LOL, bullying and making someone do things they don’t want to do isn’t what I meant.
……a little common sense there brah.
I can tell you though, raw, gear to be part of many crews your expected to be disciplined in some way whether it’s not being 1-minute late or in the case of bigtime like WS hitting numbers your supposed to hit and if “equipment” is the name of the game for that particular fed or whatever, then they expect to do what it takes.
…..common sense man.
That wasn’t my experience lifting in a private powerlifting club at all. It was members only and not open to the general public. My partner and I were welcomed warmly and given club t-shirts after we finished our first squat workout.
The only requirement for continued membership is $35 a month, respecting the equipment and respecting the other members. Novice lifters were generally welcome, too. It’s still there if I ever feel like taking a break from my basement setup.
It has bodybuilders, powerlifters who compete in other federations, fitness models, and just regular lifters, too.
You seem to think every powerlifting crew is Westside Barbell.
Yeah, I’m well aware there are “clubs” to join with serious lifters from bodybuilding to powerlifting.
It would not be a good business practice to kick out and make an intimidating space to its financial support, most lifting clubs you join are great places.
Some places might be limited on space and those clubs might be less catering.
Many powerlifting crews (not all) are more expecting of some talents, now these guys might own a club and then lift with the crew after hours, ya know the money during the day and the crew lifting outside that business time zone. Not ALL!
Luckily for you, it is all optional.
You are very lucky to find such a person. It seems like most medical professionals (including everyone here - doctors, chiros, PTs, etc.) have an aversion to barbell lifting. It’s also quite possible they just never had the time given the amount of time one must spend in school to achieve those credentials. I’d love to find a family practitioner who lifted weights and played rec league sports because he/she would actually understand what I put my body through.
Ok, whatever……
So how did me saying enticing with some glory mean bullying and trying to force?
I see the gear as enticing because a lifter might be lifting raw and then sees someone the same size lifting hundreds of pounds more but with gear. It’s very easy to want to be part of that, and please don’t miss quote me and think I think there’s something wrong there.
I might not agree but I’m not saying anything is wrong.
Oh he’s a rare specimen, for sure. He is high-level in all three. Four-stripe brown belt at one of New England’s best BJJ gyms, a master’s level education in physical therapy, and a Team USA gold medalist in master’s weightlifting. Basically a master of human movement. Same age as me, too.
Your observations hash with my experience, where none of my PCP’s or orthopedic specialists advised me to continue lifting heavy. My coach did no such thing at all, he just correctly diagnosed my issue without any X-rays or MRI’s and gave me the correct way to fix it with a 10 minute conversation about the whole situation. He did know what my doctors said about it and the x-ray results, so that probably helped him narrow it down.
Dude, that was a cold line. I’m stealing it.
thanks for sharing . . do you remember what the band exercises were that you did?
Internal rotation and external rotations in two different arm positions. The first with my upper arm pointing directly down and my forearm at a 90 degree angle to it. The second with my arm extended outwards with my forearm oriented directly upwards at a 90 degree angle. I used the lightest Rogue band for these, light orange in color. I was already doing face-pulls and band pull-aparts, which he advised me to continue. I typically do at least 20 reps in each orientation, sometimes more if I have time.
The bottom’s up kettlebell presses with the instability of a loose grip actually gave me a minor “pump” at higher reps. I used mostly 8 and 12 lb kettlebells for this. They fire a lot of those small shoulder muscles that I was apparently neglecting and aggravating with lots of hunched-over desk time at work.
I don’t think you can actually overdo any of these lightweight band exercises, and there are others that can be easily found online. They were very beneficial to me in eliminating the persistent pain I had and getting back to moving barbells.
As someone who also deals with desk posture, but no shoulder pain (perhaps yet), it’s good to hear I’m doing almost the right stuff. I train 4x a week and each each session I end with either band-aparts or facepulls on rotation. Every lifting day I do shoulder dislocations (up and overs) with a band or stick). Every upper day I do a set or two of external rotations as a warm-up with my elbows by my side, forearms straight ahead, palms up. I’ve been thinking of doing side lying down dumbell ones and progressing them, but usually forget/can’t be bothered. I also do a 30 second end range hold on the pulldown which seems to open a lot of stuff up (like a hang, but I’m not confident enough in my body right now for that not to potentially hurt me - I have more control of it on the pulldown)
I sometimes do pull-aparts at any every angle I can think of in the moment aswell if I’m standing around waiting for something.
I’d love to do the bottoms-up kettlebell presses but my overhead range is just a few inches short of fully overhead. I can do standing overhead presses full range but in my daily life or single arm with a dumbell/kettlebell it’s a bit short of it.
I wouldn’t worry about your range of motion when it comes to lightweight, bottoms-up kettlebell presses with a loose grip. Even if you can’t fully extend your arms overhead, you still have a range of motion to work with and a light enough weight to where injury risk is nonexistent. Plenty of little shoulder muscles will fire even if you can’t fully extend your arms.
The heaviest I went with these were my 24 lb kettlebells, but I’m not convinced that the heavier weights had any significant benefit for my shoulder health and function. You can just chill on the sofa and do bottoms-up presses with 8lb kettlebells with a very loose grip. The worst case scenario is that they don’t help at all, with no real risk of significant injury.
There’s no risk of me going too heavy, I’m too stubborn and dumb to let it get in my head that it could even slightly give me something to recover from that would impact the rest of my training.
I have a 6kg kettlebell at home which felt unsafe, which reveals a lot about how weak certain areas might be and how light I really need to start!
Use the same band and do the “no money” exercise. Elbows fixed at your sides, arms at 90, palms up. Externally rotate both arms at the same time and it should hit the same external rotators. Sounds like it’ll blend in seamlessly with your pull-aparts.
That’s actually what I meant when I said
I should have mentioned it was with a band. If they are good enough, why add anything else? It’s good to re-affirm it, so thanks all the same. I think sometimes I can value exercises I’m not doing just because I’m not doing it, but logically serves little to no benefit over anything else.
You nailed it. No need to do the lying DB version in addition.
Anyone else have a problem, I guess with their “shape”? I don’t believe in a “good posture” as such because we are all so different - almost everyone has a bit of anterior pelvic tilt, nobodies shoulders are in the perfect position all day every day, and I don’t fall for the clickbait preying on peoples insecurites over this stuff (anymore - despite going through my phases).
HOWEVER, there is definitely something wrong with how my scapular glides and all that lovely stuff which IS to do with posture. No matter how many videos I watch, how many exercises I try for months on end that I think might be working for a few days then all of sudden “BOSH” I’m back struggling.
I feel many exercises build good “shape”, a proper squat, a nicely done couple sets of rows etc. It never seems to last though, and it really effects progressive overload. One day my bench might feel dialled in, other days I just can’t get everything to sit right despite doing all the warm-ups, all the activations I’m meant to. My close-grip bench just now was awful, chest collapse, shruggy at the bottom, can’t keep chin tucked. IT’S BASIC STUFF I KNOW HOW TO CUE, but my bodies “shape” just ignores it and won’t let me build a real rhythm with some exercises. I’ve followed a million different bits of advice/videos/articles. I know past injuries probably caused it (serious wrist injury and a pec injury), I’ve tried building back up slowly lots of times but I keep losing myself.
It’s probably a discipline thing more than anything. “CUE HARDER YOU DICK”. But then, I see the retraction/depression and “chest up” some people can get standing and my body just won’t do it. So maybe there’s a mobility exercise I’m missing, it might be a pec stretch I haven’t managed to perfect, I dunno. I feel I can get it with a lot of crawling/sliding up on the bench, but it just disappears as soon as the set is over, or sometimes during despite getting as tight as I can and not having that issue for years (I’ve benched 125kg for a grindy double at ~80-85kg a long while back, and back then my form was clean and felt good).
Sorry this was a ramble better suited for my log, but not enough people read it, I’m pissed off at another fickle session, and this might be the right kind of thing a long-time lifter here might have also dealt with.
Hips and shoulders. I believe what’s most important is listening to your body. Ignore it, you pay for it. I had groin issues really early. Ignored it. Duh. At 49, had that hip replaced via resurfacing. Most folks don’t have the ability to lift huge weights. I sure didn’t. Too dense to pay attention to the signs.
The neck bridge isn’t for neck strength size, I find it’s about one of the greatest ways to “open me up”.
Yes you can do this by supporting via arms too, but the neck opens me up more.
Some PTs these days talk about rib cage position and how it influences posture and shoulder position and scap motion.
They say that basically some dudes don’t breath properly, and dont fullt ecpand their rib cages. So the syernum falls and the shoulder blades don’t move correctly.
To fix this they use breathing drills to “fill up” the ribs between the shoulder blades and under the sternum.
This guy gets deeper into the breathing and the ribs and how it effects chest training and bench pressing.
