If you are at least maintaining your bench then that is pretty good while losing weight. Do you do any other squat than front squats often anymore? I also saw that your knees cave in when squat?
For me I used to do that a lot when high bar with a moderate stance and using the rebound was my main squat style, that has stopped after doing a ton of wide stance squats, sumo pulls, wide stance good mornings, ect. At one point my hams/glutes got a shit ton stronger than my quads also.
I am not sure when though, my quads last cycle got a little weaker then exploded in strength after doing high rep high bar squats/ doing front squats.
yeah, the bench will for sure start going up again once I up the calories. My knees have been and are still crap, but I’m doing front squats now pretty much pain free, and will add in some wide box squats tomorrow. How long did it take you to get your posterior chain up to par? I’m just giving myself the mindset that I constantly need to work on wide and close stance squat and deadlift variations.
Oh cool, I have read that article on a different site than elitefts several months ago, and just recently on elitefts.
It took about twelve weeks of brutalizing my hamstrings/glutes/back and quads being a second thought to become slightly posterior chain dominate. Literally everything except the hack squat off of pins I tried out (I will only do them off of the floor if I do them again) was either neutral (zercher squats with a medium to close stance), posterior chain dominate (my squat style and sumo deadlifts), or extremely posterior chain dominate (deadlifts, romanian deadlifts, stiff legged deadlifts, ect)
If you were to try something similar, make sure to keep at least a small amount of quad work so your strength off the floor isn’t effected, and that your strength doesn’t drop a little at first.
Probably about a 3:1 ratio to ham/glute dominate to quad dominate would be enough.
awesome, that’s basically what I’m doing to fix things…I feel like getting my glutes/hams/hips up to par and working on mobility will cure my knee pain and make me much stronger. My left ham has gotten tight as a result of my shit knee, but I’m regaining ROM on it and will add in RDLs as they’re awesome
3/3/13
deficit pulls
135 3
225 3
271 1
315 1
335 1 belt too tight almost puked
315 5 PR
front squats
155 5, 4, 4 PR
meh, I’ll get 5x5 next time.
cable good girl/bad girls
a bunch
knees hurt a bit after squats but by the time I finished these they were fine
gym was closing so no time for more assistance work
I think I will switch my days around to go: bench, dead/squat, back, off, repeat
that way I’ll be able to get better leg drive during bench, have less off days, and not skip back/bis again
I think focusing on doing reps with moderately heavy weights in the main lifts or their variations + a lot of bodybuilding work will pay off the best for me at this point.
Other than that, my weakness is the knee pain I get while squatting. It was partially caused by me doing Smolov but failing to keep my knees out on rep after rep lol. I took a long time off squatting, but when I went back to squatting it came back immediately. Since then I’ve been doing a lot to make them better, and it’s definitely working, albeit slowly.
Once I’m able to bring my squat for reps up, I’ll run 5/3/1 high frequency again for a month or two and then enter a meet.
I’m taking today off and will hopefully PR on deficit deads tomorrow. I honestly love training often and am feeling guilty, even though I deadlifted on Sunday.
Also, when I do a bb show it’ll probably not be a natural one unless I want to get on stage looking like Michael Phelps. For now, I want to stay natty and get some good #s in raw powerlifting.
[quote]browndisaster wrote:
I’m taking today off and will hopefully PR on deficit deads tomorrow. I honestly love training often and am feeling guilty, even though I deadlifted on Sunday.
Also, when I do a bb show it’ll probably not be a natural one unless I want to get on stage looking like Michael Phelps. For now, I want to stay natty and get some good #s in raw powerlifting.[/quote]
[quote]browndisaster wrote:
thanks half asian brah
3/7/13
shit warmup today and my knees felt like crap so I cut stuff short
335 3 PR
315 2 meh
TKEs
a bunch
front squat
155 3, 5
bunch of bad girls
bunch of good girls
light hamstring curls[/quote]
Which one was this, deadlift conventional, sumo stance, deficit, or squat? (the 335X3 PR)
^ oops I’ll change that, it was a deficit pull. I took some nasty chunks out of my legs with them last night. I think I need to wear soccer cleats and sweatpants to avoid it instagram.com/p/WlM1bhjR0A
@zenon my thinking is that a belt that’s tight while you stand is going to be overly tight when you’re kneeling and are also putting the most pressure outwards
Make your belt a notch loose THEN fill it up with your stomach expanded and tight like you should be doing anyway for squatting/deadlifting. Expanding your stomach like that means a bigger tighter base which in theory when squatting is a better base.
It helps all of the big three to do that, especially the bench and squat.
You also want to be like a spring storing energy when your squat and bench. By the time you are in the bottom of a squat or bench you should be ready to explode out of the bottom from the energy stored.
I like to unrack bench attempts myself because it helps with the whole spring process I do, and squatting with a big sit back and forcing the knees out to store a lot of energy in the hips and hamstrings. What I am referring to is both irradiation and the stretch reflex (‘the spring’ is the stretch reflex squeezing the shit out of the bar and being tight in the whole body is irradiation)
wow well put about the irradiation and stretch in regards to squatting. I’d characterize my squat as “floppy,” I can tell that a.) I’m not firing near 100% of my motor units and b.) I’m not transferring near 100% of the force I create to the bar. I’ll reread this before I squat next time, thanks
Great, I hope it helps you get some big personal records. I have taken a ‘mini deload’ (take a couple days off) to get a nice rebound after overreaching at the end of my cycle. Let’s see who’s stronger now ;)? I plan on getting 330-350 as a squat 220-225 competition paused bench and a 370-380 ish deadlift tomorrow at 148 (yep I am a skinny bastard)
On a side note, have you ever tried high rep/volume pull ups? My back seems to respond great to a combination of low rep heavy weight, medium reps heavy weight with loose form, light weight with medium to high reps with strict form, for rows, and very high volume for weighted pull ups (12-25 reps per set for about 4 sets) matt kroc also seems to like high volume pull ups like 100 total reps. In fact, I am going to try the 100 total reps this accumulation cycle for weighted chin ups with strict form and strong MMC.
race to a 455 deadlift? My best is 385 a few weeks ago. I think your squat kills mine, and you’re too light to bench against an Alpha Male like myself
As the deadlifts are actually heavy enough to be felt in my upper back the next day, I’ve slacked on back/bi assistance in the last couple of weeks. I’m going to try and hit some heavier weights for lower volume on back/bi work for the next few months. I’ve done 100 rep pullups in the past, but I’ve never kept that in my routine for too long because it irritates my brachialis. I think you can’t go wrong with back work as long as you feel it in the muscle and do a ton of it.
3/8/13
conditioning: recumbent bike 1 hour
recovery: none
3/9/13
nothing
3/10/13
bench
145 5
170 5
190 11
was going for 12, but I’m ok with 11
decline smith
1 pps 10
1.5 pps 10
2 pps 6, 6, 8
wide grip for the pecs
floor skullcrushers
broweight 12, 12, 12
if my tricep tendons are happy with this I’ll run the weight up
single arm tri ext
20 10, 10
lateral raises
ran up the rack in sets of 10 from 25 - 50.
I’d rate today’s workout as Dave Tate/10. I unconsciously emulated the shit out of his outfit and workout style lololol
My lifts always go up one at a time. A few months ago my squat went from shit to 300 and then I crippled myself, then my bench went from shit to 250, now my deadlift is going from shit to the 400s, so I’m thinking squat shall be the next one to go up now that my knees are working somewhat.
You will probably kick my ass at that race if today’s pull was all I could do. Today, I had worked up from the bar to 300 for squats, I had done 275 like the bar was loaded with 205, then when I got to 300 my upper back couldn’t stay tight, and I was slow as **** in the hole. I barely missed it, then tried again and was closer but still didn’t get it, then tried a last time and was just dead by then. I had gotten up to an easy 205 for a competition pause bench press, and then had gotten 335X1 for a very quick rep (got off of floor easily and was smooth throughout) , by that point anything heavier and my back was giving me extremely angry warning signs like I would get injured if I had tried to grind off of the floor for more than a second, and I was just burnt out physically and mentally by that point.
Anyway, lots of back/ab work (good mornings and various ab exercises) front squats/snatch grip work for upper back, and lots of wide pause squats/ wide stance 1-1/4 squats is what I need. That and it seems like I need to do heavier work whenever I do max effort squatting. Perhaps I will get a great boost in squatting strength after I correct this bottom range weakness.