Put your feet little further back. You can do it cos I see you put them further back during your warm up. Might help if you keep tension/leg drive/ pushing yourself up the bench during the set up. I think of it like having leg drive on at 20-30% the whole time.
Upper Back Positioning & Breathing
At your lower back you are getting a good arch with good height but as we move up further you seem to flatten out a bit by the time you get to your chest. So we’ll need to improve your upper back positioning.
Some thoracic mobility work might help you out if you can be fucked but is optional. What’s not optional is depressing and retracting your scapula as much as possible to get your chest as high as possible and maintaining that position throughout the lift. Retracting/Depressing is a long ways from retracting/depressing as much as possible and you should be able to feel quite a difference.
If you aren’t already you should also learn to breath properly for bench (different to squats or deads). This is as important as any other technical point and should be performed deliberately and consistently every time you bench. Pretty much breath into your chest/upper chest ( as opposed to your belly with squats) to pop up your chest and hold your breath/maintain tension the whole set (rebreath/reset for long sets).
Next time we’ll look at the unrack.e.g. unracking with purpose, unracking with hips off the bench and using your lats to pull the bar out and maintain shoulder positioning.
Nevermind lol impulse to buy the A7 shirt passed and bands work on my bench except it grips the skin on my neck and upper back too much and chafes them lol
100+ … Wow I thought their distribution was pretty good. You’re probably just one of the unlucky few in such a place
Today’s workout:
Squat:
6x3 160kg
First set flew up like it was 60kg, Last set was like a rpe 10 Haha.
the difrence 5 sets can make.
Bench:
Nothing, just practising form atm. When i get that down im gonna start adding weight,
Also giving the elbow some rest.
Accessories:
Barbell row 3x10
Wrist curls (some stupid bodybuilding shit this is.)
I read somewhere this helps with the elbow pain, so i decided to do 'em,
Fuck does it feel good. Gonna start adding these at the end of my workouts.
Squat: 145kg 4x5
Little fatigued from yesterdays, could feel it in the hammies, Still moved fairly easy. Last 2 reps on the last set where a bit sketchy depth wise.
Bench: #lowerbodyonlycrew
Barbell rows: Fuck, i love these. Gonna keep these and slowly increase weight, I find my back is my lacking weakness in all 3 lifts.
One arm dumbell press
Have to do some sort of shoulder work, this feels allright on the elbow, and i can still go somewhat heavy.
Forearm curls. THIS SHIT HELPS SO MUCH.
If you’re experiencing some elbow pain, do these!
Lots of things are going right even at a glance cos we can see a nice near straight bar path vertically at least on the first rep. You’ll be able to feel this under the rep as a smooth concentric without a hard sticking point. So more reps like the first one lel.
On the second and third reps you lose the bar slightly forwards relative to dat sexy vertical bar path. I think whats happening is your hip shoots up a bit faster out the hole than everything else (so not really an issue with back strength). It’s not bad by any means but it makes your squat much less efficient and you just have to compare the first rep to the others to understand.
Couple of ways I’d address this (if you ask other peeps you might get different answers but id listen to my advice lel).
Some people like to cue to actively resist the tendency to pop the hips back and up or to drive their back up into the bar out the hole. Honestly I don’t think this approach is best in this case because it may change up your squat technique (which seems to be working well and look sexy when you pull it off). You can try this if you wish but we definitely don’t want you turning into an olympic lifting looking squat style.
So what I’m gonna recommend is QUADS. More. More volume. More muscle. More work. Keep going forward with building your squat as you have been but work on fixing this minor error as you go. How you go about building up your quads will depend on your program and where/how you can fit it in. (e.g. leg press gets in quad work without taxing your lower back or whole body relative to squat variations)
2nd thing I’ma mention is movement of your shoulder girdle when you take your air in. Boris Sheiko calls it out everytime he sees it at a seminar and its a pet peeve of mine but it seems so prevalent about the place that I’m pretty sure not everyone sees it as an error and if they do its a minor error. I’ll say it here that if this is the way that works for you then just ignore what I write below and do whatever the fuck you wanna do.
So movement of the shoulder girdle straight up is useless as fuck. At best it does fuck all for you. It does have a chance of messing up your set up if the bar position or your back position shifts.
Taking your air does not mean filling your lungs to maximum capacity. I can’t recall off the top of my head but I read somewhere that bracing at 70ish % capacity is best (dont quote me lel). Anyways the point is a maximally huge inspiration is not what you should be doing. I like a few short sucks of air but do whatever works for you.
Now we have how much air to take we have to remind ourselves of where it’s meant to go. I think you know to breath into your belly… so why dafuq is your upper torso/chest/back inflating so much that the bar bounces around. So…
edit Google “Proper Breathing Mechanics for Bracing Robb Wolf if you want more explanation”
Today’s workout
Squat 140kg 4x6
Everything was feeling, just off. It moved well, but form was just a little off, Movement and positioning was JUST off. Sucks.
Bench:
Still not really benching…
Rows 3x10
Bicep curls and wrist curls. THIS helps allot. doing these makes it go from like a 1/10 of feeling good, to a 8/10 of feeling good.
Still rehabing the elbow stuff. Physiotherapist gave me no advice what so ever. She told me to just “stop lifting till its over” So not going to that place again.
