One thing that people told me with back squats that I didn’t quite believe but turned out to be true… Is that it is MUCH easier to balance weight on the bar than it is to balance the bar. I have trouble not falling over backwards (and want my knees to break, as you say) with just the bar, but as more weight gets loaded on it feels much more stable / balanced. Of course more weight on the bar brings other problems… But does seem to help a lot with balance.
Keeping your chest up more might be about cueing it / remembering to do it. Planks might help too, though. I’m finding that when I do my weighted planks I find it much easier to keep my chest up than when I don’t do my weighted planks. Of course they aren’t much fun… Only thing I find even less fun than planks is squats, truth be told, but they do seem to help my squats. Might be worth a shot if cuing doesn’t fit it.
Seriously, though, your squats are looking pretty good!!!
[quote]alexus wrote:
One thing that people told me with back squats that I didn’t quite believe but turned out to be true… Is that it is MUCH easier to balance weight on the bar than it is to balance the bar. I have trouble not falling over backwards (and want my knees to break, as you say) with just the bar, but as more weight gets loaded on it feels much more stable / balanced. Of course more weight on the bar brings other problems… But does seem to help a lot with balance.
Keeping your chest up more might be about cueing it / remembering to do it. Planks might help too, though. I’m finding that when I do my weighted planks I find it much easier to keep my chest up than when I don’t do my weighted planks. Of course they aren’t much fun… Only thing I find even less fun than planks is squats, truth be told, but they do seem to help my squats. Might be worth a shot if cuing doesn’t fit it.
Seriously, though, your squats are looking pretty good!!! [/quote]
Thank Alexus, I’ll be doing bench tonight and will practice my squat form as an accessory. It may have been a bad idea in terms of achieving depth to switch my form to a pl squat instead of the oly back squat I was just naturally doing. I have very flexible ankles, I also find it easier to not fold(at the waist) when doing the oly version. I’ll film both and post them tonight.
I’ve never done weighted planks. I usually do the regular ones. Is there a plate on your back?
I do need a proper core workout though. I usually just do planks and weighted crunches.
all i need my abs to do for oly lifting is to remain rigid under a load for not very much time at all, so all i do for my abs is weighted planks. once i could do 3x120 second planks i reduced the time to 60 seconds and started weighting them. the weight went up pretty fast since the time was reduced. can do 20kg or 25kg plates now. either ask someone to put the weight on me or there is a way of maneuvering it up there myself. once i need 2 plates on me i think i’ll need someone else to put them there, though.
with other ab work… i think i need to spend some time on abdominal activation. i have trouble with ab rollouts because i can feel myself hanging off my lumbar spine rather than using my abs. i have trouble with situps and leg raises because i can feel myself using my hip flexors rather than using my abs. i should spend some time getting the movement patterns at some point.
i used to aim to alternate abs and back at the end of each training session. weighted planks one day and back extensions the other. but then i learned that your lower back always will fatigue first since there is less muscle mass in that region. that as such one always does need to be careful not to overtrain it. my lower back gets trained in pretty much everything i do… so i’ve given up training it specifically… but i guess only time will tell whether that works for me. no idea what might work for you.
Just checin’ in to see the hottie in the squat vids.
Oh, and I tried some hill sprints yesterday and they sucked. I couldn’t fire it up. Pretty sure you’d have a hard time classifying them as sprints. More like “attempted sprints”. I think I need to stick to the level ground for now. Max has already told me this.
[quote]alexus wrote:
all i need my abs to do for oly lifting is to remain rigid under a load for not very much time at all, so all i do for my abs is weighted planks. once i could do 3x120 second planks i reduced the time to 60 seconds and started weighting them. the weight went up pretty fast since the time was reduced. can do 20kg or 25kg plates now. either ask someone to put the weight on me or there is a way of maneuvering it up there myself. once i need 2 plates on me i think i’ll need someone else to put them there, though.
with other ab work… i think i need to spend some time on abdominal activation. i have trouble with ab rollouts because i can feel myself hanging off my lumbar spine rather than using my abs. i have trouble with situps and leg raises because i can feel myself using my hip flexors rather than using my abs. i should spend some time getting the movement patterns at some point.
i used to aim to alternate abs and back at the end of each training session. weighted planks one day and back extensions the other. but then i learned that your lower back always will fatigue first since there is less muscle mass in that region. that as such one always does need to be careful not to overtrain it. my lower back gets trained in pretty much everything i do… so i’ve given up training it specifically… but i guess only time will tell whether that works for me. no idea what might work for you.
[/quote]
Hey Alexus
I usually do ab stuff at the end of my workouts too, because I hate them! So I make myself do them as the last exercise in my workouts. I am thinking of alternating a plank day with a day where I do variations of weighted crunches and leg lifts. I haven’t really thought about low back stuff yet. I definitely like the idea of weighted planks, less time in the plank woo hoo!
I have also thought I would add in a pushup position plank as part of my warm up for overhead press day.
Your squats don’t look bad to me - knee cave is very slight, really and you’re hitting a pretty good depth.
You are lucky to have flexible ankles - it makes life a lot easier.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Have you been doing that sprint workout I told you about?[/quote]
Hi Brother Chris
Not yet, this week and last I have been practicing my squat and deadlift forms (practice has been the accessory lifts for all lift days mostly) so the knees are grumpy. I may try it Saturday though I’m not sure about sprinting that much though, I’m more of a once or twice a week sprinter.
[quote]Powerpuff wrote:
Just checin’ in to see the hottie in the squat vids.
Oh, and I tried some hill sprints yesterday and they sucked. I couldn’t fire it up. Pretty sure you’d have a hard time classifying them as sprints. More like “attempted sprints”. I think I need to stick to the level ground for now. Max has already told me this. ;)[/quote]
[quote]Cal Jones wrote:
Your squats don’t look bad to me - knee cave is very slight, really and you’re hitting a pretty good depth.
You are lucky to have flexible ankles - it makes life a lot easier. [/quote]
Considering all the sprains I’ve had over the years it’s surprising to me they are flexible.
This is me taking advantage of the flexible ankles, instead of just trying to break at the hips but it kind of hurts the knees a bit, and my back may be rounding a bit. So I may just stick with the other squat(The vids I’ve already put up). I’m watching some Rippetoe vids on form so we’ll see.
I was going to put up vids of deadlifts but I forgot to charge my camera before going to the gym. I have split up deads and overhead presses so I can focus on each one better. My accessory lifts for the deadlift yesterday was practicing deadlifts and ab work. My butt is sore so I hope that means the deads were good. Oh and I used Bre’s x-rated glute activation thing too, I give it a thumbs up.
Today (evening) will be overhead press day, I have some ideas for warming up my shoulders that I want to try. I think maybe warming up more before the lift will prevent the joint pain I was feeling last time. It usually goes away by the last lift, where I go all out but not last time.
Warm up(possible maybe as a circuit)
-pinwheeling the arms
-pushup position plank(10-20secs)
-overhead press(db 5-10lbs)
Then do push presses(these have never hurt my shoulders)
Accessories (I’m not sure if I will do all of these except plank(I always do ab stuff))
-face pulls
-overhead shrug
-maybe more push presses
-plank (elbows, and trying weighted this time)
kind of excited to give the press it’s own day.
Oh and I have not forgotten I am supposed to be supplementing my musical diet with Little Kim for the confidence. Prescribed by Hallowed.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Have you been doing that sprint workout I told you about?[/quote]
Hi Brother Chris
Not yet, this week and last I have been practicing my squat and deadlift forms (practice has been the accessory lifts for all lift days mostly) so the knees are grumpy. I may try it Saturday though I’m not sure about sprinting that much though, I’m more of a once or twice a week sprinter.
I may have to try and see.
Oh and thanks for visiting my log. [/quote]
You can do however often you want. Just the more frequent you do it the easier it will be, the thing with sprints is that you have to do them often.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Have you been doing that sprint workout I told you about?[/quote]
Hi Brother Chris
Not yet, this week and last I have been practicing my squat and deadlift forms (practice has been the accessory lifts for all lift days mostly) so the knees are grumpy. I may try it Saturday though I’m not sure about sprinting that much though, I’m more of a once or twice a week sprinter.
I may have to try and see.
Oh and thanks for visiting my log. [/quote]
You can do however often you want. Just the more frequent you do it the easier it will be, the thing with sprints is that you have to do them often.[/quote]
Yeah I’ll have to work up to them. It’s mostly a knee thing, getting them used to the work along with the lifting too.
I am jealous of how good your squats look since I still have trouble getting such a smooth descent.
Only thing I got is about sitting your butt back from the start (breaking from the hips) and then descending the rest of the way. I think you are losing your lumbar arch a bit at the bottom but not terribly badly.
Hard to describe… But if you imagine your butt to be curled back (like a scorpian’s tail) you can kind of sit down hard into your hip flexors. Not sure if this makes sense. Sometimes people can get the feeling by just descending into a relaxed squat then wiggling around trying to set their arch (curling the butt back and up) then really feeling tension in the hip flexors. That is what you want.
You have probably seen this:
Some of what he says is controversial. Most people think that it isn’t good to let the hips rise before the shoulders (goodmorning it up). Ripptoe seems to be endorsing that way of squatting here. Think I found something at one point… Where the idea seemed to be that most people don’t use hip drive properly on squats so he is focused on getting people learning to drive up with their hips from the get-go. Then LATER once people have mastered hip drive the coach can become more of a Nazi about not letting the person goodmorning it up.
Your squat is looking pretty good though. I bet you would find breaking from the hips (sitting the butt back from the start) much easier with some weight on the bar. In my own case, anyway, I can’t balance it very well (feel like I’m gonna can over backwards) until I’ve got around half my bodyweight on the bar. At that point balance seems to sort itself out.
A sprint log turned to lifting. I can get on board with this.
Your squat looks amazing from both a form and strength standpoint. A lot of women don’t fly up and down under the 45lb bar their first time practicing with it like you are. My friend was certainly struggling with the 30lb fixed barbell her first time.
From what I can see at this angle, you are rocking/leaning forward at the bottom and are slightly too far forward the whole way coming up. I think this is a problem that would cause you to fail and therefore probably not do it if you were using more weight. With lighter weights, it’s harder to identify balance issues, which is kind of what this is.
To fix the issue, just imagine driving all of your weight into your heels and remember to keep your core tight at the bottom. If that isn’t working as well, also imagine pulling your toes off of the ground during the whole squat.
Shoulders, it was a good day today despite not being able to get more than 3 reps @ 65lbs again. grrrr.
I feel the warmup I did for shoulders was a good idea, although I may decide to substitute a downward dog for the pushup position plank next time.
The accesories lifts I did were:
-push press, my ego demanded that I push press the f@*K out of 65lbs just to show it who’s boss.
-over head shrug, I think I will do this before the push press next time so I can push press up more weight for the shrug, also I am already feeling the effects of this lift, thumbs up
-did not try face pulls(running out of time)
-weighted plank (this was awesome Alexus) I just tried with the 25lbs plate but I will try the 35 then the 45 on the next to plank days just to see how long I can hold it. I held it for 30 secs.
Because of the holiday on monday all my lifts are one day after the other. Tomorrow is squat day and I am still sore from deadlift day grrr, stupid gym. Oh well.
I will be repping out 100lbs, 95lbs was my old 1rm and I repped that out last week. this will be my week 3 so after my deload I will be breaking 100lbs!
I’m not sure if I wan to do squat practice as accessory to the squat tomorrow, maybe box squats.
I really like this guy, Kid Koala with Moon River Remix
This one too, really I have yet to find a remix of his I don’t like.
