today’s training @j4gga2 liking the warmup thing you told me. I really like doing goblet squats but with a plate and hold the plate forward at the bottom, leaning side too side seems to loosen up the ankles and hips real good.
emom circus dumbell
I dont have one so I use fat gripz on a dumbell.
35kg 10×1
Back squats
5 second eccentric
90kg 4×5
No hip shift today which was great.
Incline dumbell rows
2×10 30kg
External rotators 2×15
Back was feeling better until I slipped (slid) when walking and like shocked it. Oh well lol. Will keep up the mcgill big 3 which helps majorly along with some other stuff like glute bridges
It honestly feels better every day (in the mornings every few hours). I’m not sure if it’s because I’m pushing it, I’m doing the right things for my recovery, or I just recover quickly, but it’s very promising. Unfortunately I’ll have to bow out of my comp. Total rehab is about twelve weeks, and with the comp roughly 13 weeks away I don’t want to risk it, and I’ll be deconditioned.
today’s training Front squats
95 ×5
100×3
110×5kg instructions were an amrap until form breaks down. Did 5 but was starting to get knee cave so capped it as per instruction-i dont want to practice knee cave either
Rear delt swings
Dropset
10kg dumbells
60 reps
30 reps with 7’s
10 reps with 5
Push press
2× max reps
65kg ×10
×7
Lat pulldowns 5×15 80kg. Used a different attachment and pumped up my lats (wide neutral grip)
Don’t worry about anything I’m about to say (I don’t want to misconstrue that I think knee cave is totally normal, listen to your coach duh), also I hope you don’t mind if I derail this thread for some nerd time.
Chinese oly-lifters cue it, and from a mechanics standpoint the glute med, glute min, piriformis and IIRC deep hip Rotators like gemelli internally rotate the hip in flexion, and externally rotate as you move into extension. Also, internally-rotated femurs in the bottom of a squat place the quads in an advantageous position. Doesn’t that mean that you could get higher glute and quad activation by squatting from this type of position?
The main drawback I see is that you can no longer use your adductor group effectively. Knees in would take out adductor Magnus, right?
I don’t really see a problem with a bit of knee cave. If that is the way you naturally squat and you don’t have a personal problem with it, go ahead. Your body usually moves in a way that is the strongest way for you to do a spesific task. Now note that I said a bit of knee cave, I’m not advocating squatting with your knees together, and personally I feel better with my knees not caving, and so does the majority of people I coach.
Understandable. I squat with my knees pretty far out so I was just curious.
Also just on the whole cueing of knee cave. CWS talks about it really well since his knee’s start out wider than his toes for eccentric then come back in line with his foot on concentric. Just speaks to that attention to detail thing with cueing
Just thinking about that now made me think that lowering into a squat with knees out probably helps with control because of the increased stretch on the adductors
The comfort is probably a huge part I wasn’t really considering, thanks for the response
I think it depends on the amount of knee cave. I see a little bit of caving in a lot of big, strong people when they do max lifts. I see it in Olympic lifters. But what I don’t see is the knees darn near hitting each other in the middle.
@danteism mentioned that the body will move in a way that is strongest for that particular person. This has always confused me. I’ve learned “proper” technique for a lot of things and then I see people with horrible technique do well and stay injury free.
Take running for example. There’s good running form and then there’s what most people actually do. I know what good running form is, and it’s actually quite difficult to learn and master (I haven’t mastered it). I’ve always heard that the body will find the most efficient way to do something. But running violates that rule. If perfect running form is the most efficient and fastest, then why is it so hard?
Just another example in the real world that perfect or ideal “technique” doesn’t fit everyone.
If the idea is that the technique an individual automatically goes to is the most efficient for them, wouldn’t that mean someone with “unfavourable” structure and/or functional patterns would revert to a whatever is most efficient given those deficits. Come to think of it, isn’t that just compensation?
I definitely see your point with runners though. Whenever I read/see/hear about that amount of technique work sprinters go through to get faster, I always wonder if proper Sprint technique is something “locked away” in our DNA or early man just sprinted inefficiently, if not poorly
That’s always been my view on it, but I’ve learned not to cram everyone into the same box. Using the squat as an example, I’m not going to let someone let their knees cave, go over their toes, and their heels come up. That’s atrocious. That might feel natural to them, but it’s far from effective.
Take the same person after some coaching, and now you’ve got them to staying back on their heels/midfoot, their knees don’t go over their toes, but there’s a bit of caving on the concentric. I’m probably not going to continue to worry about that.
“Proper” or “ideal” form is a starting point, but not the only option.
Shouldnt I be aiming to hit the same depth every time though? I suppose it wouldn’t matter if some reps were just under parallel. It would be difficult for me to know though, I just squat to what feels comfortable. Too high and its eh, too low and its eh
i don’t know. for a recreational lifter i think it doesn’t matter as long as the lifter don’t get injured. for a competitive lifter i’d guess there will be a tradeoff in this case between specificity and general strength. but, if general strength is the goal with your front squats then i see no reason not to try and get something extra from the set, if on the other hand you have a competition pending in the near future with the actual event included then be as specific as possible.
i don’t agree. the body will naturally move in a way such that it experiences the least amount of discomfort, thus tissue such as tendons and ligaments will not provide good feedback because we don’t experience discomfort in these zones until the damage has spread to surrounding tissue. thus, proper movement pattern (i.e. movement that doesn’t harm tendons etc.) must be taught and trained.
