertical.
do need to work on the glute drive (but starting to get it) and on shoving the knees out. lazy adductors!!

powerclean
35kg 1x3

3x6@ 38.5kg (1kg increase from last time)

okay. some better some worse from oly point of view. do need to focus on exploding or i tend to lean forwards a bit to catch it.

press

bailed. have been having some tendonitis feeling in my elbow after snatching yesterday… read something about slow negatives can help with that. feels like my tricep tendon. um… slow bicep curls??

lolz.

1102

[quote]alexus wrote:
Deadlift.

80kg flew up!!! PB and the most weight i’ve ever lifted!! [/quote]

This is awesome. Glad something clicked.

1103

thanks :slight_smile: not sure whether it will stay clicked, but felt like a bit of a breakthrough.

TRAINING –

recovering from yesterday mostly.
eva / softball / golf ball rolling. getting stuck into my calves / arches with the golf ball.

getting better arch / toe flexibility. mostly due to new work shoes :slight_smile: working some hindu squats, too (unweighted balance / mobility / foot strength drill). air squats balances up on toes / ball of feet. feels good. very very wobbly.

snatches

  • up to 35kg. working on getting under quick and riding the bounce out the hole. also working on jumping back a bit for the catch.
  • drop snatches, hang snatches with 20kg.

GHR (stick assisted) 5x5

been feeling some elbow tendonitis. triceps tendons, i think. worked out it is probably due to the lighter drills i’ve been doing with snatches. because i need to lower the bar when it doesn’t have the bumpers on it.

will do some curls / tricep extensions with light weight for highish reps to help promote blood flow to the tendon. see how that goes. squatz tomorrow yay.

1104

Exceptional effort Miss Alexus!

How good does the golf ball feel on the plantar fascia?! I can actually hear mine crunch as I roll.
Ive had a look at those Hindu squats. So what exactly are your trying to achieve with that? A stronger foot? Are they safe for the knees?
And I hope you take fish oil? Whenever I feel a bit of tendonitis I go double my fish oil for a few days and it seems to help.

1105

good weighted planks

Once my gym is set up (sept?) Ill work on getting the bar lowere for squats, do you have a vid showing the bar placement?

1106

thanks bird :slight_smile:

golf ball on the inside of my arch feels a little bit crunchy, yup. feels like there might be tendons in there… loads of scar tissue… noticing a significant improvement in my arches already so very optimistic that this will help. being careful not to overdo it since pulling an arch wouldn’t be much fun at all.

with the hindu squats i’m trying to achieve: the ability to balance on the ball of my foot. my toes don’t bend back from the ball very well or if i try and make them the middle joint tends to pop up and they curl up painfully jamming into the ground. i’m working on trying to get them to stretch back without clawing. this will enable me to lunge and split jerk one day, hopefully. they are stretching out a bit better already. pulling the big toe back from the ball results in significant tension on a tendon(?) inside my arch. trying to roll it out and improve the stretch. the more bendy they become the more i have a stable surface for balancing. the hindu squats will help strengthen the new range of motion, i think. my bodyweight is enough (any type of calf raise movement is very hard for me).

i wondered about the ‘hindu squats hurt your knees’ thing, too. best i can figure… most of that is coming from the idea that ‘if you bring your knees forwards in front of your toes then you will hurt your knees’ idea. which we know is false since olympic lifters will bring their knees forwards from their toes and they don’t have knee problems because of it. some of it also seems to be coming from the idea that squatting down past parallel will hurt your knees - and of course we know that one is false as well.

the movement is less stable than a weight on the heels squat. very easy to mess up the balance. i do think that it would be very easy indeed to mess up the balance a little if one tried to weight the movement and that one could indeed fuck up the knees that way. i’d be very careful indeed about loading hindu squats. probably best not loaded. or if loaded light loads aiming for controlled movement rather than risking dive bombing into an injury. it is very quad dominant - perhaps more so than front squats. does put pressure on the knee tendons (especially if you try and keep your knees together) but feels to me like good pressure that will help strengthen the knee stabilizers. try them out without weight. see you you like 'em.

i’ve forgotten to take my fish oil for a while now. yay!!! that means that i’ll notice a difference when i start taking it again. thanks for the reminder!!

UpScale - i’ve developed the habit of basically aiming for as tight a upper body position as possible. so… hands are only just on the knurled part of the bar. i set my hands on the bar then duck my head under pulling my shoulder blades back together as hard as i can. then i pull my body as far up the bar as possible so the bar is as low down my back as possible to get it with my hands on the bar. feels to me like it is mostly resting on my triceps - but the weights are pretty light. wrist wraps help a lot… will aim to take some more vids this weekend. think i might be copying snappers set up ritual, actually…

in other news:

i ordered a set of micro bands. i figure there is a whole bunch of prehabby stuff i can do with them. use them as an assist for my feet and other kinds of stretching, too.

i also ordered something accidentally (wrong thing) and am hoping they will change it to the pull-up starter kit. basically… a red band, an orange band, a yellow band. have used the orange (middle) for chin-ups before and hard work - but could only just eek out a set of 5. think i’ve got a bit better with chins since then… so the yellow will be useful. the red should be useful for pull-ups. i need to wake-up my lats i think so wider grip pull up grip stuff which i’m particularly weak at.

1107

Dont take too much of a wide grip on the pullups, too wide and in my experience it effects the teres minor/major rather than the lats. A slightly wider than shoulder width seems to target the lats better. Anyways enjoy the bands I know I do!

1108

yay for band work!!!

I use/used them for pull ups for a long time and most recently GHD stuff. How fun!! Im excited for this purchase you have made.

1109

Hey, I have crunchy feet too, I mean really crunchy, like someone put sand in them. On my arches, toes & heals, basically everywhere. Someone told me that hot and cold foot baths are good for that. I don’t have the patience to try it out though.

Working on jumping back?? I have to do the opposite.

1110

matty - ooh. i’ve vaguely heard of the teres major / minor. i’ll have to look those up. got ya on the not too wide thing. hopefully the red one will be strong enough to provide enough assistance for me.

dasher - do you mean glute ham raise stuff or something else? i’m hoping the red one, once again, will be strong enough for me to be able to ditch the stick on them.

TRAINING –

had a weird kind of a day where i never felt like i’d quite woken up properly. didn’t quite feel in the mood for training but sometimes i have my best sessions when i arrive in that mindset. didn’t manage to get myself out of it, though. hopefully the arrival of bands will cheer me tomorrow.

mobility / stretching stuff. very gentle on things today. things are recovering a bit, i think. hope to push it a bit harder tomorrow or the next day.

Low Bar Back Squats

20kg 1x5
25kg 1x5
30kg 1x5

35kg 3x5 (1kg increase)

not very happy with my glute drive out the hole. the squats felt pretty easy - but not activating things properly. need to take a bit longer with my warm-up sets, i think. instead of being happy i got out the hole make myself do it properly. noticing my left ITB is tight for rolling but not my right. think i’m mostly using one leg to drive out and there is some a-symmetry. will try and be more careful next time.

Bench

20kg 1x5
25kg 1x5
30kg 1x5

32.5kg 3x5 (.5kg increase because of the plates)

okay. didn’t come close to stalling but some of these involved a bit of a hefty shove. need a more non slippy t-shirt to help keep my upper back tight.

Deadlift.

messed around basically. worked up to 78.5kg. i think i need to lower the weight, do more reps, and focus on form. not holding my arch as tight as i’d like and think my hips are getting high again. when i get the pulling it back thing right it simply flies up but my lumbar arch is a bit dodgey… not quite sure what to do with these. maybe 60kg top set and increase by 2.5kg each time??

thought about cardio. didn’t feel like cardio.

tomorrow will be a better day.

1111

have you tried rolling them a bit gently with a tennis ball minimal? i started out with that… then moved to a hard plastic softball sized ball… now i’m a bit vicious with the golf ball - but needing some time to recover from that.

1112

I was wondering if you follow Ripptoes technique of hip drive coming out of the hole for squats?

And do you think that could potentially mess up your oly lifting later?

1113

YAY for crunchy feet!
Just watched the video. Squats are so complicated. It almost looks like he does a mini goodmorning at the end of squatting up…

Anyway, Alexus, where did you get the bands from? I need to order some for myself for some hardcore PNF stretching and “ankle dislocation” stretches. Have you tried x-band walks, they are meant to be good for glute activation.

tweet tweet

1114

[quote]alexus wrote:
think i might be copying snappers set up ritual, actually…

[/quote]
UpScale: I have a vid of bar placement with low bar squats. On my old log “Strong Little Snapper” at the bottom of page 38.

1115

[quote]kpsnap wrote:

[quote]alexus wrote:
think i might be copying snappers set up ritual, actually…

[/quote]
UpScale: I have a vid of bar placement with low bar squats. On my old log “Strong Little Snapper” at the bottom of page 38. [/quote]

oh thanks!!! going to look now!

1116

all the cool kids have bands now.

training is looking solid- good work on that pull PR

1117

Your deadlift struggles sound like mine. Damn you, hip mobility!

1118

ooh, i need to check snappers set up ritual again - thanks for the link.

you are my depth nazi right snap? if i cut them high i’m relying on you to tell me. yeah?

basically coming to learn that the powerlifts require (optimally) a very tight start position. i’m liking it. get a lot of love from technical proficiency and discovering that the powerlifts require much more technical proficiency than one might initially think which inspires me a lot to get good at them / appreciate the work of others who get good at them.

the aussie / nz sports system is different from the US (don’t know about canada). basically… we have ‘regional’ teams that i think play something of the role of university athletic teams. people are selected to represent their state from regional teams and eventually their country. the regional teams are basically clubs who are open to anyone to join. so… the upshot is that we don’t have university athletics quite the way the US system does.

it means we don’t have dip-shits who feel entitled to degrees… but it also means we don’t quite seem to have the smarts behind the university sports (since it isn’t as high calibre as say, being part of the UNC, Chapel Hill basketball team).

anyway…

I train in a (good) university gym… and there is a ‘commercial’ side of that which is a bit mixed… loads of cable machines (good, i guess) and chin up stations (good i guess) and the light dumbbells aren’t stupid colored. there are a variety of extra things one can do (that one pays extra for). they run classes in judo and bjj and other kinds of martial arts… there are courses in kettlebells and posture and flexibility and strength and flexibility etc which seem totally non-stupid but a bit much for me to afford in addition to standard gym membership. they also do the les mills thing of bodypump and RPM and bodybalance etc which I suppose (to be fair) are non-stupid ways of targeting some kind of exercise to the masses. aslo taigliates classes (a weird blend of yoga, tai-chi, and pilates) which i take some enjoyment from when i’m seriously injured…

anyway… apparently there is a new strength coach or something who is working with some university sports teams. so there is more influx of university sports athletes training in the heavy weights room (with the platform, squat racks etc) these days.

that is good, i guess. saw a female rower tonight. she was ambivalent… probably about as strong as me (or maybe a bit stronger). that is cool. i think she partly wasn’t into it… and partly… had some trouble getting into it. (e.g., since unassisted chins are pretty freaking hard for chicks). i think there were one or more trainers but hard to tell since people were working in etc…

hopefully they keep coming through. and hopefully… there might (eventually) be some kind of job for me…

we will see…

bands arrived. yay. bit rushed tonight. will take some more time over the next couple days. i’m excited since i can feel recruitment and with the bands i’m not going to get all ego side-tracked about how much weight i can / should lift. yay.

damn, x band walks are hard…

and… um… i think i should have got the ‘fat bastards’ chin-up kit because the standard one isn’t quite as hopeful as i’d supposed (though i got 3 pull ups and can’t do any unassisted).

also got the GHR with the red band - but needed the stick as well… hamstrings felt like they would have ripped off otherwise. damn.

1119

[quote]alexus wrote:
ooh, i need to check snappers set up ritual again - thanks for the link.

you are my depth nazi right snap? if i cut them high i’m relying on you to tell me. yeah?

[/quote]
Sure, I can call your depth if you vid from the side. I can’t imagine you short the depth since you do Oly training.

1120

[quote]kpsnap wrote:
I can’t imagine you short the depth since you do Oly training.[/quote]
oh, but i’m trying…

my aim is to uncontroversially break parallel. so so long as the form nazi (you) thinks i’m breaking parallel, then i’m breaking parallel (take it as a compliment).

basically…

my aim is to get a bodyweight squat by the end of the year. i wanted that to be front squat - but i don’t think that is going to happen for me because of the leverage issues due to my ankles. i simply have no excuse not to get a sitting back style squat (with vertical shins), though. so… so long as snapper reckons i broke parellel then i broke parallel, i reckon

:slight_smile:

once i’ve got that i’ll try and bring my front squat up to match it. but just get it in the first instance (so at least muscles and tendons will have adapted to the load) and then i’ll try getting it in a tricker way (e.g., front squatting it)