Sounds good, you’re lucky you have found a knowledgeable PT where you are who will help you achieve your goals.
@Lift and Eat, absolutely. The thought of a commercial gym personal trainer almost makes me feel ill. It’s one thing to bash them because many of them are dummies (sure, some are great at what they do) but I’ve actually known people who have worked out for a couple of months and decided they were going to get their PT certificate. Maybe that’s a Canada thing where it’s so easy? I’m not sure, but it’s scary that people pay these “trainers” money. Sam is pretty epic though, I wish I could find videos of him on YouTube to share with you guys.
Back and Biceps
Well, yesterday was my first official PT session. I felt great today actually, even though I was dreading some crazy DOMS in my hips… But nope. Today posed a different challenge. Now that I have scheduled training sessions with Sam, what the heck should I be doing on my other days at the gym? I have a feeling this is going to take some getting used to, but since I have a push day and a pull day (tomorrow and the following day respectively) coming up, I decided I’d get some back and biceps in.
I started today off trying to take some principles from Sam. I know my body is super tight. He’s proven it to me over the past few years. He’ll watch me do a movement and knows right away “You need to stretch X. Here’s how”. And the kicker is that he’s always right. I wanted to get my pullups in first in my training, so I tried incorporating band lat stretches in between every set. The cool thing is that since I stick to sets of 6, I was able to do each set super wide with really strict form. From there, I moved onto rowing since that’s a nice big compound movement. While there, I did some hip stretches from yesterday with the bands.
The second half of my workout was all about biceps. I’ve been ramping up bicep volume over the past few weeks, so I figure having half a day to train them probably twice a week isn’t overkill compared to before. I didn’t really know what to do for stretching here, so I just blasted my guns like it was nobody’s business. I still find it funny that my arms are relatively week even though I don’t think they look that small. Maybe I’m wrong.
At the end of my workout I wanted to get a few sets of squats in without Sam’s guidance. I wanted to practice what he showed me yesterday. I only got up to a plate on each side, which sounds ridiculous, but these highbar squats are much different than what I’m used to. My hips feel like they’re going to explode when I do these, so I wanted to practice holding them a bit in the hole too. I followed that up with some core since Sam says we’ll be ruining abs. One of his lifting lessons is that your core is extremely important for compound movements, so as you strengthen your core, you make other movements easier/better.
Super Wide Grip Pullups
9 x 6 @ Bodyweight Band lat stretches in between every set
Overhand Barbell Rows
4 x 6 @ 135 Band hip stretches in between sets
Underhand Barbell Rows
4 x 6 @ 135 “Splits” style hip stretch in between sets
Chest Supported T-Bar Rows (Wide)
1 x 6 @ 45
2 x 6 @ 70
Chest Supported T-Bar Rows (Close)
3 x 6 @ 70
Straight Bar Curls
4 x 6 @ 60
Dumbbell Spider Curls
3 x 6 @ 25
Close-Grip EZ Bar Curls
3 x 6 @ 50 Superset with hammer curls
Hammer Curls
4 x 6 @ 30
Reverse EZ Bar Curls
3 x 6 @ 50
Highbar Squats
2 x 3 @ Bar 5 lbs plate under heel
2 x 3 @ 95 5 lbs plate under heel
5 x 3 @ 135 5 lbs plate under heel
Planks
2 x 1 minute (ish?) @ Bodyweight I wasn’t really tracking
Situps
3 x 10 @ Bodyweight
I think part of the problem, in the UK at least, is that general gym instructors are often treated by some companies like glorified cleaners, the pay is low & combined with unsocial shift hours it makes many want to make the step up to Personal Trainers asap. They see this as a way to earn more, do less shit jobs & set their own hours to a greater degree. So I think many get qualified before they have much actual training experience themselves.
I feel that being a good PT has just as much to do with experience of training as learning about anatomy & how to instruct someone else & that experience only really comes with time. It varies of cause as there are always exceptions, but more time spent under the bar actually doing it yourself I think makes people better trainers.
At least in the UK there is now the register for trainers which requires continual learning to get it renewed each yr, though its far from perfect. Anyway just my take & this is coming from someone who has been in the industry!
Good points. I personally don’t know how hard it is to maintain a PT cert here in Canada (I’ve never gone through it). But again, I’ve known someone closely that’s become a PT after basically not working out at all, which is scary stuff. I’m glad I found someone I’ve seen not as a PT for years become one haha
Personal Training Day 2
Pretty short training session today since I’m rushing to install some flooring in my condo before the weekend, but Sam and I were back at it. Today was about addressing some of my limitations in terms of flexibility in my upper body and my technique when it comes to benching. Lot’s of little takeaway points.
We started off the training by stretching. Obviously. The not so obvious part is that we were stretching my hamstrings and hips for benching. It makes sense if you know how to bench (not a bodybuilder bench) because you need to be able to get your legs tight and planted. If your hips and hamstrings are tight, it’s nearly impossible to get the planting you want with your legs to brace your upper body as you press. Typical hamstring and hip stretches with the bands were hit before we got into the real meat of the training session.
We only got two pressing exercises done today, but again, these training sessions are going to be a lot more about how to lift and how to stretch and not so much about “go lift all the weights”. We widened by grip on bench by a couple of inches. I’m used to benching super super narrow, and as a result, I bring the bar down pretty low on my torso. With my grip out slightly, I could start to bring the bar down closer to my nipple and right around the bottom of my pecs. I was under the impression Sam was suggesting even higher on my torso, which was throwing me off… it took until the last couple of sets to really clue in. We worked up to a 225 double (with him spotting). The wider grip is absolutely going to take some getting used to.
Like Sam promised, we finished up this training session with core work. Core. Core. Core. No bosu ball balancing bullshit… Ab wheels and twists. The good stuff. I have another training session tomorrow, so if my abs don’t hurt by tomorrow night, I’m sure they’ll hurt on Friday.
Personal Training Day 3… Squatting!
I figured we’d finally be getting to a pulling day… but nope! Sam wanted to focus on squatting again. He knows I’m able to squat a decent weight and he knows that I’ve been squatting a decent amount of volume, but he wants to change my squatting form so that I can do it more effectively. He agrees the pulling part should come pretty easily given my build (short as hell and long arms).
Like usual, we started warming up my hips and stretching my legs out. It’s going to be a trend with Sam over these 100+ sessions. From there, we went right into some kettlebell front squats just to practice technique and warm up a bit. After that, it was oly back squatting for sets of 6. I got up to two sets of 225 with a few spots but basically failed on my final rep of each one. It’s incredibly humbling to go from box squatting 315+, 10x10 squatting 185 and then suddenly not even able to hit 6 at 225. That’s just part of the process though.
Sam set up a brutal ab circuit afterward. I confessed my love for one of the girls at the gym to him so now yet another person knows my true feelings <3. Then he set me up to do a squatting and ab circuit facing away from her, and I bet it was just to drive me nuts. Oh well, I’m there to get strong. I can tell already that tomorrow my abs are going to be destroyed from tonight’s session. I’m thinking that I want to try military pressing and deadlifting tomorrow since I haven’t done either of these in a few days now that I’ve been doing personal training.
Deadlifts, Military Press, and Triceps
Tonight was all over the map. I was just trying to pick some compound movements I haven’t done in a while thanks to my personal training with Sam… and then I came up with whatever the heck I did tonight. It ended up being a solid session though with a focus on deadlifts right at the beginning.
I started off by getting my hips and hamstrings stretched out like Sam has been showing me. I figure that I should be leveraging what he’s teaching me on my non PT days so that I can get used to integrating stretching and mobility into my workouts. Once I was limbered up, I started deadlifting. My goal here was to take one of Sam’s lessons and focus on it the whole time: keep your shins vertical. Essentially, when looking at my squat/pull from the side, he wants my shins to be vertical. If you look at my body from the front, you’ll see my knees slightly pushed outside of my feet to open up my hips and allow for this vertical shin position.
With that said, I started with a few deadlifting sets of 135 to focus on this shin position. As I was ramping up weight, I had to focus less on setup time. The reality when deadlifting for me is that if I spend a ton of time on the setup, I’ll never get it off the ground. I need to attack the weight. Thus, the early sets were slow, calculated, and precise and the latter sets were a bit less so. There were a few reps in there where I could tell my shin and back position made for a super easy pull.
After deadlifting, I moved into military press. Another lesson from Sam (before personal training) was to use less of a chest shelf and more of a shoulder shelf. This would ensure I could keep my back and posture upright. I stretched out my shoulders to help with the flexibility and noticed an immediate difference. From there, I ramped with triples until I got to a single at 135. Again, a few reps out of all those sets where the bar just went up extremely easily because I think everything just lined up right.
Towards the end of my workout, I tried doing some abs. Not a chance. I started with the ab wheel and hitting a single set of 8 was the hardest thing I did all night. My abs are fried. That wasn’t happening. I finally finished up with a few sets of high bar squats to work on my technique.
Conventional Deadlifts
4 x 3 @ 135 Band hip/hamstring stretches prior to this
2 x 3 @ 225 Band lat stretches between all sets
2 x 3 @ 275
1 x 3 @ 315
1 x 1 @ 315
1 x 1 @ 335
1 x 1 @ 355
1 x 1 @ 375
Military Press
2 x 3 @ Bar
2 x 3 @ 65
2 x 3 @ 85
2 x 3 @ 105
1 x 3 @ 115
1 x 3 @ 125
2 x 2 @ 135
1 x 1 @ 135
Close Grip Bench
2 x 5 @ 135
2 x 3 @ 155
2 Hand Tricep Cable Pushdowns
1 x 12 @ 47.5
1 x 20 @ 47.5
1 x 12 @ 47.5
Ab Wheel
1 x 8 @ Bodyweight My abs felt like they were about to tear off of my body… so no dice.
Stair Master
10 Minutes @ Medium Pace
High Bar Squats
2 x 3 @ Bar
5 x 3 @ 95 Practicing slowly and without hands for posture
Personal Training Day 4… Pulling.
Haven’t posted the past few days, but I’ve been busy (and actually lifting). I’ll be travelling for work the next couple of days, but hopefully I’ll be able to hit a session on Friday night. I’ll have to see. Tonight was the first pulling session that I did with Sam, and again… It was humbling.
I got to stretch on my own before the training actually started which was a nice change of pace. Now that he’s given me some tools to work with, I can stretch and limber up on my own and now chew into the training time. After I was loosened up, it was time to get into pulling. We started with rack pulls for the first pulling movement to really work on the hip hinge. Lesson learned for me? My 385 conventional deadlift is basically just a hip-less squat. I couldn’t rack pull past 315 and if you’ve followed my logs, you might have seen that I attempted this on my own and had the same problem. When pulling from that height, it feels like I have no mechanical advantage… and it’s really just because I can’t use my legs to drive it off the ground how I’d like to.
Next up was sumo deadlifts, which was a pretty new pulling movement for me. I tried doing these a bit before, but they never quite felt right. We superset these with a TBar row to get my hips and spine in the right position and work on my back. Definitely felt my ass/hips after a few sets of that. We followed that up with some back extensions and I really got to see just how weak my lower back is. It’s actually insane.
Tonight’s pulling session was no different… we finished up with some core movements. By the end of it, my back and hips were so tired and I really got to see just how much I rely on them for certain core movements. Embarrassing. After I wrapped up with Sam, I decided to hit some oly back squats with 135 on the bar and hold it in the hole with no hands. From that position, I tried to work on all my cues like staying upright (to balance the bar), keeping my feet more forward, pushing my knees out, and keeping my head down. I can already tell my glutes are going to be fried tomorrow.
Personal Training… Pressing.
I recently hit a rough patch with work where I was pretty swamped. Between travelling and preparing for a big customer meeting, I’ve been stressing out, losing sleep, and working on stuff I don’t usually have my hands in. I haven’t been slacking on my lifting though (maybe on my nutrition a bit, but it happens). How have things been going? Let’s see…
Tonight was only my second pressing session with my trainer, Sam. We decided we’d get set up to bench tonight in one of the squat racks. Before you freak out about the waste of the perfectly good squat rack, you need to understand that I have funny proportions. I’m a pretty short dude, so on the standard benches, I actually have to round my shoulders forward (breaking my form) in order to unrack the bar, and then I need to try and reset while I have the bar unracked. For pressing tonight, we focuses on sets of four for bench and tried to ramp up to a maximum using that.
I was initially a bit nervous… I mean, I usually only ramp with sets of three (oh no! one rep different!) and if I’m getting really heavy, I taper it down to two and one rep. Tonight we got up near the 225 mark within a couple of sets, and then I was expected to hit four. Talk about a mind fuck… I just recently broke my 225 plateau, so hitting it for three additional reps was going to be ridiculous. Or not, since I did it. Shocker. Next step? Sam tacked 10 more pounds on the bar. I hit that for three reps on my own and got a spot on the fourth rep. If you’re paying attention, that’s two bench press PRs in a row. So I didn’t hit my fourth rep, but Sam figured I had a little bit left. So five pounds more on the bar. Two reps on my own at 240 and 2 reps spotted by Sam. That’s three bench press PRs in a row, and now I don’t even know what my one rep max is.
The rest of the pressing session was some lighter dumbbell work focuses on pressing movements for chest and shoulders and really targeting some flexibility issues. My shoulders don’t have a great range of motion (as I’m learning) so that’s something I’m going to try and focus on outside of the training sessions. After a pile of volume work, it was time to tackle some core.
The DOMS will be strong with this one tomorrow.
Arms, arms, and arms.
Trying not to lose focus on writing these lifting logs. Now that a lot of what I’m doing is corrective work and less focus on hitting certain numbers, the motivation for logging this stuff isn’t there as much. I’ll probably drop tracking sets/reps/weight until I’m back on a program that warrants recording that kind of information. For now, it’s all about stretching, flexibility, and technique. Well, until you get a full on arm assault day like today.
This is the second “arm day” I’ve had since I’ve signed up for personal training. The thought of a whole day dedicated to arms seems ridiculous to me since they’re a relatively small portion of your body. It’s like having a calf day. Okay, not that bad I guess. With training, I find new parts of my body are aching the following days, so that coupled with Sam’s schedule for my lifts make my own sessions a little bit spontaneous. While I’m going through this corrective phase of training, my schedule definitely allows an arm day to fit in.
My goal on an arm day is to get as much volume as I can in an average gym session. So for me, that’s about 45-75 minutes. Best way to do that is to superset all kinds of exercises together, and it feels crazy doing it for arms. Crazy good. I started off by doing some narrow grip bench to blast my triceps, and then I tossed the Fat Gripz onto a straight bar for some bicep action. A few sets in and I was already getting a gnarly pump. From there, spider curls superset with cable rope pulldowns. At this point my arms are feeling great. When I was walking back from the fountain a few times, I felt like I couldn’t fully straighten or bend my arms. Exactly what I want.
I added in a crazy 4 exercise superset. With Fat Gripz, I started with strict dumbbell curls, followed by cable tricep pressdowns, into dumbbell hammer curls, and then finished off with overhead rope extensions. Three rounds of that and my arms just felt like blocks of meat that wouldn’t move. Of course, that wasn’t enough forearm work for my liking, so I finished off my assault on my arms with some false grip reverse curls superset with dumbbell preacher curls. There. Now my sleeves are stretched.
Trying to take some lessons from Sam, I finished off by getting some core work in. I’m pretty sure I’m squatting with him tomorrow, so I didn’t want to kill my core. Just wanted to hit them a bit. I did a few rounds of planks and the ab wheel, and then got some hip stretches in since my hips are the weakest thing to hit the face of the Earth.
Personal Training… Legs.
Another personal training leg day with Sam. I’m starting to look forward to these days and dread them at the same time. It’s hard to take so many steps back in order to try and correct things, but I know it’ll be worth it in the long run. But just when you think you’re getting better, you take a swift kick to the hip. Figuratively. But it sure feels like literally.
I was getting “warmed up” before Sam was finished up with his previous client. I say “warmed up” because tonight I learned the difference between warming up and stretching. I had my hamstrings and hips pretty loose and got some foam rolling for my lower back. Once we got into squatting (body weight for form, and then kettle bells to work on posture) I could already tell something was starting to be a bit off. The funny thing is that we never really go heavy on these things. I mean, I get up to 45 lbs per kettle bell and front squat that, but I’ve been able to hit singles at 205. This isn’t heavy, but it absolutely fries my system.
By the time we got into lunges, that’s where stuff started to go downhill pretty quick. I could feel a tightness in my right hip and between sets I’d try opening up my hips a bit more to see if I could get rid of the tightness. But that wasn’t helping at all. In reality, it was probably making things a bit worse. By the time I had some water breaks near the end of the session, I was already favouring my right hip when I was walking. There’s nothing like pulling your hip doing some 25 pound lunges…
I’ll be travelling for work tomorrow, so I’ll be missing at least tomorrow and I imagine the following day for training. Kind of sucks, but that’s just how it is. I’ll be sure to make up for it when I’m back. Might be a good opportunity to let my hip rest up.
Chest and Biceps
The past couple of days I was travelling for work, so I didn’t get time to step into a gym. Again, I’m in the gym basically every day, so when these types of things come up, I don’t stress too much about not making it into a gym. No big deal. Tonight I wanted to crush some chest and get some sets of biceps in, but it ended up being a complete forearm and biceps annihilation.
Taking a lesson from Sam, I warmed up my hips before benching today. Because I pulled my hip pretty bad last time warming up cold, I tried getting my legs moving a bit more and going less crazy on the stretches. From there, I took another lesson and benched from the squat rack. I feel like a turd doing it, but the fact that I can unrack the bar without rolling my shoulders and losing my setup is awesome. I ended up getting to a few sets of triples at around 205 but didn’t go any heavier.
Sounds funny, but using a different bench to press from actually resulted in a big confidence drop despite being in a squat rack. After some triples, I dropped down to 135 and blasted a few sets of 10 and supersetted that with some fat gripz straight bar curls. And that’s where biceps and forearms took over.
A buddy was at the gym nearby and saw that I had my fat gripz out. He was really interested in trying them out and always does insane amounts of volume for biceps. I mean, this guy curls in the squat rack, but he curls more than I row. I ain’t even mad. I figured this was a great time to hop on the way-too-much-biceps-volume bandwagon and totally fry my biceps with him and another friend at the gym. We started curling the bar with fat gripz and then worked up to a comfortable working weight. Once we got there, we decided we’d start doing drop sets of hammer curls while waiting for our turn in the rack. Then we started doing drop sets of squat rack curls with the fat gripz still on. My biceps were so mangled by that point and my hands could barely open or close from the fat gripz.
That was an epic pump, but it sort of derailed from my chest workout. I finished up with some dumbbell presses just to get a little bit more chest action in. My biceps were so tight by that point that it was actually making some light dumbbell chest presses difficult.
Full Body Workout
This weekend was going to be a little bit of a mess for me since I was a volunteer at a local university event that ran literally around the clock all weekend. I had talked to my trainer Sam, and he said we’d be doing a full body workout on Saturday. This meant that my Friday workout kind of got turned into a full body workout leading into it… But it turns out Saturday we just did legs. Because I’ll be pressing tomorrow with him, I kind of got stuck with another full body workout today. Woops!
Full body workouts are a bit of an unusual thing for me. I’m used to splitting stuff up into a body part or two, and picking a couple of primary movements to focus on for the session. For example, if I were having a leg day I might focus on front and back squats, or maybe just on my deadlifting. If I were having a chest day, bench press would be my major lift. If I were blasting shoulders and triceps together, I might focus on military press first. When it comes to a full body workout for me, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing, but I do have my own strategy for getting it done.
Friday before my supposed full body workout with Sam, I ended up trying to tackle military press and some rack pulls. These were my primary movements for the session. I kind of turned it into a pulling session with shoulders as a secondary focus. I got some pullups in there too since more of those can never hurt. I felt like I had hit a bunch of various muscle groups but none of them hard enough to exhaust me for the next day.
With Sam, I quickly found out that I wasn’t doing a full body workout anymore. The first thing he told me is that we were going to be testing my four rep max for the back squat. That’s not so full body to me! Anyway, I got warmed up and stretched out. My hips were back to feeling normal which was a great sign. While ramping, I ended up dumping the bar with 230 on it on my third rep… which I was extremely embarrassed about. I got pinned 2/3 of the way up the rep, so Sam didn’t even attempt to help me since we both thought I’d get through it. Butttt nope. I dumped it like an idiot. I tried it again right after and crushed it. I ended up hitting two sets in a row at 250 for four reps, but any more than that and I was probably going to get pinned again. This was awesome progress for me, and I was really happy to see 250 get hit in my new squatting stance.
Today I went in thinking “arms”. I wasn’t totally planning on a full body workout. I was assuming I was going to be doing a pulling session tomorrow, but when I saw Sam at the gym he let me know I’d be pressing. I dropped triceps almost completely from the workout (aside from a few sets) so that they wouldn’t be gunned for when tomorrow came around. Hard to press without any triceps. So this workout turned into a mash of things. I was pretty set on hitting biceps, so I decided I’d do another mostly pulling session since my legs were still fried from working with Sam. I made sure that I got my rowing exercises in before going crazy with bicep work. Afterwards I hit some big dropsets with the fat gripz and then rolled out my abs with some planks mixed in. I finished off the whole workout trying to get some squatting technique in and really focused on hitting my glutes at the top of the range of motion.
Bench and Squats
Thought I’d open this post up with a picture of Kai Greene aka Mr. Getting It Done. Another year with no win for Kai at the Olympia, but hey… He’s got the best attitude around and he’s freaskishly built. Definitely my Man Crush Monday (according to Internet standards). Tonight with Sam was a squat and bench session, despite me telling him that my legs were still torched from the weekend. Glad I listened to him.
Started off the session by getting all stretched up prior to meeting with Sam. Typical band stretches and got limbered up. First mission put forth by Sam was to set a squat PR. Simple, right? My legs were so sore I could barely bend down to pick anything up… But oh well. 135 was easy, 185 felt good (but noticed my knees start to tweak at the bottom), 230 was tricky but manageable, and 250 was even harder but I powered through it. 270 is where things got scary, but I took Sam’s advice and didn’t hesitate as much between my first and second rep. Totally nailed it for a new oly squat PR.
Next was benching. This is what I was hoping to get done today considering the discomfort I had in my legs prior to the session. Ramped up to a solid set of 240, which I was really proud to hit, and then back down to 185. 185 on the way back down felt super light. Like 95 lbs light. I’m not used to having that experience when I bench. The difference was that I was hitting it for sets of 10, so somewhere around the 5 rep mark is became impossibly hard… But before that it was insanely easy. Go figure. Failed on my second set of 10 on the final rep.
Moved into some accessory work like kettle bell front squats, GHRs, and some core to wrap it all up. It felt like a really solid workout, but after core, I felt gassed. Can’t wait to see how tomorrow goes…
Hey man,
Have been having a good ready through this and dam it looks good. Keep up the good work!
One question is all these work outs in lbs? Looking at the size of your legs I would have thought you could smash 270lbs?
@gavsterry Thanks for joining in. All the lifts are in lbs, yeah. My bodyweight hovers around 155-160 and I’m an outrageously tall 5’ 4". Now that I’ve switched to a highbar squat (which I have never done in my entire life) and started training with a guy who does strictly Olympic style lifting, all of my lifts are way way way down. I’m resetting myself to get my technique improved and work through any flexibility issues I have. And I have a ton. So I used to free squat 270+ for a triple comfortably and box squat 315-350 neighbourhood. Highbar squat is a different beast, but once I strengthen and loosen up my hips, I’m pretty confident I’ll be smashing my old records.
TL;DR: I used to think I was somewhat strong, but now in order to master my technique I’m back to being a pussy.
Squat and Pull
The week has been flying by for me, and even though I’m not necessarily posting very single night this week, I’m absolutely in the gym every single night. Tonight’s training session snuck up on me since I thought I was converted over to training on Saturdays instead. No worries though since Sam and I still got some leg training in. And when it’s time to train legs, it’s time to squat.
I got my usual pre-training warmup and stretching in. I’m trying to balance out the warming up with stretching now instead of just stretching while cold. It’s been working a bit better the past couple of sessions, in my opinion. We didn’t wait too long before getting right into it. We ramped pretty fast on highbar squats and jumped from 235 to 275.
The goal was to hit a double, but I failed pretty fast. The really cool thing was that I failed and still felt like I was 100% stable. It wasn’t like my legs and body were flailing around and the bar dumped or anything crazy like that. We pulled back a bit and I nailed 2 reps at 265… and then we decided I should attempt 275 again. I nailed the first one and then hit the rack pins on the second rep and then shortly after failed to drive the bar back up.
The interesting part about those few squatting sets is that my legs never felt like crumbling or flopping around. They always felt really tight and engages. My torso was the same way: tight and engaged. Failure was really just my inability to drive out of the whole with enough power, so dumping the bar was as easy as slowly easing myself back into the hole, and rolling it off.
I rarely ever fail when I work out, and almost never when I work out alone. It’s a good lesson for me to be failing like this. It proves that I can be pushing myself more and that nothing bad resulted from it. There’s nothing wrong with failing on a rep… There’s something wrong with not pushing yourself to get better. Anyway, I followed all of that up with 4x4 of 225-235 with my final set being the best only because I wasn’t wasting time between reps.
After the squatting session, Sam got me rack pulling and doing front squats with the kettle bells. Some solid supersets with basically no break in between. The weight was light but it had me out of breath pretty quick. The rack pulls actually felt much more natural with the technique Sam has me using. The workout was wrapped up with some weighted planks that destroyed my abs. Who knew squats and planks could bring so much pain to your abs…
Nice one bud,
Wasn’t trying to pick holes or anything mind. Just curious. Has been a good read and will follow closely. I love squatting but have somewhat lost my form massively lately. Along with any motivation I had. I need to do another programme, but I want to focus on the main lifts. Bench, Squat and deadlift. Anything else is side work.
Do you use any lifting shoes for squats?
@gavsterry Ahhh, sorry I cam across as defensive. I didn’t assume you were picking holes, just wanted to explain the back story as much as possible. Squatting is fucking awesome, but yeah, I was trying to hit so much volume that I ended up training a less than optimal squat pattern into my habits. Now it’s time to undo all of it, but that’s what ya gotta do if you’re in it for the long haul.
As for shoes, I only started squatting in shoes recently. For the last couple of years I only squatted in socks. For personal training at goodlife, you need to have shoes. I just bought a pair of high-top chuck taylors since they’re super flat and a pair of reebok crossfit shoes. I only bought two pairs because the reeboks were like 150 and there was a buy-one-get-second-half-off deal with a bug in the software at the store, so I got the expensive ones for half the price. I still don’t like it as much as socks though. I might invest in some solid olympic squatting shoes, but not at this point.
Thanks for following along. Knowing people are paying attention is motivating haha
Squats and Biceps
Yeah, we squatted yesterday. Yeah, I squatted again tonight. What’s it to ya? Gotta hit that volume with perfect form to train that pattern in right. And since it’s Friday, why not absolutely dust these guns? Nothing like some bicep abuse on a Friday night after squatting your brains out.
Started off the session getting some hip stretches in. This was nothing crazy, just some medium tension band hip stretches to get things opened up a bit. I decided I’d get a few pullups in tonight since I hadn’t done any in a few days. This was a pretty solid warmup loosening my upper back and getting some blood flowing. But then it was squat time. I got setup in a squat rack and just did body squats until I could hit the depth I wanted with the posture I was aiming for. The one thing that made a huge difference tonight was stretching my calves out to get some ankle mobility. Absolutely absurd difference in my ability to hit depth. I’ll keep that in mind.
Once I was warmed up, it was time to start squatting some shit. I wanted to get a bunch of volume in and really work on my technique without Sam there to call it all out for me. I wanted to observe and feel when I was doing things wrong. I stuck to 135 the whole way through so I could shift the bar around as necessary without having to worry about getting crushed. Cranked out 8 sets of 10 at that weight which was awesome. I was able to keep the bar up high on my shoulders, force my stomach out and hold it, push wide with my knees on the way down, and drive through my heels on the way up on every set and every rep. Sam would have been proud. I was supersetting all of that with straight bar curls with Fat Gripz tossed on the bar.
After high bar squats, I tried getting some front squats in. I really want to work on my wrist and arm positioning. If I stretch out my shoulders, I have no problem getting a solid shoulder shelf now. I’m still a bit nervous about my hand and wrist placement though, so I stuck to pretty low weight. Again, I was able to drive my knees out really well on every single rep and keep great posture.
I finished up the workout my blasting my biceps. I did some hammer curls with fat grips supersetted with straight bar spider curls. My biceps were feeling pretty good from the first straight bar exercised before this, but this got the pump in my biceps to another level. Not to mention, I started to get a solid forearm pump going to. Gotta love that. From there, it was an assortment of dumbbell curl type exercises mixing and matching the Fat Gripz to fry everything else in my arms. Biceps successfully blasted.