I try to “bend” over my shoulders by pulling down on it when squatting. I think we are getting at the same thing, and yes it is helpful. I havent been doing that because one of my elbows has been pretty inflamed the last 2-3 weeks. I’ll have to pick up an elbow sleeve.[/quote]
I got some shoulder discomfort when switching to this new setup so I’ve been doing shoulder mobility/strengthening work since I think that’s the problem. My left shoulder is weaker than my right side and I have felt it in my left elbow.[/quote]
Have either of you tried using wrist wraps when squatting? I know when I don’t use mine my elbows start to get quite a bit of inflammation and pain.
[quote]knobby22 wrote:
Interesting thread. My chest will cave and/or I’ll lean forward coming out the the hole when chasing a new 1RM.
It makes sense that it’s actually weak legs: hips rising faster than torso in an effort to lock out the knees. Never heard of it that way.
Gonna do my best to keep my form and if I fail my next 1RM attempt, it will be with an arch. At least that’s the goal.[/quote]
I used to have this same problem but, you have to figure out if that is actually what it is. There is a huge difference between your hips rising and causing you to fall over and your chest collapsing due to upper back weakness or lack of tightness. I missed 625 a month and half ago because my I was scared of the weight and was focusing on pushing with my legs and didnt maintain position which caused the bar to come forward my hips to rise. I didnt even take full 10 seconds to recover and unrack it after the spotters took it and focused on nothing but keeping my head back and lats engaged and I smoked it.
I really think that analyzing a lift in order to determine a weak muscle group can be very, very deceiving. It is more effective to analyze a lift in order to determine weak patterns of movement and address those through special exercises. While you may be correct that doing ab work will help your squat, it could also be quad work, glute work, lower back work or any combination of these that are needed.
So instead of going through all of those assistance exercises every training session, I would recommend doing something that forces you to work through your weakest movement patterns. In your case, I would say that front squats would be the most effective way to do this since you have to force your hips under the bar and stop your butt from shooting up in order to keep the bar on your shoulders. Notice also that the front squat trains every one of the aforementioned muscle groups effectively.
I’m actually of the opinion, that if you maintain solid form, the lift you want to improve will improve the weak muscles. If your quads are weak, but you put in all your work where you can stay upright, the quads are going to get hit the hardest because you will be at their limit, but you’ll be below the limit for the other stronger muscles. It’s the breaking down of form that allows you to de-load the weaker muscles and load and develop stronger muscles out of proportion to what you need for correct form.
Personally I think that works a lot better and is a lot more sure fire than trying to figure out what is or isn’t weak and pic out the right accessory lifts or variations and volumes and loads and frequencies to try and re-balance muscle groups for a particular form of a particular movement.
If you want a strong, good form squat, squat as much as you’re able in good form and don’t ever let that form break down. It is a necessity of physics that the weakest parts for maintaining good form will get worked the hardest and in exact proportion to their weakness. When you train with bad form, you practice and develop muscle and muscle patterns for the bad form.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I’m actually of the opinion, that if you maintain solid form, the lift you want to improve will improve the weak muscles. If your quads are weak, but you put in all your work where you can stay upright, the quads are going to get hit the hardest because you will be at their limit, but you’ll be below the limit for the other stronger muscles. It’s the breaking down of form that allows you to de-load the weaker muscles and load and develop stronger muscles out of proportion to what you need for correct form.
Personally I think that works a lot better and is a lot more sure fire than trying to figure out what is or isn’t weak and pic out the right accessory lifts or variations and volumes and loads and frequencies to try and re-balance muscle groups for a particular form of a particular movement.
If you want a strong, good form squat, squat as much as you’re able in good form and don’t ever let that form break down. It is a necessity of physics that the weakest parts for maintaining good form will get worked the hardest and in exact proportion to their weakness. When you train with bad form, you practice and develop muscle and muscle patterns for the bad form.
[/quote]
I completely agree with that. The main thing I was pointing out was that I didn’t know it was bad form to begin with because I never knew what it meant to really have tight lats during the setup. I thought it was tight but really it was nowhere near the level of contraction as for my deadlift. Most of my training consists of submaximal loads in the 80-90% range where my abs and erectors alone can keep me in an upright position. It’s when I go beyond that (90-100%) when they really need the assistance from the lats to keep my torso upright and by the time I reach that high of a percentage, it’s probably time to peak. That results in volume lost not engaging the lats. Strengthening my lats won’t help if I’m not using that strength. That could probably also be said about knowing how to use the lats but not the abs.
My guess is that a person’s form is best evaluated at 90-95% loads where it gives an accurate picture of the muscles being utilized and there shouldn’t be that much form breakdown at those weights.
[quote]badwolf42 wrote:
I agree. if your deadlift is much stronger then you don’t have a weak back. try to get stronger legs and you will probably be surprised how strong your back/core really is.[/quote]
That’s exactly what my line of reasoning was in the past so I’m just offering another perspective. My back was strong in the deadlift because the first thing I learned about powerlifting or just lifting heavy in general was learning to use the posterior chain. It took awhile to learn to properly use the anterior chain (ab bracing) but once I did my deadlift felt so much better and stronger.
The posterior chain is as strong as its weakest link, as well as the anterior chain. Sure I fired all the muscles properly during the deadlift but it doesn’t automatically mean I did for squat. By not fully firing my lats, that forced all of the load onto my abs which couldn’t handle the high load so my chest would shift forward (the lats were finally loaded after being stretched into the good morning position). This shift puts the low back/glutes/hams in a position to handle more load and thus it is perceived that the quads are weak. If the bar never shifted in the first place, the quads could have easily handled the load. At this point, the back is fried and the quads didn’t get much work.
That is why it’s important to look through the entire posterior and anterior chain to see where the weak link is. The weak link doesn’t necessarily have to be a weak muscle, it can be an underutilized muscle.
Edit: It could be the case that the quads are weak and by placing all of the load on the posterior chain, the back is overloaded and thus fails. But I was thinking the OP had a similar case to mine since he felt he still had strength in his quads.[/quote]
I see where you are coming from. So after you learned how to squat properly then you figured things out better? And i agree thats its probably not just one weak muscle and is more likely technique to get everything firing properly. Some people naturally know how to fire everything correctly(and we all hate them) others have to take a lot of time to figure it out.
[quote]badwolf42 wrote:
I see where you are coming from. So after you learned how to squat properly then you figured things out better? And i agree thats its probably not just one weak muscle and is more likely technique to get everything firing properly. Some people naturally know how to fire everything correctly(and we all hate them) others have to take a lot of time to figure it out.[/quote]
I know what you mean. I started off not knowing how to use my lats or abs for any lift which is probably the worst possible way to start off. Watching how others lift is almost useless if you don’t know how it’s supposed to feel.
I’ll find out in a few weeks at my meet. I figured it out a couple months ago and slowly reverted back to my old form to see if the shoulder pinching would work. It’s like being a gambler that can’t quit. I felt my chest caving a bit when hitting 375 for a couple singles last week so I decided last week to never go back to that bad habit because it just doesn’t work. The new setup is more stable and consistent but I haven’t used it for anything more than 355 (355 felt great a few weeks ago).
My last squat PR was back in June where I hit 385 and my chest collapsed a bit. I have a meet in Dec. where I’m going for around 407/413 on my final attempt. I’ll be most satisfied if I hit my second attempt of 391 with no form breakdown. It would mean that I likely solved my biggest problem for the squat and training next year will be much more predictable.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
I’m actually of the opinion, that if you maintain solid form, the lift you want to improve will improve the weak muscles. If your quads are weak, but you put in all your work where you can stay upright, the quads are going to get hit the hardest because you will be at their limit, but you’ll be below the limit for the other stronger muscles. It’s the breaking down of form that allows you to de-load the weaker muscles and load and develop stronger muscles out of proportion to what you need for correct form.
Personally I think that works a lot better and is a lot more sure fire than trying to figure out what is or isn’t weak and pic out the right accessory lifts or variations and volumes and loads and frequencies to try and re-balance muscle groups for a particular form of a particular movement.
If you want a strong, good form squat, squat as much as you’re able in good form and don’t ever let that form break down. It is a necessity of physics that the weakest parts for maintaining good form will get worked the hardest and in exact proportion to their weakness. When you train with bad form, you practice and develop muscle and muscle patterns for the bad form.
[/quote]
I agree with this as well. Most lifters are going to perform more than just the big three though so figuring out which assistance lifts to perform after you’ve applied these principles to your big lifts is still a valid approach. I always try to attack problems from multiple angles whenever possible.
I’ve chased “weak point” training for along time, but i see the best gains by far from pounding the main lift and doing some big mass building movements as acc work. I’m sure I will go back to chasing weak points eventually, but it is fun to just pound weight and not analyze it