Different strokes, etc. Those people would squat loads regardless of setup.
Also, remember there’s no such thing as a PL squat. There’s just a squat. Equipped squatters, especially multiply, squat super wide because that’s what gets the most out of the suit. Single ply is a bit different, and raw is VERY different. In raw meets you’ll see people squat with narrow, medium and wide stances and high, medium and low bar. It’s down to what suits you.
Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense.
Sorry to go off topic, but do you ever sleep? You’re always active at literally every hour of the day it seems.
Whenever I can. It’s half past seven in the morning here and I’m about to head off to work. I get up anywhere between four and seven usually, and I’m on here while I prepare and eat breakfast.
How long are your work shifts?
It’s 5-3-1 terminology for keep adding weight to the bar until you are satisfied.
Basically if your scripted workout out that day was:
5 reps at 95-135-155-175-185
If you were feeling strong you could keep going and your next sets would be something like:
5 reps at 195-205 and those would be called “jokers” in 5-3-1.
Eight to 16 hours, depending whether I take overtime or not - which I rarely do these day. Usually somewhere between seven am and five pm, then every five or six weeks I get a run of five or seven eleven pm to seven am shifts, then days off and seven three pm to eleven pm shifts.
That sounds like a solid work week. With/without overtime. What do you do again? I remember you saying what it was but I forgot
Oh okay. That makes sense. Would jokers mainly revolve around small jumps in weights? Or bigger ones?
I’m a public servant, one of the rare ones who does shift work. It’s a remarkably undemanding job.
With jokers, the jumps are up to you. Generally, you’re never meant to exceed your TM.
Are you referring to the Chinese Olympic Lifting folks?
I’d be careful to draw any conclusions from them. Their government literally chooses people who are the best built for Olympic lifting and trains them for at least a decade before they’re “ready”.
Oh okay. Makes sense.
Does it differ from American public servant jobs? Or are they pretty much the same?
Well I wasn’t concluding anything about them. I know far too little to have a concrete opinion of them. I just noticed they squat a lot with serious weight on their backs in a particular stance (which I cannot do, so it grabs my attention). Considering lately I’ve been playing around with my squat stance it’s just something I notice. And I just wonder how’d they fair with squatting to parallel.
I’m guessing similar? We get slightly lower pay than private enterprise but much, MUCH better conditions (holiday pay, sick pay, superannuation, penalty rates, flexibility, etc).
That sounds amazing lol
Damn straight. It’s not something I’d give up lightly.
Yes. Personally once I get to about 80% of my 1RM my jumps are about 5% regardless of rep range especially in my normal training.
I honestly think there’s a ton of folks that the Chinese got rid of cause they didn’t grow up to be properly built for the Olympic style high-bar squat.
The interesting thing I noticed after watching some Olympic lifters on Youtube is that depth actually varies a lot among the competitors. Some BURY the front-squat portion of the clean, whereas others drop down to what really would be just below parallel at most. I don’t know whether they chose the depth that feels the best for them or their coaches drilled it into them.
My instinctive reaction is that the bury vs kiss depth is down to how explosive vs how strong the individual is.
The really explosive ones would bury it, knowing they’ll get a ton of stretch reflex driving them up and use that momentum to keep going (I used to try this for my squats. Bad idea).
The stronger but slower ones would just kiss depth or rather catch the clean as high as possible because they rely on muscling the weight back up more than momentum from the stretch, so the shorter the distance they move the weight the easier.
I don’t know, I may be way off.
That makes sense. I noticed that too, but I always thought you’re supposed to really sink into the bottom portion of the lift. And we may never know unless we ask them or their coaches I suppose. I’ve seen a few people snatch at the parallel level and I always thought they weren’t going to the prescribed depth, but alas I am proven wrong.
No no no, that sounds about right. The few times I’ve practiced snatching, I always thought I was doing wrong because I’d only hit depth right at or slightly under. The few times I really sank into the snatch I agrravated my sciatica, and joyfully said screw that. Lol