The elbows go where they go, I concentrate on the bar, not elbows.
Maybe this will help. I put my hands about shoulder width apart. I use same grip as bench: twist hands so bar rests on fleshy part near wrist. I get bar as close to wrist as possible so wrist doesn’t bend under weight. I suppose that gets elbows out to side.
Interesting, my older brother used to be a software developer who worked on “simpplicity”. The program was for people who wanted to write programs who didn’t know how. For example, if someone wanted a particular function, they selected that type of thing and the program would plumk in that segment and have it work, something like that.
Now he is IT in an industrial place.
Your pulldowns sound like reasonable numbers.
Thicker shoulders sound promising. Actually you just reminded me, I need to keep up my wrist exercises too.
Deadkong, not familiar with simpplicity, at first thought you meant Simcity. Sounds like what used to be called CASE tool (Computer Assisted Software Engineer or something like that), software used to create software.
Have used CASE tools with mixed results, found that you have to spend time figuring out how to use tool (they can get complex), they sometimes produce more clumsy code than a programmer would, and if something goes wrong with the code and you don’t know the language, can’t fix it. Case in point: Dreamweaver by Adobe is point and click to build web site pages, it creates the HTML. Sound foolproof. But I tutor students which get totally blocked when things don’t go right and they sit there staring at the screen. I take one look at the HTML and see immediately what can be fixed.
The pulldowns may be good, but would really like to do chins with weights . . . someday.
Techno, thanks. I’ve worked forearms before, but they seem the most stubborn bodypart of all. Just had an impulse to work them. Really, if I want to work them, should pound them every session for the next 3 months and see what happens.
Nice thing working part time, can spend 2 or 3 days a week at the pool tanning.
Good to see you’re still tearing it up cav, definite progress going on in here.
Hi, Led.
Squats
95 x 7 . SEVERE PAIN
that weird feeling I had last week is back. injury. can’t squat. try something else.
Front squat
45 x 10
65 x 10 . elbow pain, can’t go on
No choice. Will have to take off a week. Maybe more.
Just for fun, decided to throw some bench while I’m at it.
Bench press
45 x 10
95 x 10
115 x 5 . x 8 . God. That’s so tough.
135 x 3 . yelling so loud other guys are looking at me.
I lost strength.
Dang son, you fallin’ apart or what? Hope that pain is nothing serious, R&R just might be the ticket.
Led, I’ve had injury before, it will heal. Just need a layoff anyway, definitely overstressed and/or overtrained.
Looks like I was pushing squats too hard to make something like that happen. but I just can’t believe 185 is too much weight. And my bench? Don’t make me laugh.
Frankly, I’m getting sick to death of TNation. Already got flamed on a couple of other threads and I can damn well do without that shit. I was hoping to get some good advice here, but nothing. I’ve posted my training for over a year, everyone’s cool with that. I’m eating like all the experts say I should. And the results? Not good enough.
Hey there Cavalier, sorry to hear about the various pains in your life. Am I recalling correctly didn’t you take a week off 2-3 weeks ago?
As for flaming a$$hats sorry they are a part of the internet don’t they fall under Godwin’s Law?
Re: elbows and overhead pressing. I didn’t think this was important until someone at the gym pointed out that by having my elbows to the side I was using more of my deltoids to perform the exercise and that if I wanted to get a stronger Overhead Press I needed to force my elbows to stay inside as long as possible this increase tricep involvement and results in a stronger press. I learned the new form and went from an 85 Lbs struggle to hit 5 to getting 105 x 5 fairly easily (I struggle at 120+).
Hi Cotenbroek. You have a good memory, I took off the first week of May. Definitely stressed again.
Actually, I believe Godwin’s Law says any conversation on politics eventually has somebody comparing his opponent to Hitler, or something like that. Suppose it’s a corollary that if you log long enough, you run into jerks.
Well, the whole point of overhead pressing is to work delts. I can certainly try moving elbows around and see what I can do. Of course, my tris aren’t much stronger, so can’t predict what will happen. Bench also sucks ass, maybe for the same reason, but have had powerlifter trainers look at it and they see nothing wrong, who knows.
Injuries are feeling better but not healed. Went swimming in the apartment pool, first time in years I went in the water. Now I remember why. I hate cold water. How can it be cold on such a hot day?? Took me 20 minutes just to get water up to my neck so I could start swimming. Good thing no one was watching. Interesting - felt stronger than before. So strange to walk through water good and fast and not be out of breath at all.
I should clarify what I mean by “bench sucks” or what. Actually, my lifts are all falling right into the standard pattern. Deadlift mid to high 200’s. Squat about 200. Bench nearly 150. OH press not quite 100. It’s the old 5/4/3 ratio.
Trainers who powerlift have looked at my form and say I’m fine. Conclusion is that I’m just fucking weak all over and need overall strength. Which is what I’ve been working on for years.
Made it to the gym for some deload stuff. Micellaneous: OH press, rows, legX’s, some Hammer Press . . . whatever. Light stuff.
[quote]cavalier wrote:
I should clarify what I mean by “bench sucks” or what. Actually, my lifts are all falling right into the standard pattern. Deadlift mid to high 200’s. Squat about 200. Bench nearly 150. OH press not quite 100. It’s the old 5/4/3 ratio.
Trainers who powerlift have looked at my form and say I’m fine. Conclusion is that I’m just fucking weak all over and need overall strength. Which is what I’ve been working on for years.[/quote]
Marathon, not sprint. You’re making progress. Soldier on.
Hi Hawkman, thanks for the encouragement.
Strange. Two days after doing the light workout, felt really, really good. Emotional high. Today back to normal. I believe that workout was much more like what I should do most of the time.
Very possible I’ve been overstressed / overtrained / over whatever and just whacking body down. If so, must not push workouts too far. Difficult, as I’m in the habit of working as hard as possible. Actually, my “hard work” turned out way different from other’s “hard work”. Nobody else in the gym breaks a sweat or gets out of breath, even lifting twice what I do. Occasionally there’s a grunt.
Injury is still there, making squatting impossible. Will concentrate on deads and bench and miscellaneous. Low stress, strength building. Can’t believe I’m doing this, but think I’ll try a Louie Simmons routine in an old PL mag of mine. Deadlifts 3 or 4 times a week, very light weight, high reps. Supposedly builds solid strength. We’ll see.
[quote]cavalier wrote:
Strange. Two days after doing the light workout, felt really, really good. Emotional high. Today back to normal. I believe that workout was much more like what I should do most of the time.
Very possible I’ve been overstressed / overtrained / over whatever and just whacking body down. If so, must not push workouts too far. Difficult, as I’m in the habit of working as hard as possible. Actually, my “hard work” turned out way different from other’s “hard work”. Nobody else in the gym breaks a sweat or gets out of breath, even lifting twice what I do. Occasionally there’s a grunt.
[/quote]
An E high, sounds good to me.
I’m a firm believer in listening to what the body tells you, ok sometimes we do just need to kick it up a few notches (& ok yes sometimes I don’t listen to it). As hippy as this sounds, our body has wisdom sometimes we just need to listen to.
[quote]cavalier wrote:
Hi Hawkman, thanks for the encouragement.
Strange. Two days after doing the light workout, felt really, really good. Emotional high. Today back to normal. I believe that workout was much more like what I should do most of the time.
Very possible I’ve been overstressed / overtrained / over whatever and just whacking body down. If so, must not push workouts too far. Difficult, as I’m in the habit of working as hard as possible. Actually, my “hard work” turned out way different from other’s “hard work”. Nobody else in the gym breaks a sweat or gets out of breath, even lifting twice what I do. Occasionally there’s a grunt.
Injury is still there, making squatting impossible. Will concentrate on deads and bench and miscellaneous. Low stress, strength building. Can’t believe I’m doing this, but think I’ll try a Louie Simmons routine in an old PL mag of mine. Deadlifts 3 or 4 times a week, very light weight, high reps. Supposedly builds solid strength. We’ll see.[/quote]
Less is more in certain cases.
I think you and are similar in our somatic and psychological type in that volume is contraindicated unless used to cement or bolster a gain that’s already been made. I also think you have a stronger will than I do. Any time I’ve pursued a “straight sets” routine I’ve stalled out in short order. When I was younger I spent years trying to get past a 225lb BP to no avail using that scheme.
The last few years I’ve pursued max or near-max singles in the major lifts with 1 or a couple of back off sets for growth and it’s worked (is working) very well for me. I take an ‘easy’ day here and there when I start getting creaky or burned out, but it’s usually a very short run of them before I’m able to go back to hitting max or 90%+ singles again. I think such a scheme might work for you, but you have to try it out and tweak to fit. Everyone’s slightly (or not so slightly) different.
Christian Thibeaudeau wrote an article a few years ago on “Easy-hard gainers” that just seemed to click with me and those are the principles I’m using to train. Side benefits: I don’t really get sore any more, just tight and I have mental energy left over to do or think about other things.
Please excuse me for butting in, I know you have some strong ideas of how to train. I just hope that something from the preceding paragraphs might be helpful to you. I really admire your pit-bull persistence and just hope to be of assistance.
Techno, I do listen to my body, but had to build a frame of reference to interpret it. They say “Work hard!”, so I do, but eventually noticed other guys just don’t do it the way I do. Have paid for training several times, but no one said “Here’s what to look for”.
Albino, I always welcome civility. Don’t know if I have strong ideas of how to train - if I knew, I’d be benching 500.
Are you currently pursuing that routine? I’ll take a closer look at your log.
Have generally tried to avoid max singles because they’re stressful, can lead to injury, and if I guess wrong and can’t make it, get very upset. On the other hand, hi reps of moderately heavy can really give me a 911 experience.
Have done Nautilus style lo volume for many years, didn’t get anywhere. Could blame diet, could blame poor style . . . but now believe volume by itself isn’t the crucial factor.
I’m following the regimen I described currently. The top weight in a lift for the day varies between 90% of max to 100%+ of max depending on how I feel and how the previous warmup weight felt. It’s been my experience that you’ll always get some growth and strength out of a 90% lift + a backoff set and that you can always do at least one 90% lift unless you are already seriously depleted. Sometimes I’ll do multiple singles and a back off set. Sometimes I don’t do the backoff set at all. Sometimes I just do the backoff set. It’s very flexible.
I don’t know if this regimen is scalable to the weights MarauderMeat and PeteS work with, but it worked for me at least up to a 395 SQ, 285BP and 500DL at one point. Not big weights, but a good point to consider other programs if stalling or chronic over-reaching occurs.
Variation of the lifts seems to be key component for me. I’ll go stale if I do the same lifts the same way for too long, so I rotate among 4 variations of each main lift and swap out the ones that start to stall. It means my PR spreadsheet is pretty long, but it keeps things interesting and seems to bolster weak areas over time.
I try to put my weaker movements at the front of the session, so that they get some juice, and so exercise order is fluid depending on what’s lagging for me.
I may or may not do accessory movements, depending on allotted session time and available energy, but they generally come last if I do them at all. Same prioritization as the main movements, except that upper back stuff is first.
I try to deadlift heavy only one session out of 4 and if the low back feels burned up, I’ll do a power pulling movement. You might be able to do more than that, but I have a screwed up back and it gets offended at too much DLing.
Interesting, Albino. So have you found the 90% singles to build strength by themselves? I tend to keep a routine for some weeks or months to see if I’m making any gains.
Also remember your idea of mediocre lifts is positively bionic by my standards, and if I could ever lift like that, I’d be giddy with joy.
Went to gym and did misc stuff. Firm rule: NO STRESS. Some OH press (65 lb), some Hammer Row (kinda surprised how many plates I used), pushups, arm curl (50 lb), tri pulldown. Can’t do squats, didn’t want to risk overstress with deads, so did some leg curls and leg extensions. Feeling quite good now - strange to feel better walking out the gym than walking in.
Oh - looked in the cardio room. They were using dinky rubber “barbells”, probably no more than 10 or 20 lbs. Dancing around doing clean & press (sort of), sort of rows, sort of squats (all of 4 inches). Couldn’t help laughing.
[quote]cavalier wrote:
Interesting, Albino. So have you found the 90% singles to build strength by themselves? I tend to keep a routine for some weeks or months to see if I’m making any gains.
Also remember your idea of mediocre lifts is positively bionic by my standards, and if I could ever lift like that, I’d be giddy with joy.
Went to gym and did misc stuff. Firm rule: NO STRESS. Some OH press (65 lb), some Hammer Row (kinda surprised how many plates I used), pushups, arm curl (50 lb), tri pulldown. Can’t do squats, didn’t want to risk overstress with deads, so did some leg curls and leg extensions. Feeling quite good now - strange to feel better walking out the gym than walking in.
Oh - looked in the cardio room. They were using dinky rubber “barbells”, probably no more than 10 or 20 lbs. Dancing around doing clean & press (sort of), sort of rows, sort of squats (all of 4 inches). Couldn’t help laughing.[/quote]
Actually, no…or, rather, not so much; at least, not for me. The 90%+ single seems to kick higher the ‘set-point’ of what you consider heavy - making it easier to lift at those percentages of max, but I’m thinking these days that it’s the back-off set of 5 that’s building the strength. The combination is like a 1-2 punch. The heavy set makes the 5’s easier to do, so you can go heavier on them. Doing the set of 5 makes the next session’s singles easier and it just keeps ratcheting upwards over time. If I do just singles, I start to lift solely on nerve and that gets wearing unless I’m doing only 80-85% of max. But that’s boring.
One thing that I like about this style of lifting is that I miss very few lifts, which builds confidence, enables me to shake off the ones I do miss because I have so many successful ones in the bag and makes me think that I might be able to lift something notable some day.