Huh, so apparently my knees come to my chin.
Oh shi-. When I was recovering from ligament damage in my wrist, I switched to one arm DB Press for a while as I wasn’t comfortable hoisting up the weight on the injured side without the aid of the other. Despite all my other lifts slogging along during rehab, I was hitting PRs I haven’t been able to hit since with the DB Press. I never really thought about it like that but experience rings it 100% true.
Have you ever done a training block with the trap bar? Sounds like it would be perfect for you. Most underrated tool in the gym by a country mile.
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I used to use it alot in the past, but ever since I discovered snatch-grip I’ve been in love with it. It just feels like a more complete lift, blasting the glutes, ham, upper back, and even quads more than any other pulling style for me. With TBDL, I almost felt like I was cheating, and only doing a partial lift and never really getting that sense that any muscles were being stimulated enough. It always felt like a partial squat and zero hinge if that makes sense. A SGDL feels like 75% hinge and 25% squat. A conventional dead felt like 50% hinge, 50% lower back extension until my long ass legs weren’t in the way lol.
It’s funny you call it underrated, because my experience is the opposite. My gym has like 4 hex bars, and it seems like the go-to for all the personal trainers with beginners. And I see so many casual gym goers using primarily TBDL.
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Yeah, a lot of personal trainers will go for it because it’s easier to teach than the straight bar, and people won’t have any mobility issues with it.
Your criticisms seem mostly linked to high handles though. With the low handles you can make it as squatty or as hingey as you desire. I kind of see the high-bar as more comparitive to a below the knee rack pull removing a lot of the stress off the lower back and adding a whole bunch of quad making it really good for power/athlete training. The lack of range of motion isn’t great for your goal of targetting certain muscles for sure.
The low handles are a different beast. You quickly see how cheaty the high handles actually were. I believe a lot of the hate towards it comes from comparing the high-handle movement to movements with larger ranges of motion which is a shame.
This is of course not to say the SGDL is not also a fantastic movement. You know your body, what you enjoy and what you feel the most is always gonna be the best for you. I was just thinking how the trap bar completely fixes the need to get your knees back issue.
For me, it’s a YOUR body thing: barbell bench press kills my shoulders, dumbbells don’t. Also for me: dips produce better chest results than pressing.
My bro science take on this: someone who trained chest using barbell press and added weight consistently would not get as good results as someone who trained chest using weighted dips and added weight consistently.
But people hardly ever do this - I often see people doing bodyweight dips but very seldom see anyone loading up a belt…
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…whereas bench often has the opposite problem. People loading up too many plates and not focusing on rep work with good form.
Dips and bench are obviously both great exercises, and I know lots of people that would mimic your thoughts. Dips comes with it’s own cons like any other movement; some people struggle to get the right amount of ROM, for others it hurts their shoulders just like bench might hurt someone elses, some gyms don’t have a dip station, entry level might be a bit too high for bigger dudes. I could write a similar but different list for bench which is also imperfect for many reasons.
This is why I think a lot of this stuff is just noise to me now. As long as your exercise selection is sensible and it suits you in the ways you want it to it’s gonna get you 90% of the way there whatever you do.
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I’m sixty and running Starting Strength again. I’m not a heavy lifter, but have been at it a while, took a break, and am back. Fucked around with 531 at really low weights and then got a nudge and am back on SS.
Exercise selection is, I think, key. I am only squatting 155 last session, deadlifting 165, benching 135 (but hit 175 on joker sets, YNDTP, I get it) so for me, doing these compound lifts make sense.
In the past, I lifted heavier and I hope to get back to the point that my exercise selection is important.
But, for now, I need to add strength and that means Squats, Deadlifts, BP and OHP.
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I feel like dips are a tricep exercise. But as a taller person I always have to bend my legs to not hit the floor, so it shifts my muscle stress. Weights on the belt definitely provide the counter balance to make it more like a decline press.
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So now everybody is in their living room or office and checking this out now.
There is no ATG for me. Maxed out my ass is still 10in off the ground and the tops of my knees are at the nipples. Technically just even with them, as my knees settle well outside of my shoulders in this position.
I had been meaning to ask if @Brant_Drake 's ankles were around his ears but felt that might be gay.
I swear you and I need to have a podcast where we just sit down for an hour at a pop and talk about cool things we remember reading somewhere.
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I started a game of gay chicken with my buddy and now we’ve been married for 12 years, adopted 2 kids, and run a bed and breakfast in Vermont.
I’m starting to suspect he might actually be gay.
Weighted ring dips fire my chest up big time
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Nawh… i dont see a connection.
I have an idea of “being that which does”. It’s similar to “fake it till you make it” and the notion of a self-fulfilling prophecy, but ultimately it boils down to “In order to be X, you must do the things that X does”. You must BE that which does (what it is you want to accomplish).
If you want to be a lumberjack, you need to go chop down trees. If you want to be a boxer, you need to punch people. You get it.
Where the bro science portion of this comes through is nutrition. I really think this has wheels, based on what I’m seeing from other trainees. Specifically, with the overemphasis on macros/macro goals rather than actual MEAL construction, I see trainees that are eating far more like endurance athletes than dudes interested in actually getting big and strong. “Meals” of nothing but carbs, in the form of breads, oats, bagels, cereal, etc, all in the pursuit of hitting their “carb goal”, and then they’ll chunk out a “meal” here and there of basically a protein shake and some sort of blender monstrosity, most likely because their guts are so full of grain that they don’t have any room for real food.
Consequently, these dudes DON’T look jacked. They, instead, look like your average dude at a half marathon. Which, if you’ve ever been to one or ran one, know that it’s honestly not that impressive. Yeah, the WINNERS of those things can be pretty fit, but the participants, not so much.
“Be that which does” when you eat. If you wanna be jacked, eat like someone who is jacked: protein at EVERY meal, carbs as needed.
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Reeks of Men’s Health as opposed to Flex.
My dad always called Men’s Health “that gay magazine.”
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The need for large doses carbs for performance has been greatly overstated
I feel like we can very much track the emphasis on carbs for gaining to correlate with the introduction of insulin to bodybuilding. When we observe the diets of bodybuilders BEFORE that era, far more fat and far fewer carbs were consumed.
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I would bet that those guys on the cover look better than 90%+ of the guys who post here.