Getting good at squats/deadlifts with tight hamstrings?

Lothaar

Hi all,
I've got tight hamstrings and dormant glutes. To date, all of my efforts at squatting or deadlifting ended with some sort of lower back pain that caused me to give those lifts up.

I always knew I have tight hamstrings. I discovered I had dormant glutes when I read a recent post (BossArky, I think) about how great 'bird dogs' are as a glute activation exercise. I tried them, and a couple of others, and suddenly I was able to deadlift!

Add to that the fact that a change in personal circumstances has given me an extra few minutes every day to work on flexibility, and I think I can make it happen... finally.

So, my focus for the next six weeks is to nail down squats and deadlifts as part of a total body training programme. I'd appreciate any advice I can get on the below routine. I've tried and failed many times but I now finally have the time to get it right.

Here's the plan:
I'll lift twice (lunch and evening) on Monday and Wednesday and once on Friday (lunch). All three days involve total body training. Mon and Wed are split into upper (lunch) and lower (evening) body sections.

Lunch sessions are exactly 45 mins in total, including warmups. Evening sessions are 30 mins in total.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'll do 20 mins HIIT and a further 15 mins stretching, focusing on my hamstrings and hips.

The routine looks like this:
All exercises must reach 24 reps. So - either 4x6 or 3x8. I'm mixing it up. Exercises that have a / between them are part of a superset or circuit.


Monday Lunch: Chest and back – chin ups/dips; hammer curl/tricep extension/upright row/external rotation

Monday Evening: Legs, abs, and calves – deadlift/split squat/standing calf raise/hanging leg raise

Tuesday: 20 mins HIIT; stretching

Wednesday Lunch: Chest and back – Bench press/Bent over rows; flyes/bent over raise/EZ curl/tate press/side raises

Wednesday Evening: Legs, abs, and calves – stiff-legged deadlift/lunge/seated calf raise/weighted sit-ups

Thursday: 20 mins HIIT; stretching

Friday Lunch: Total Body – Squats/overhead press; incline bench/one-arm rows/mule kicks/side bends.

My goals are to perfect my form, get stronger... and lose a bit of weight (sorting this through my diet and by quitting booze for a while).

Any advice would be much appreciated. I'll gladly repay you with a hamburger on Tuesday.

d'Oracle

I'm not really in any place to advise but....

Erm, when do you rest?

Lothaar

Saturday and Sunday are rest days.

I'm not lifting particularly heavy weights, btw. I can bench press more than I can deadlift or squat. Actually, I can single-leg calf raise more than I squat!

j1974

Lothaar wrote: »

Saturday and Sunday are rest days.

I'm not lifting particularly heavy weights, btw. I can bench press more than I can deadlift or squat. Actually, I can single-leg calf raise more than I squat!

if your benching more than you squat, your in trouble. you must have very slim legs. you should try putting a 40kg barbell on you back and doing step ups on a bench. make sure the bench is so high that when you step up, your knee is now less than level with your hip. then follow with decent walking lunges. stick to high rep squats, 20's once a week also, but it looks like youre over doing it far too much. legs will realy grow if done hard and on their own once a week.

I do

85kg-90kg squats x 15 reps for 2 sets, full squats.

leg press 200kg x 12 reps, for 3 sets

2 sets of walking lunges ( about 20 steps per set) with 18kg Dumbells

3 sets of 65kg stiff leg deadlift x 10 reps

then calves.

and finish by doing standing free squats, as fast as you can, ass to the floor to maximum, one set, usualy 75-100 reps.

excellent for conditioning. if you do cardio then the weight may stay that way or improve slowly. if you cut out your cardio, you can use heavier weight and grow quicker.

once a week!! try it if you like

Lothaar

Thanks for the reply. It all sounds good... but I don't think I explained things well enough!

At present, I am so ridiculously inflexible around the hips/hams that I can't physically get down to parallel. Weirdly, my legs aren't skinny. My quads are fairly muscular. However, I have no @ss whatsoever. I'm guessing that years of compensating for my lack of glute activity in everything I do has given me decent quads... and a bit of a lower back problem.

I'm not trying to grow - if it happens, then cool. I'm losing weight, actually! But I want to perfect my form and get stronger if possible.

ragg

would you consider going to see a trainer that will show you how to fix them issues?

By the sounds of your flexability issues, you are prime to get injured

j1974

Lothaar wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. It all sounds good... but I don't think I explained things well enough!

At present, I am so ridiculously inflexible around the hips/hams that I can't physically get down to parallel. Weirdly, my legs aren't skinny. My quads are fairly muscular. However, I have no @ss whatsoever. I'm guessing that years of compensating for my lack of glute activity in everything I do has given me decent quads... and a bit of a lower back problem.

I'm not trying to grow - if it happens, then cool. I'm losing weight, actually! But I want to perfect my form and get stronger if possible.

oh ok then, you need to get some specific stretches and do some core work. id start with light good mornings, and ten stiff dead lifts. but the key for you is stretch, stretch, stretch. Youll be amazed at what you can get on youtube when it comes to training, even top class physio's regularly post, and top personal trainers. try this, good luck mate.

Transform

do these to activate the glutes and there is another one of my videos on stretching in there also when you look

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLYQzBZZSoc

there are absolutley lots more great glute exercises that i must get around to doing videos on as soooo many people have this issue weak glutes and very tight piriformis muscles

Lothaar

Sweet - thanks for the replies everyone.

Transform, I was doing two separate warmups that amounted to the same thing as that one warmup you posted. Nicely done - you saved me a bit of time!

I have a few questions relating to my first post. Apologies for the amount of questions in one thread - I spent a good bit of time thinking about and researching this over Chrimbo, as I want to make the best use of my available time and get the best possible results.

My questions are:
1. Am I making the best use of time? I can train at lunch every weekday and after work for 30 mins 4 days a week.

2. On the two-a-day workouts, have I split things up well? Any improvements I could make?

3. Am I doing too much? Or at least, am I hitting my CNS too hard over the course of a week? (I figure that I'm not lifting heavy enough to really tax my CNS, but I could be wrong.)

4. Is there anything else I can do to address my tight hamstrings and dormant glutes? Or anything else I can do that will make me better at deadlifting and squatting?

I'm on my second week of the aforeposted programme and doing ok. I deadlifted 70kgs yesterday with (I think) good form. Felt good anyway. I know that's not a lot of weight, but I'm slowly building up. It was 60kgs last week.

Thanks for all your help!

Sangre

What exactly is 'glute activation' meant to do?

Transform

Sangre wrote: »

What exactly is 'glute activation' meant to do?

tell your glutes to wake the feck up and start doing more work instead of the thighs taking all the weight.

Most people from my experience have this issue.

The glutes are much stronger than the quads also so when you get them going it will help all your lifts.

Sangre

Sorry, should have phrased my question better. I understand thats what they're meant to do, I'm just curious how they are 'woken up'.

Should something like bird dogs be done as a warmup or after your squat/deadlift?

kevpants

Sangre wrote: »

Sorry, should have phrased my question better. I understand thats what they're meant to do, I'm just curious how they are 'woken up'.

Should something like bird dogs be done as a warmup or after your squat/deadlift?

Bird dogs are my staple glute activation exercise. Do them as a lower body warmup.

Glute activation is about using the neural pathways to the muscle involved. This is problem, those pathways are often inactive therefore when they are expected to fire in the chain they don't so other muscle have to make up for them, causing an injury, eventually.

For example with me it was my left glute that never fired when deadlifting. So as the weight came up the sequence should have been.

Hamstrings fire - glutes fire - lower back fires - upper back fires.

Mine was:

Hamstrings fire - right glute fires - lower back fires and takes up the slack on the left side - upper back fires.

Guess where I got injured.

So much of getting stronger is actually neural, muscles you don't even know you have come into play if train them.

It's one of the resons compunds are so heavily reccomended, they get everything working as one. Sometimes though you just have little bits that don't work.

Similarly to glutes, peoples scap retraction often needs work.

Transform

totally agree and i just switch the glute exercise from session to session.

Rolling the glutes can help lots also

Sangre

Thanks kev, thats brilliant. Exactly what I was looking for.

I'll start incorporating them on my squat/DL days as a warm-up.

Lothaar

kevpants wrote: »

Similarly to glutes, peoples scap retraction often needs work.

Aha! I was just thinking this yesterday. I tried to do pullups and completely failed. Then I switched to chinups and was able to do a few, finishing on negatives.

It struck me that I never feel my back muscles working on chinups. It's all arms. In the same way that I could never feel my glutes working until I discovered glute activation... how do you activate the back muscles? And is there a similar thing for chest muscles? I often find that it's my arms and shoulders that get tired first.

Transform

Lothaar wrote: »

Aha! I was just thinking this yesterday. I tried to do pullups and completely failed. Then I switched to chinups and was able to do a few, finishing on negatives.

It struck me that I never feel my back muscles working on chinups. It's all arms. In the same way that I could never feel my glutes working until I discovered glute activation... how do you activate the back muscles? And is there a similar thing for chest muscles? I often find that it's my arms and shoulders that get tired first.

scap press ups, band pulls, face pulls etc there is a piece on my blog in injuries etc so have a gander

bealfeirste5

Lothaar wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. It all sounds good... but I don't think I explained things well enough!

At present, I am so ridiculously inflexible around the hips/hams that I can't physically get down to parallel. Weirdly, my legs aren't skinny. My quads are fairly muscular. However, I have no @ss whatsoever. I'm guessing that years of compensating for my lack of glute activity in everything I do has given me decent quads... and a bit of a lower back problem.

I'm not trying to grow - if it happens, then cool. I'm losing weight, actually! But I want to perfect my form and get stronger if possible.

With regards to the inflexible issue, try dancing. It's a great way to just loosen up and of course if youre looking to lose weight, it's probably the most fun way to go about it?