Gee Whiz fellers this has been one heck of a thread. Please keep it up guys. This is my attempt not being holier than thou.
Golly Gee, I agree. I just want to thank the Beave and Wally for all of the great advice.
Jim,
I do them off pins as well, but I just went to Lowes the other day and got some 1/4" chain – 10 feet of it (just in case) for $18.00. I’ve yet to try GM suspended from chains, but I’ll keep ya’ll posted. I’m going to start my training tomorrow again, I’ll have my training log online with movies.
Really, this thread just keeps on getting better. There is definitely a lot of information between these 2 threads. Hopefully people are learning a thing or two. I definitely am.
Actually, I meant to ask how high you set the pins for the suspended goodmornings.
Doogie,
That is up to you. Try to get the bar so your near parallel. If your not completely parallel, don’t worry about it. As long as your torching your p-chain.
do any of you use isometrics or isokinetic training (pausing at a sticking point for some seconds and then exploding) and if so, how do you incorporate them to the training routine? Im going to use them on my next training block and see how it goes.
btw, I had a little abdominal strain - is this a common west side thing, should I add any aditional exercise etc.
S-man
Glute,
Your probably talking about concentric training. Suspended good mornings (chains or on pins), Pin press (chains or pins). I take on concentric training is that it has it’s place in your training blocks, but don’t do it all the time. It’s really demanding when the weights get up there.
For your abs … a hurting strain, or soreness? When I started westside, I remember my abs have never been so sore. Hitting them with a lot of weight really woke them up, and I wasn’t used to it. I don’t have that problem anymore. But if it’s a painful strain, might want to get it checked out.
For additional exercises … I would first evaulate your situation first, but if they are simply sore, I would add some light ab work in between workouts. Get your abs caught up, then continue to hit them hard on squat/dl days.
Doogie and others-
Vary your heights for suspended GMs for some variety. Like Landon said, you can really set them anywhere.
Glute-
I have never really used isometrics since training Westside, though I know Dave Tate among others has dabbled with it a bit. I believe it probably has merit for certain people at times, but I’m not sure I’m ready to make it a huge part of my training program. Let us know how it goes, and where you plan to incoporate it.
There really needs to be a seperate forum for Westside…
Question for other Westsiders. Does anyone get bicep pain from their DE bench. I know that I do. I would guess that it is from de-accelerating the bar on the way down. It would seem that some supplemental bicep work may be in order, especially since you often hear about bicep tears in powerlifters. Any thoughts?
Brian,
I haven’t heard anything like that from anyone, but I could see how that could happen. Your bar velocity concentric, and eccentrically is pretty fast, and as your bicep is the first thing to contract in the concentric phase, you might be able to strain it.
You may want to decrease your volume on the DE bench day, and maybe do 5-6 sets instead of 8+ sets. Also, you may want to add some conditioning bicep work in, and once that gets up there, add some good low rep/high weight sets in to strengthen your bicep right up.
The bicep tear is typically from deadlift pulls. To help with this is to increase elbow flexion strength. Hammer curls seem to be winning exercise to remedy this.
What part of your bicep is hurting?
-Landon
It is the middle to lower portion of the bicep. It doesn’t really feel like a strain but an uncomfortable soreness during/after my DE bench. Maybe I should cut back on the volume. Been doing 10 sets. BTW, I didn’t realize most bicep tears were from DLs.
With nearly 600 posts in 2 threads, it seems as if there is quite a bit of interest in Westside. It would seem that there would be enough for a forum of its own, but I don’t know how practical and/or fair that would be.
A Powerlifting Forum might be a better idea, because there are other systems of training that also result in strong people. I just don’t know if it would be fair to do that while neglecting strongman, bodybuilding, martial arts, and other endeavors forum-wise.
A Continual Progress/Training Log Forum would address a lot of these issues, but wouldn’t spark quite the same discussion as a separate Powerlifting Forum, but who knows. I still like the idea of being able to find a mentor and follow their training (and diet). There is a lot that I think we could learn from each other.
And thanks to everybody who has been participating in these threads, and char-dawg for starting this whole thing.
BrianT- Bicep tendon pain is very common when you really begin to concentrate on your bench…I have had bouts of this in my left bicep tendon and basically every good bencher I know has had some bicep tendon tendinitis or pain…I do a few things and it always gets better…1. on bench days get yourself some equibloc horse tropical pain releiver on elitefitness rub it on your whole arm that is bothering you DO THIS 2 MINUTES BEFORE YOUR WARMUP…then have your training partner, wife, son ect take duc tape and tape your arm, not to tight but not to loose right in the middle so you can feel it is tight but not bothering you…***** MAKE SURE WHO EVER HELPS YOU TAPE YOUR ARM DOSENT GET HE EQUIBLOC ON THEM THEN TOUCH SOME ONE OR THEY WILL BURN LIKE NEVER BEFORE “MAKE SURE THEY WASH THEIR HANDS GOOD” I HAVE HAD SOME HORROR STORIES WITH THIS STUFF…Then after your work outs and on the off days when you shower take a cup off ice cubes with you get the water really hot and hold your arm in the hot water for 30 seconds then ice it for a minute then hold it under the hot water again…Last thing do a shit load of lat pulldowns and light hammer curls in your warmup this will help get blood in there and help with pain during your training…Good Luck Big Martin
When you guys are working up in suspended good mornings… do you GM the weight up, squat it down to the pins (or chains)… and go again?
or GM it up and back down, and wait a sec to kill the stretch reflex before going again?
Goldberg – Thanks for the explanations!
Landon – I’ll be interested to hear how your new suspension chain setup works out, and your thoughts on the differences.
Jim
One thing about elbow pain that feels like its in the biceps. It might not be. I thought it was and my ART guy laughed at me and said it was actually from my triceps. He fixed my triceps up and the pain was gone. Might be a referred pain deal. I dunno. I didnt ask.
Most of my suspended good mornings are at nut level. I like to warmup in sets of one. Ill do one rep and lower it with a squat motion. Ill do a down set after this usually with regular good mornings to increase the volume.
BTW: those kettlebells are…nah, just kidding. I got too much respect for Westside…
On the subject of another forum:
Just make it a “Power/Strength” forum and I’ll be happy. That way, ALL sorts of strength/power related issues could be addressed.
And there is a need for a Continual Progress/Training Log forum.
Man, this thread is immense. But with good info through and through.
Concerning the bicep pain-
Good suggestions have been made. This question comes up on Elitefts every now and then, and has been addressed there numerous times. Check out the search engine over there, too.
I personally love my Jack’s Blue Heat (similar to the stuff bigmartin mentioned).
About suspended GMs, again-
Over here we like to work up with 5’s, 3’s, whatever, till we get to singles like usual. When doing multiple reps, we normally GM it up, quickly lower it under control in a GM motion (to avoid most of the eccentric strain), take a second to reset, and then go again…much like what ryno described. When doing our heavy singles we will GM it up, and then a lot of times pretty much just lean over and “dump” it back into the chains pretty damn fast. We never really squat it down to the chains, but again, I don’t think this is a really big deal.
I really need to learn how to use my camera so I can post some videos.
Steve, no shit you do. haha. I’m getting my camera soon. On a fedex truck as we speak. I’ll have something similar to tommy fannon’s online journal, but numbers that are not as impressive.
I’m back. Cancun was hot. Sorry for the last barely legible post, but I was to Guiness Stouted at the time. Forgot to do a little back spacing.
A little thought on the biceps pain issue. So many things can be involved. Dr. Dave examined Goldie and found it to be the triceps. Other culprits can be the supinator, brachialis, or brachioradialis, or a combo of all of these and more. For instance , if the supinator is involved the brachioradialis is usually involved.
I developed a pain such as this back in 88. It went away after buying a new gimmick called the trap bar. When I switched back to conventional deads the pain was gone. This was pre ART times for whatever that’s worth.
My pain was in my left pronated arm and came about only on benching, nothing else.