Yeah, it was definitely “ouchie” territory, not “fuck, jesus, one of you call an ambulance while I stop the bleeding” territory. Probably won’t be entering any Sots press comps soon though.
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That made me chuckle.
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I’ll take notes from y’all on how not to mess up me shoulders. @Koestrizer you guys do any reaching type movements?
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I’m not completely sure what you mean.
I suspect from your log you mean something with scapular range of motion?
Ye. Lot of protraction and elevation. Strength athletes are depressed (lel :c) and/or retracted a lot. Maybe more so protraction for you because of ur overhead stuff that covers elevation
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Ah ok got ya. We don’t do too much specific stuff but I have some things in there to move my shoulder blades through everything.
For one, I have been doing a lot of overhead squats for months now. That forces you to not only move your shoulder blades to a great range of motion but also to stabilize each position.
Then as you said I do all the overheads, so not a lot of active depression going on but I also do shrugs.
Btn presses are also a whole different experience for the rear delts and shoulder blade surrounding muscles.
I don’t see much of a need for protraction. My front delts are pretty big and even though my pecs are flexible, my posture takes care of the protraction, haha.
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@guineapig what kind of reaching exercises are you doing?
Did some reaching push ups and will do some protracted cable pressing.
Amazing pressing strength. Your squat is a thing of beauty, so smooth and tight. And I see nothing wrong with your DL, it’s as tight as all things should be!
The clean is a complicated animal… Perhaps I’ll have your shoulders being a bit more in front of the bar, you have quite long legs. Problem is that you’re not finishing the extension and jumping up, but putting all your hip power as you pass the knees, resulting in a “rainbow” clean, the bar moves a bit forward, that’s you also catch it leaning back. Because you certainly have the strength and power ez peazy, you catch it all super high despite this.
This fault is very common with people who only do power variations. If you check the deiference between your power snatches and cleans, you can see the difference. On the snatches you stand tall, like you want to jump up, the bar stays close to you. On cleans, especially when you are fatigued, you want to explode up with your arms/traps as soon as you pass the knees and want to transition already, but you didn’t finish the hip extension. Try to be more patient and really focus on standing tall and jumping up and you’ll destroy this weight.
As a warm-up try clean high-pulls staying on the toes, and sometimes low pulls focusing on full hip extension and comitting to the lift.
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Cheers mate. In terms of static strength events, I excel the most at pressing. Although in competition it’s the carries that bring home the points. Not sure about the squat but my deadlifts has definitely come a long way this year. Both lack in poundage compared to other strongmen and my competitors but we’re getting there. I’m still the worst ‘deadlifter’ of my league to my knowledge (ouch 
). But it’s a long game and I can deal with getting in a few zeroes in competition.
Very accurate analysis of the cleans. In theory I know what to do.
This is exactly what my coach critized the most- not standing tall. I can’t seem to bring this stuff together as soon as the weights get even somewhat heavy. One main problem is that there is so much to train that cleans don’t make as regular of an appearance as they would need to to get better.
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This. This is the same kind of thing that you mentioned on a post by Pwn I think, about how as a coach it’s easy to coach someone, but very hard for us to make us do the thing we know we need, but don’t like. Like my teacher, he practically doesn’t warm up or skips his accessories, and knows it’s bad lol.
We know what to do, but without someone evaluating, we don’t always know if what we do is right even though we know what to do. I know I have to keep my upper back tight. But until my teacher yesterday said to me it was good when I was doing it, then only I knew what to feel, what muscles to contract and how
I feel you. Really try for warm-ups muscle cleans when you finish on your toes and stay there. Approved by @j4gga2
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1 power jerks
4 x 5 @ 107,5 kg
2 floating deadlifts (3 sec. Ecc.)
3 x 5 @ 152,5 kg
3 bench press
4 x 10 @ 90 kg
4 bent over row
3 x 8 @ 110 kg
5a lunges
4 x 8 @ 55 kg per leg
5b side bends
4 x 8 @ 30 kg per side
Notes:
- overheads felt better than the last few times! Front rack is still giving me trouble but speed was back.
- floating deads on point
- whoa it has been a minute since I’ve done flat benching. Now that I have the comparsion, I stand by it: More pec involvement in floor presses for me, @voxel.
- very successful session. Pretty hard as well. Stuff adds up and I am slow and tired, lol.
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Yeah definitely part of it. Although in the case of heavier cleans it’s also an issue of coordination, haha.
As with everything else in life, an outside voice is very helpful in lifting. Even if it says what we already know. It’s a big part of therapy. Or any medical consultation (everyone knows smoking, obesity and drugs are unhealthy but it hits different when your doc says “you’re dying. Stop that.”
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This is why I still spend time in a certain log
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You have a lot of patience.
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I’m very sympathetic to the plight given my own experience. The tough part is, when I was at my worst, I had no idea. And, I look back now and I can see things a lot more clearly. What worries me is that whenever I slip, I “forget” about those things, or it alone doesn’t become enough to override the behaviour. So, I know there’s really very little impact reason has but I’m also very upset with friends and family who afterwards was like, “yeah, we saw it was an issue etcetera.” and it’s like “Maybe you could have told me?”.
Like, maybe I would have stopped earlier, I don’t know, but hell I’d rather be very awkward and risk making someone upset or angry with how honest I’m being than learning later of the outcome and not having put any effort whatsoever into highlighting to them that they are engaging in self-harming behaviour.
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This is interesting. When I first fell into a major depression I abandoned pretty much everything. Had no interest in any of my hobbies anymore (besides lifting), totally shut myself off from my friends and just was at home, drinking and losing my mind.
The crazy part is: No one noticed. No one called me on it. When we talked about it years later my friends were like “yeah we were wondering about why you never stuck around or didn’t go out anymore”.
The fact that nobody spoke up (bothered to ask?) made me feel very alone.
I knew things were going really wrong but I didn’t draw the right conclusion yet.
When I opened up about what was going on to my best friend, he instantly concluded that I needed professional help.
To this day if I don’t want people to know how I’m doing, they won’t. Even if I want then to know, I can’t. One of my flatmates is a very close friend of mine whom I’ve known for 16 years. Not too long ago we talked and I told him how I was doing really bad and he replied “you know if you didn’t tell me that, I wouldn’t be able to tell whatsoever. I really thought you were doing better.”
My grandfather had a saying that took on a new meaning for me over the years: “How am I? Good. Nobody would believe me anyways if I said otherwise.”
There is obviously a huge difference to your story there, since I knew what was going on with me was damaging.
Still, the moral of the story (for me) is, that I always make it a point to be nice to others. You never know what other people are dealing with and what your smile and your words of encouragement might mean to them. I forget to act on this at times, I am human afterall but I never stray too far.
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I would also like to plug:
I call these drop catches. For me, drop catches and toe muscle cleans get most people to a very passable power clean
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Also, for activation, cleans before squats/snatches before deadlifts. Now you are practicing twice weekly.
Or do a complex that includes both, like the Javorek Complex (contains power versions)
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Thanks for sharing, and that final paragraph highlights how much of a good egg you are and that you managed to take a really bad life experience and make it into a positive in the world.
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