congrats on finishing your dissertation!!! what did you write on? your vids are great… and I like your coaches? commentary along with the vid. nice work and thanks for posting.
nice lifting! i laughed about your wearing vibrams under your oly shoes. i guess you do it because you were gifted the shoes but it is a very interesting idea for me (vibrams are helping me rehab my toes / feet). i might ask one of the guys to try on their shoes - wearing my vibrams this time - and see how that feels.
sorry to hear you can’t do your true love right now.
Might I ask what what they repaired when you had your knee surgery?
I’m heading to the operating table (soon hopefully) myself for ACL reconstruction.
Theperfectdrug- My dissertation was on the relationship between the structure (size) of the hippocampus and behavior in humans. In other words, size matters! The commentary on the videos are definitely a special touch. If you could see the guy it would even make it better. He’s a bearded beast.
Alexus- I also usually just train in Vibrams too! When I decided to take up the O-lifts I was gifted these gigantor shoes. I found that if I wear them over the vibrams, they will actually stay on my feet.
LastStand-I just had some debris cleaned out of the knee via arthroscopic surgery. My patella kept getting caught on a floating piece of cartilage. When this happened I couldn’t bend my knee. It was very painful. Unfortunately the surgeon also informed me that I have no more cartilage on my patella. He said that I would always be in pain and that in about 5 years it would be unbearable and I would need a knee replacement. Today I am pain free and my knees feel better than ever. I can thank Mike Robertson for that. His knee rehab and injury prevention training is AMAZING. I highly suggest checking him out after your ACL surgery. The money spent working with him could save you more pain and surgery down the road!
I’m looking forward to following along.
It took everything in me to get through last night’s workout. Tuesday was so good, it was inevitable that the next day in would SUCK! A few years ago this would have pissed me off. The longer I lift, I’ve realized that it’s all a part of the game. On days like this, it’s best to lower the weights and just give 80% so that you’ll be ready to rock it out the next time around. If you try to push through days like this, it just leaves you more and more spent as the weeks go on. It’s best to just chill out and realize that one workout doesn’t define your overall strength.
That’s my little soap box moment for all of you beginning intermediate lifters! I say beginning intermediate because it’s the group who is most susceptible to trying to push through bad workouts. Newbies usually make gains so easy, that once a beginner becomes intermediate, they freak out that their gains are slowing or stalled, so they convince themselves that they aren’t pushing hard enough. Then they burn out, never to advance to the next level.
So here was my workout:
-A little foam rolling
-Prehab warmup
-Clean warmup with PVC
-45lb bar cleans- I was looping the bar away from my body a bit, but most looked good.
-Went straight up to 90lbs (mental error): Just couldn’t do it. I was so spent. My coach told me to just do the hip thrust and jump from a hang. This part actually looked really good. I was getting the arm pop, which is the important part. I would just drop the wait instead of actually cleaning it. I only did a few sets of doubles.
-Front squats- 3x5:85lbs My hip flexors were SO tight! Every rep hurt so bad, even with stretching in between sets. Luckily I have a massage tonight.
-Box step-ups- 3x6: 25lbs I’m sure this seems ridiculously light, but it is imperative that I control my knee cave and focus on technique here. When I started with Mike, I couldn’t step up on this box without major shooting pain. So I see this as a huge success.
-Ab wheel rollouts- 3x10
That’s all folks. I’m hoping that Saturday will be an excellent training session!!!
I’m feeling simultaneously wonderful and exhausted. I got work done today at the gym. I worked up to a 115 pound clean! It was real “purdy” too.
Here’s what followed after 45 minutes of o-lifting:
Band pull-ups- 3x6
Strict press- 3x6 at 50lbs…My coach corrected my form on these. I was bringing the bar way to low, which was killing my shoulders.
Rope pulls- 3x8 at 42.5 lbs
Kneeling kb push press 3x8 at 8kg
Band pallof presses 3x30 seconds.
Now I must eat!
(has a feeling that she’s also probably bringing the bar too low)
Are your kb push presses done with the kettlebell balanced upright or flopped over?
Good work today!
[quote]ironcross wrote:
(has a feeling that she’s also probably bringing the bar too low)
Are your kb push presses done with the kettlebell balanced upright or flopped over?
Good work today![/quote]
Thanks! I do them with the bell flopped over. I concentrate on keeping a super tight back. I never thought about doing it bell up.
thankyou for your soapbox rant. i found it really very helpful, indeed 
congrats on your clean!
how low is too low on the shoulder presses?
just curious!
-Alexus, I’m glad you found it helpful. It took me getting really injured to learn this, so I have a desire to spare others the grief.
-Betty- For the strict overhead press, he said to the chin. I was going down to my clavicle. To the chin felt much easier on my joints and tendons!
yes, me too!!!
yay…good to know from a reputable guy, that that’s ok to do!
The gym felt like the twilight zone yesterday. There was the obese young lady walking around the track doing alternating arm curls with her trainer following behind her. There was a full grown man attempting to move the paralell dip bars while dipping. Although a fun feet of strength for a keg party, it is not appropriate for a busy gym where space is a commodaty. But my personal favorite was the creepy old man who decided to invade my training partner’s space while she was trying to do a set of really heavy deadlifts.
She was working on the platform and he actually stood on the platform with his face about 12 inches from hers trying to make conversation. Poor girl gave him all the go away cues but she is really just too nice. After she was done, I took my spot on the platform. While he attempted to resume his conversation with her, I decided this was the perfect time to practice my hip technique for the clean.
In other words, starting from a hang, I jumped and dropped the weights instead of doing the full clean. Between the shot gun noise from landing with the oly shoes and the weight hitting the ground, the guy freaked out and physically jumped back. It was priceless. He then looked at me like I was crazy. I smiled and told him to watch out because I was planning on doing it again. He left promptly.
Workout:
Foam rolled
Warm-up
Practiced some oly techniqe stuff. My coach did truly want me to work on dropping the bar. It wasn’t just a tactic to scare old weirdo men. I have a tendency to hold onto the bar, which could cause me to seriously injure my shoulders at heavier weights. I was also practicing “tri-lat tuck”.
-RDL 3x6 @ 200lb
-Split squats @ 20lb dumbells
-Skipped the jacknives due to the busy gym and my training partner already left, so I didn’t have anyone competent to help with the bands.
-7 sets of 20kg kettlebell swings (10 seconds on 50 seconds off).
Not too shabby. The day was okay. Nothing to write home about, but at the end I felt like shit got done!
haha that is awesome! yeah, it is important to learn to drop the bar. i used to have a bad habit of dropping then then catching it once it bounced up in the hang position then lowering it fast in a way that hurt my back 
important to learn to drop it then pat it down safely. i really can’t believe some people… glad you scared him good
that is getting shit done. nice deadlift.
[quote]alexus wrote:
haha that is awesome! yeah, it is important to learn to drop the bar. i used to have a bad habit of dropping then then catching it once it bounced up in the hang position then lowering it fast in a way that hurt my back important to learn to drop it then pat it down safely. i really can’t believe some people… glad you scared him good
that is getting shit done. nice deadlift.[/quote]
Thanks Alexus! I’m very glad I’m not the only one who had to get passed this. I’m learning that it’s not always just the lift that can cause serious injury in this sport!
Checking in to say “hi”. I’ll be glad to follow along and learn from your training.
[quote]sbmart2 wrote:
She was working on the platform and he actually stood on the platform with his face about 12 inches from hers trying to make conversation.
I smiled and told him to watch out because I was planning on doing it again. He left promptly.
[/quote]
Good lord, why do people behave that way? Excellent response from you!
-Glad you came by arachne!
Yesterday’s workout was dedicated to my snatch. This is the second time ever that I did snatches so I was pretty excited. I’m still not sure if I started oly lifting because it’s badass or because I can make middle school jokes.
Anyway, I did a long warm up that included foam rolling.
-Snatch warm-ups: Practiced the stick and drop, then snatches with PVC, finally behind the neck press with bar
-4x2 bar
-1x0 65lb fail
-1x0 65lb fail (I wasn’t getting under the bar on the other ones. I was landing stiff legged)
-Did a few sets at 65 behind the neck
-2x1 65lb PR! (I know this isn’t much and I am capable of doing more, but I’ve decided to relish in all PRs regardless)
-I was pretty tired at this point so I did some snatch hip technique and called it a day on snatch work.
I finished up with some band resisted kettlebell swings. These were fun and a nice change up from regular swings.
congrats on the PR!
of course you are capable of doing much much more.
the humbling thing about Oly Lifting is the number of reps that need to be done at submaximal weights in order to develop consistent technique. still, that would get bloody boring pretty fast if we didn’t get to test our maxes sometimes.
masch posted something to me on my log a while back about how sometimes things seem to go well so trying for maxes and othertimes things turn to shit so time to do triples or something at lower weights to get the consistency back. process really does feel like two steps forwards one step back to me. or more often one step forwards and three steps back lol.
clearly i’ve been doing this for too long because i miss the jokes. just occasionally i think ‘oh my god i actually started a thread titled “please critique my snatch”’. lol.