no, i can’t actually do the stretch. i find it takes me about 3 minutes until i can actually get into the position for the stretch. then i can stretch things a teeny bit, but not enough to actually activate my glutes yet. am a little wary of this upsetting my hips… but will try and match it with the glute activation stuff and see if that helps. just the act of trying to do it seems to help me activate my glutes when my leg is back behind midline. will see if that translates into finishing the pull better.
you do do a lot of travelling! buses can be frustrating with their windy routes. working with light weights seems sensible. i’m finding that that is what i need now, too, if i want to train fairly frequently.
Haha, ok so it is supposed to be very very hard. Yeah getting into the position AND getting out of it seems like a lot of work. I was actually sweating from the intensity of it.
Actually I have another question for you Dr. Hip Alexus, I’m not too sure if it was just my imagination, but when I was walking yesterday, I was feeling my hips flexors with my fingers just to see what they were doing. The right one seems to move around a bit more than my left one, feels like a few of the muscles are moving side ways whereas the left ones feel more stable. Any thoughts on that?
my most recent ideas i shamelessly stole from sbmart. except i’ve probably perverted them via misunderstanding…
i don’t know, truth be told. i think there is a tendon or something there that runs down the front… i used to have this problem where it got really painful to walk or to raise my leg up in front. pain in the tendon? joint? i couldn’t tell what was wrong. my best guess is that it was anterior femoral glide where the front of the femur was jamming into the front of the pelvis socket. it seemed to me that stretching my hip flexors made it worse. so… i stopped stretching my hip flexors.
but now i’m thinking that maybe the glute activation is about stabilizing the femur. so maybe if i get the glutes activating properly (e.g., with x band walks etc) then my hip won’t hurt. i’m going to try this… but i don’t know how it will turn out.
maybe (but i’ll admit i’m making things up) is your left one tighter than your right one? do you have better glute activation on the side that isn’t as tight? which side generally feels better to you (not when you are trying to stretch it or whatever, but just with general movement)?
my right hip is the worst. the flexor is much tighter in that one. when i stretch it the femur seems to jam worse in that one. that glute also seems to have trouble working. i have a tendancy to stand up my squats mostly using my left leg.
Yeah I thought the problem was my left hip, turns out my left hip has just been overcompensating for my weak right one. But my left hip flexor is tighter than my right, but if I really focus on my right glute to stabalise and get power from, the left one tends to be a bit looser. Thanks
haha. hips are weird. still don’t know how to figure mine out… they are a lot better than they ever have been. but i was surprised as hell about my inability to do that stretch. part of me still kind of wonders whether they are actually supposed to be able to do that…
[video]Video Moved to Hub[/video]
Ugh, thought I recorded it all, then just when I said I was done… So I went for another one round just to record it. Yes I know, hips rising too soon, although it felt like I was keeping them down. The drop snatch felt really good though earlier on. It seems easier to lift from the crates, than just hanging the bar just below the knee, is it worth hanging it just below the knee or should I continue with the crate??? That smell in the background are my chickpeas cooking.
[quote]minimaltechno wrote:
Hey Ironcross, yeah fish oil helps me a bit but not that much. I’m finding any type of stress doesn’t help at all.[/quote]
I have to admit I take more than the recommended dosage every day and then up it and add in some meals containing fish when it’s getting close to pain time. It’s interesting seeing what’s going on in here regarding the hig flexors. I’ve been told mine are way too tight and responsible for me not extending all the way when I run, but they’ve never resulted in pain.
That smell in the background are my chickpeas cooking.[/quote]
How do you serve them?
[/quote]
With liver and a nice chianti. Ok but seriously if you are not afraid of a bit of oil, after boiling them & some spinach, place them in a terracotta dish with oil, parpirika, cayenne pepper, some sea salt, pepper, chilies, pour enough oil to cover. I can’t remember how long but baked it as long till the spinach is cooked right down (you’ll need loads of spinach) and make as spicy as you like, I love capsicum!
Sounds good! If I buy beans and chickpeas, I buy them canned so I don’t have to worry about soaking and boiling for hours. I tend to keep pulses to a minimum, though, due to the lectins.
that chickpea recipe sounds delicious. i really love chickpeas.
i thought your hips may have risen a bit soon on the last three - but the earlier ones looked really good to me! I think it is worth using the crates rather than trying to hold it in the start position. The start position is meant to be quite tiring.
If you watch Olympic competitors they sort of do a quick dip into the start position just as they initiate the lift. I need a little more time to mentally check that I’m in the position - but I certainly don’t want to try and hang around with the bar in that position. I think trying to do that results in the hips starting higher.
If you posted your vid on the Oly forum Koing might give you some helpful feedback. Others, too. The feedback can be a bit mixed - so take with grains of salt. Especially since you have a coach already. Seriously, though, those early ones in particular were looking really great to me (for what that is worth).
Love the music, too. That is just the kind of music I like for my Oly Lifting zone.
Aw thanks Lexy. Yeah I actually sent Koing a PM, I just don’t feel comfortable starting a new thread with my video, like once I’m done on my log I just remove the vids to keep in my hub. I’m way out of my comfort zone putting it up here on the net. Might watch that slo-mo vid on the oly forum again. The music is my username, Boondogle is the dj. Miss the coaching but also LOVING the time to myself when I workout, and no long bus journey!
Ok so got a bit excited with what to do:
did some asst *chin ups; *ytwl’s, *right wrist stuff
rowing (concentrated on keeping the scap down)
-bulgarian squats 20kg DB (left leg - 3x5; right leg 6x5)
-rows
-good mornings 3x15 (focus on keeping the back & arch tight)
-arnie presses 3x8
-ball taps/plank 3 sets
-5 mins tabata style on bike
Snatching, very very quick session, didn’t feel like I was keeping the bar close enough to me, didn’t have time to record so don’t know. But I know what it should feel like. Was very tired, had to cajole my body into actually squatting, things are a bit sore & stiff.
Went to pool, again tired and stiff, only did some real swimming for 400m. The last couple of lengths I got some inspiration to keep up and beat one of the guys. I’m usually not competitive but I needed something to get me through the last of it. Anyway I’m feeling everything today, couldn’t even run for the bus this morning. But its the good kind of sore.
WORK RANT—I know communication can get a bit garbled, but sometimes it just irks me when people don’t listen to exactly what you are saying and completely miss your actual point. Its usually the same person that does it all the time because they refuse to work on their listening skills.
FOOD TALK—Had a yummy lunch yesterday, very basic, just some broc, shrimp, butter & loads of cayenne pepper. It was simple, good & cheap as the broc & shrimp were on sale. Thought I was going to be good this week but when I came home from the pool there was wine and chocolate in the house. It doesn’t count if I don’t buy it, right?
Wine and chocolates? Sounds good! I’m in a chocolate tasting club and I always have a big smile on my face when a box arrives.
Broccoli and shrimp sounds good. I love broccoli. Actually, I love veggies. Good thing, huh?
Cal, yes good thing we do like veggies, keeps a girl regular too, and keeps MiM happy.
Patch…Alright alright, I’ll get a picture from somewhere, LOL, peer pressure! It’s just that at work the pics are disabled so I don’t even notice. More homework. Speaking of which my diving club wants me to write a short article for the website, yeah sounds nice but I can’t get to it. I’ll procrastinate some more by looking for a picture. Mobility work sounds all nice and everything but it sure is hard work and painful.
the initial plan was to do a new episode every day, but i actually think it will be more productive to spend more days on something when that thing feels particularly problematic. so… i wonder how many months i’ll be stuck on episode 2 for?? i’ve got this weird deep in the hip socket wrenching feeling going on… i remember that feeling from learning to squat. from pushing my knees out in particular. this feels like a same thing all over again but through a slightly different plane of motion. it is a plane i started avoiding because it didn’t seem needed for squats and only seemed to get my hip hurting in bad ways. but i really do think that the x band walk activation stuff is what is needed to balance things out so they won’t hurt in bad ways. and i think i need to be able to externally rotate my hips for oly lifting (like avatar freak dude).
have also discovered that i’m supposed to be able to externally rotate my shoulders. damn. hopefully i can roll these pecs since my boobies have all but disappeared :-/
Ok I thought this might turn into a crappy session, there were more sets but were so bad, was over thinking and stopping mid lift. The 3rd and the last one felt/looked right (well relatively speaking), kept the bar close enought. I was glad I took vid of the crappy ones, I noticed on those that I didn’t align the bar properly with my foot (thanks Lexy for that trajectory vid). I guess in a weird way I had the bar too far out because I was trying not to bang my knees, but gotta trust the knees will move themselves. Also being able to slow down the vid helps, I think my arms might be a bit too stiff still, hence the bar moving forward when it got up to my chest.
Quickly went to crappy gym to do some bulgarians
Did some 20kg extra on right side left, 6 sets counting down
Leg R L R
1st 6 6 5
2nd 5 5 4
3rd 4 4 3
4th 3 3 2
5th 2 2 1
6th 1 1 1
Then went with diving club in pool, I brought my sea fins for extra resistance, and boy are they resistant compared to pool fins. I was having a hard time not bending my right knee though, definitely something going on there.
