[quote]cavalier wrote:
Here’s my procedure for deadlifts, I think of the body tensing from hands to feet. Place hands on bar, then grip hard. Then tense arms (pull up slack), then tense shoulders & traps. Tense back (arch, etc). Tense hips by moving down to “squat” position. Then tense legs and immediately pull. Timing is everything, once I start the process, I can’t stop. If I start hesitating, I’m sure the hips would come back up before the bar moves.
Don’t know if this helps.[/quote]
Wow, how do you remember all that? I can’t even remember what I went upstairs for these days!
If I tried to remember all that, I’d forget what I was supposed to be doing half way through the lift.
My cues are, pull the slack out of the bar and keep the head up. That’s it.[/quote]
Which probably explains why at the meet, even though they have loudspeakers screeching behind me, my memory is of complete silence. No room left to listen.
Really amazes me how people can just walk up to a weight and pick it up. Lifting’s been so difficult for me, I just have to pull every trick I can to get anything up. How can anyone do it with bad form and not tear their spine to pieces?
By the way, Brett, I also have a checklist for the process up to gripping the bar, and another for the lift itself.
Great work. How are you liking the volume? Videotaping my lifts was the best thing I ever did and that is really going to help out with getting your form nailed.
Lots of tips in here now. We’ll videotape some DE work next week (it’s a deload) and see if I have better form with lighter weight.
James, the volume is OK right now. My body isn’t balking at me too much considering I had an a$$ kicker of a leg session Tuesday and went for a PR on DL’s on Tuesday (at the end of DOMS, on 120g of carbs between the two sessions).
There is a “squat setup video” that I’ve seen shared in the forums before:
We can’t see how close your hands are to your shoulders on the bar because of the angle of the video – but in general closer hands means tighter shoulders.
It also looks like your elbows are coming backwards – ideally your elbows would be down. Check out the vid.
[quote]ddot76 wrote:
Ok, here’s the squat vid (as promised) so please be critical.
[/quote]
I switched my hands to be a little wider recently because I felt when I had them close (pinky inside the ring) that my elbows shot back. I know I should try and force them down and felt with my hands a little wider (index on the rings) I did a better job of doing that (obviously not in the vid).
Deadlift form looks good to me. Most people say “set up behind the bar” – but I noticed that as soon as you got the bar off of the ground – the bar moved backwards towards your shins – a noticeable and measurable amount – that’s wasted motion – and probably means you are setting up too far away from the bar. I took stills from your movie – and inserted lines for emphasis to show just how far the weight is moving backwards.
The top image is your “setup” – the point where you positioned your body relative to the bar – and you are starting to take up the slack – but you have not lifted the bar off the ground yet. The bottom image is the moment the bar comes off the ground (at least as closely as I can get doing screen grabs from youtube). I lined the images up using the vertical bars of the cage – i.e., there is no intentional image scaling or distortion on my part.
There is a Mark Rippetoe video that argues for setting up closer to the bar:
That rocked. HARD! I’m five shades of jealous at the moment. I had myself deluded that you and I seemed to have similar strength levels but you just went and blew that all to hell… a##hole!
Nyc’s advice was exactly what helped me control my hyper hips:
walk up to the bar.
stop when the bar is at the middle of the foor.
bend over and grab the bar.
sit down until the shins touch the bar.
set the back.
pull.
For whatever reason that was my “light bulb moment”. That was a good pull. You have significantly bigger lifts in your immediate future. It’s quite cool, actually.
Moving day today so I got my bench session in last night.
Bench + Chest
Bench
**Warm Up
(doubled minis over wrist)
10 x bar
10 x 95
10 x 135
**Working Sets
5 x 175
(no more doubled minis)
3 x 200
1 x 225
Overall bench setup has been MUCH better. I’ve never thought to film my setup but I will next time for some tips/pointers.
A. Doubled-Mini Decline BB
2 x 12 x 135lbs
2 x 10 x 145lbs
This was actually killer for the BB pump (if you like that kind of thing) since the last few reps are very TRI taxing, you can and not fully lockout and keep the tension on the pecs.
B. HS Seated Chest + Machine Flyes
**Went back to the BB days (and specifically OVT (Optimal Volume Training)) for this one
The idea was 6-8 “normal” reps of the press at a good weight (something you’d struggle to get 10 with) and then switch to machine flyes where you’re focusing on tempo for 6 reps. 1 contraction, 1 pause, 6 eccentric. Weight is around 45-55% of what you’re normally do for say 10-12reps.
4 x 6 x 2pps + 4 x 6 x 100
Did shoulder separation/broomstick stretches in between sets.
Chest was nice and swole and full of blood.
Finished with some abz (cable crunches + wheel rollout supersets - 50 reps in total).
Catching up . . . regarding the squat video. I would slow down the reps. You are speed squatting! That will allow you to keep tight and really sit back. Super duper depth! Wow. That’s practically an Oly-depth squat.
The conventional DL pull. Didn’t look too bad to me. Your back didn’t round. You know, there is just tons of advice out there. And it’s best to try it out and see what fits. The funny thing is that I’ve recently stopped obsessing about my setup. I reach down and grip it and rip it. Strangely, I’m pulling much better. The more I obsess, the more problematic DL becomes for me.
[quote]cavalier wrote:
Reading over the OVT article, it looks pretty time consuming. How well has it worked for you?[/quote]
I used it for 10 of the last 11 weeks before my show in '08 and it was good. FYI, the last week I just followed Thib’s ‘Get Shredded in 6 days’ article to a tee.
Dave Tate-esque post. I’m so exhausted from the move this weekend.
I got in to do arms.
Bunch of Curls.
Bunch of Presses.
Not necessarily in that order.
Cheat meal tonight included Chinese food, Reese Peanut Butter cups and Haegan Daz Ice Cream bar.
PS: I didn’t plan on doing cardio today but I ended up loading up a broken shopping cart up with 3 cases of water bottles and pushing it around Costco for 25 minutes. Highly (un)recommended.
