Maybe. I don’t think it’s a major one. It’s a lot harder to get hurt on a split squat than bilateral movements, and your back isn’t going crazy, but it is kind of a violent movement in the bottom of a “squat” so potentially.
It’s more of an effectiveness question. You’re doing that move to load your quads. Where your quads are under the most tension in a lengthened position, you end up totally unloading them and initiating the movement with a violent hip action. If that explosive hip extension is your goal, there are way better movements. I think you’re trying to build quads here, so I’d keep that movement up and down like a piston and really load them.
Happy to do so. I’m not uniquely qualified to look, or anything; lots of smart dudes here.
Rows are about keeping your torso stationary and letting your hands be hooks. You should kind of sweep your elbow back so your hands end up closer to your waist than your chest (if you want lats). Over time you’ll learn to feel your lat so you can really get it to contract and stretch. This really takes folks a long time to learn. I don’t love having people chase weight on lat exercises.
Rows are about keeping your torso stationary and letting your hands be hooks
Then again, that’s what I thought I was already doing
You should kind of sweep your elbow back so your hands end up closer to your waist than your chest (if you want lats). Over time you’ll learn to feel your lat so you can really get it to contract and stretch. This really takes folks a long time to learn.
I only started yesterday obviously after reviewing the videos posted here (and another one by Alsruhe), but it’s the “elbow back” part that’s incredibly hard for me since my shoulder blade instability makes it feel like I’m hitting a brick wall. Which is why I want to post another video to make sure I’m actually bringing back my elbows far enough.
Bringing my elbow far back on my bad arm (left) is stilll stupidly hard even using my 1 lbs phone as a weight due to the shoulder blade dysfunction.
Yeah, my shoulder blade dysfunction was preventing me from this ROM before, but hopefully this is proper. Just 10lbs here, but 1lbs felt challenging yesterday.
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Here is the left arm, which still has a very dysfunctional shoulder blade at the end ROM. I don’t even seem to have the external rotation in this arm to keep it parallel to my torso (it’s still turned a bit inwards).
How does the second video with 10lbs look? This was hard on my left shoulder blade, but in a good way. My left scapula hasn’t seen this ROM since 2013 and has been in pain since yesterday haha. I’m actually thankful you guys caught that my row ROM was lacking.
Everyone else is free to give input!
Edit: This probably a question for my PT, but on my left side at the top ROM, I barely feel my back. Instead, it’s more that my scapula is just shaking. I’m gonna assume this is just the massive instability that’s still there?
I suppose that’s an option. But I can’t tell YOU what to do—because I’m not you and I can only say what I would do. And I like JW’s hard conditioning work, so that’s what I would do with an extra day.
Honestly, I think you’re majoring in the minors at this point, my dude.
Read 5/3/1 Forever, take from it and apply what you can, work with your medical professionals to figure out what’s right for YOU, and then—whatever that is—just buckle down, do it consistently, with real effort, for a long time.
Great on you for having the courage to take 150lbs off the bar and get it right. Very good work.
These look a ton better. I can see what you’re talking about between your left and right.
In terms of feel - did you feel it in your lat on the right arm? I can see your lat opening on reps 3-5, so it looked good. The movement looked good for you just trying it this way. It’s a real struggle for almost everyone to learn to nail that lat vs just pull on the weight.
For your left, when you say feel in your scapula, I think you’re probably getting some rear delt and rhomboid work and that’s what I would guess from looking at the video. I have two small tips, if your structure/ limitations will allow (tell me if they won’t and we can try something else).
Try getting your torso more parallel to the floor. You’re low, but most of it is how far back you have your hips. If you can move your feet toward the table just a couple inches and drop to your elbow on the table, that should fix it. You can stay on your hand, too, but might need a lower platform.
Can you pin your elbow closer to your side so it travels more up and back? Right now it’s wanting to drift laterally. That’s putting your upper arm in a position closer to if you were using a pronated grip and trying to hit that mid/ upper back (which I think you’re feeling).
It’s pretty normal to have two sides move differently due to injury history or being human (I know yours may have more significance), so some imbalance will just always be there and isn’t the end of the world. We do want to be able to target the lat, though.
In terms of feel - did you feel it in your lat on the right arm?
Sort of. If I pull towards my hips, I feel my lat more. If I pull more towards my upper abdomen, I feel it less. I’ve been doing rows for the upper back, so I’d have to retrain my MMC if I want to focus on my lats too.
Can you pin your elbow closer to your side so it travels more up and back? Right now it’s wanting to drift laterally.
Not the left arm since it doesn’t have the external rotation to go straight up and back. I tried this arm again but made sure to think about doing an external rotation before each rep and was able to feel my back muscles rather than my winging scapula. But it’s still tricky until I get my external rotation strength further up (which could take a year perhaps).
I could do something like a neutral-grip cable row where it should be much easier for me to pull straight back and feel my lats. And then keep the DB rows much lighter as more of a PT movement until that left side catches up.
And yeah, I can get my torso more parallel to the floor. It’ll just take some getting used to.
Great on you for having the courage to take 150lbs off the bar and get it right. Very good work.
I’ve had to restart with nearly every single lift, sometimes more than once, so I’m used to this. Besides, once I get used to the new ROM, the strength always seems to come back eventually. My ROM on everything was meme worthy at first.
The book arrived a few days ago and I’ve read it. Just finished my first session today. The assistance kicked my ass since I’m not used to high reps on multiple movements in the same session. Today was the first time I ever did pushdowns, cable rows, legpresses and EZ curls (outside of testing to see if those exercises cause pain), so that’s definitely a win.
And my PT signed off on me doing squats! I’m gonna start with like a 50% TM just to be safe haha. Same with Bench. This book should keep me more than occupied for years.
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And a question:
On bench/incline bench, retracting the shoulder blades was a popular cue for a long time, but now I hear lots of people talking against it. The claim is that keeping the shoulder blades pinched causes impingment. My PT gave me the advice to not pinch my shoulder blades together. Allowing my shoulder blades to move freely was a big reason why I was eventually able to do full ROM on upper body pushing exercises.
However, I’ve only done dumbbells and bodyweight so far. I’ve only gone up to 135 on barbell bench to test out the movement, but it seems keeping the scapula pinched is needed to unrack the bar safely. After that, though, I let my scapula move freely during each rep, before pinching the scapula again to re-rack the bar.
Is this fine? It’s hard to tell with only 135, but I want to be safe before doing anything heavier. Standing barbell OHP feels fine with a free-moving scapula. I can’t even reach overhead if I keep my scapula pinched.
I sorta did. My gym (an independent one that caters less towards “planet fitness types”) has trainers, but obviously none of them knew about Elhers Danlos. It took me years just to find good physical therapists for my issues.
The advice I got from trainers were the typical cues (retract shoulder blades, back tight, etc). I have lifted in my front of my phyiscal therapist, but only with bodyweight and dumbbells. Speaking of which, I feel like an idiot now because she should’ve been the first person I asked this question.
Hopefully I can get schedule some time with her within the next few days. I’m sure we’ll figure out a plan for the bench.
Thanks for all the help, everyone! I’ll post again if I have any questions and for form checks. Hopefully by 6 months my body can handle going hard on barbell movements and I can do the more intense 531 templates.
