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Does my bum look big in this squat rack?

kevpants

Right, the title.

Well I wanted something different and one of the biggest issues to do with this routine I'm going to start logging is the ever increasing size of my moneymaker. And the subsequent arguments with Mrs Pants about why I have to replace my entire lower body wardrobe.

I've been doing Westside since the start of May as much as I could in Crunch Westmanstown with limited facilities and spotters etc. After joining Total fitness in Castleknock in mid July I've been able to really get down to it.

I've been keeping a log since the start however I have been so happy with things the last few weeks I've decided to share. No one I show my logbook to is very interested, they're more concerned with the smell of sweat eminating from the pages.

There's a whole back catalog but here are my stats (1 rep maxes) as of 16/09/08 where I'll start the log.

Age: 28
Height: 5' 11''
Weight: 100kg
Bench: 132.5kg
Squat: 160kg
Deadlift: 190kg
Turn ons: Long walks on the beach, open log fires....:pac:

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kevpants

COH wrote: »

Damn you and your sumo-friendly hips. I've all but given up on them.... stupid hips :mad:

Really? Do they actually cause you pain? Takes me a long time to get loose enough to get in position but when you hit one right it's just a lightbulb moment of "That's what they're meant to be like!". I've often ground out rep 3 on a set of only to have rep 4 fly off the ground like it was on springs because I nailed the technique.

They're ridiculously easier to recover from, unbelievably so.

COH

kevpants wrote: »

Really? Do they actually cause you pain? Takes me a long time to get loose enough to get in position but when you hit one right it's just a lightbulb moment of "That's what they're meant to be like!". I've often ground out rep 3 on a set of only to have rep 4 fly off the ground like it was on springs because I nailed the technique.

They're ridiculously easier to recover from, unbelievably so.

I could not be more inconsistent with the set up. I tried wide stance low box squatting to parallel and below to open the hips up but even then I couldn't drive my knees out or get hips low enough to avoid some degree of stiff legging. The day I pulled the 220x5 I had squatted 240x3 just before and even then didn't feel great. I failed a couple of 180 pulls only to pull them for speed reps 30seconds later, failed 210 miserably then pulled it for 5reps, toes in, toes out, toes to plates, shins st rings, hips high, hips low... I'd say a different set up feels 'good' every set or even rep.... stupid exercise.

Among other excuses I have insanely tight adductors on both sides having torn them playing American football years ago... no amount of physio, stretching, SMR or band distraction has ever made any degree of inroads into increased flexibility. I know they are a weak link - and I murder them daily, but they still suck, especially on the right side (or the retard side as I have come to know it)

Before I went on holidays last month the box squatting culminated in an aggravated hip capsule... my lower back evidently tried to pick up the slack and then imploded too. It's only this week that everything has felt back to normal. I thought about pushing the sumo again but I find it boring, frustrating at times and painfully slow so I just went back doing some conventional instead.

kevpants

Yeah sounds like a pain in the hole. Hard to figure out what way to deadlift when your body keeps bursting into tears for different reasons. There's only two choices with deadlifts, at least with squats you can be forever tweaking stance and bar position, hand position etc.

If you do re-consider the sumos, start with your feet fairly close together, i.e. a good few inches from the plates, loads if you're using a DL bar. 45 degrees is enough of a turn in the feet as well. Ultra wide, toes out is grand from a theoretical point of view but no one is that supple to start with, especially not beat up auld fellas like us. This way it just turns into an above parralel, wide stance squat with the bar in your hands and I don't find them hard on the hips.

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

kevpants wrote: »

This way it just turns into an above parralel, wide stance squat with the bar in your hands

Finally a legit excuse to train high wide stance squats: deadlift gains!

Maybe that's what Hoff was doing at the Westside Pro Invitational? But he accidentally did it during a squat attempt. On the platform. And the judges had a communal stroke resulting in accidentally hitting the white light.

kevpants

Went to the physio this morning because the left side of my back from my giant rhomboid down is in spasm, I found a knot in my lower back that I initially thought was a freaking tooma, it's nawt a tooma.

Same physion approx 40 yards from my house that looked after my exploding calf muscle. I took her through my extensive lower back history and penchant for lifting large weight with the wrong muscles. She was utterly amazed at me.

Apparently my "core", my abs essentially, are weaker than an old woman. She can't actually believe I can do what I do without herniating every disk in my back. She clearly underestimates the strength of my rhomboid.

I can do all these planks etc but she pointed out I MASSIVELY cheat at all of them and my gigantic back muscles (not lats or any of the nice looking ones though) take over. If you put me in the correct position I fall apart.

All in all I need a massive improvement in the sexiness of my abs.

With the second little bundle of financial woe arriving next week it's probably a good time to take a couple of weeks off squats and pulls and just do core stuff every chance I get along with benching.

kevpants

I found the easiest ever way to log here.

Savage.

kevpants

So here's all my training. Will stick up a vid and an overview later

kevpants

This was the end to my last squat session. The work sets were front squats with 120kg for an attempted 5x5.

The project continues anyway, haven't worn a belt in a long time and I'm now entering a phase of 5x5/sets of 3 ramping up to doing something decent in competition early next year. Can't wait to stick the bar down low, get a belt and some knee wraps on and see if all this high bar and front squat business has done anything.

Continuing to work on my ab strength, in particular the right side of my trunk which due to (or the cause of depending on what you're having yourself) my wonky hips has been overly stretched and weakened.

I can now do a one legged glute bridge on my left leg, impossible a few months back and am banging out one legged planks (left leg raised, squeezing left glute and engaging right side abs) which were also impossible.

The net result of this is that I seem to be able to deadlift conventional style with no ill effect. Even feel my abs burning under the strain at lockout.

Nice to be using muscles I haven't't ever used before.

My 3x8 bench plan is just going to roll on forever. I'm adding weight and adding some size to my chest so that's all I can ask.

Schedule is a bit messed up with regard to training at the moment as you can see by the dates on the blackboard but the goal now is 1 weekend and 1 midweek session. Bench is done in both (or a variation, maybe shoulders some days), one session is squats and one is deadlifts.

kevpants

Got another couple of vids today but I think one of them got eaten by technology.

Lunchtime session and decided to low bar/belt it up for some squats to see how that went.

Knocked out 220 x 4 and 200 x 6, bot sets ending with me in a terrible good morning position. I know why though, I was having trouble getting the bar to find any purchase on my back, it really wanted to roll down and on both sets I ended up in the good morning position in an attempt to get more of me under the bar or it was going to slip off.

I was very conscious of this because I felt very strong, other than the issues controlling the bar it all felt good, I wasn't being forced into that position by anything other than not wanting to drop the bar. May be an upper back mass issue too.

I think I'm going to take a few weeks of 5x5 with the low bar to see if I can't improve on my all time best of 215 5x5. Then take a few weeks of wrapping up my knees for an assault on competition PRs next year.

Hopefully once I sort out my bar position issues I'll manage that easily. I'll throw up one or both of the vids when I can.

kevpants

MMMMMMMMMMMMEGAUPDATE

This will be mostly visual and most of it somewhat pointless and some of it completely pointless but this is a summary of the last few months.

I joined flyefit a few weeks back, mostly because there's one literally next door to my job, they're well equipped and VIS VIRES, Hanley, and possibly COH once he attains full supple leopardness, train there.

For starters here are the blackboards, these dried up once I joined the gym but I'll summarize what's going on there.

I messed up one of them so there's some repitition there and there's a full unphotographed board in the shed too but I'm just going to tail off this sentence...

I suppose the main theme of the last few weeks has been addressing my many flaws, making things difficult for myself in order to stimulate my musculature and also my body.

This meant re-examining my squat after possibly the ugliest set I've ever done, I mentioned it in my previous post but here's the video.

The next one is only to demonstrate, as if the shocking squats above weren't sufficient, just how low I am willing to sink in the interests of long term improvement. It's basically a man setting up for a squat for 8 minutes. I put on flat shoes and was trying to adjust bar placement etc. Like the above this is pretty pathetic but I like to be honest about my training here rather than just make it a list of epic winnings.

9e464024e58870a53f78d1e31e4a13a2ee47121fee215dc5c807708174d46fdd.jpg

Moving on. So as you can see I tried reverting to cons which did help stop me falling forward but there can only be depth or cons, not depth and cons, so they had to go too. I then adopted a "behind the traps hi-bar" approach which accomplished a few key things.

It allowed me to keep a more upright back angle.
It was a nice hybrid between trap crushing weightlifter style squats and low bar
They allowed me to preserve my elbows since they aren't being torqued, the bar is fully supported by my shoulders.
They also allowed me to explore squatting as high as I can, this may sound weird but the majority of my form breakdown comes from my puritanical ultra deep low bar squats which are pointless and smug.
They also highlighted my ankle mobility issues. Hanely planted that seed with some of his videos on the subject, turns out my ankles are absolutely shocking.

Here are a couple of vids, subsequently I've worked up to multiple beltless sets of 3 and 4 with 200kg with this bar placement as well as a few sets of 240kg doubles with belt and knee wraps and the bar up high like this. All I'm looking for here is a good upright torso.

I dunno where the hell this will leave me come the IPOs in April as far as my squat is concerned. I'm going to drop back into low bar for the last 2-3 weeks of squats for heavy singles wearing all the paraphernalia so we'll see then. If it works I need at least two of you to start bitching behind my back about steroid use.

Deadlift and bench wise there has been much success of late. My policy of training them once a week and making them hard to do with deficits and pauses etc is a revolutionary new design that I'm thinking of releasing in my new e-book, I just need to come up with a German themed name for it. Maybe Neural Strengthening and Deficit Adaptation Programming (NSDAP).

Boom goes the dynamite indeed.

PS. Sorry for not editing the videos down, but in my defence you can skip forward by clicking a fucking button

COH

You are going to end up with a very big total this year man ... very big indeed

Sangre

great read as usual

Hanley

That 240x4 beltless is the most impressive thing I've ever seen you do.

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Love that Hanley wanders back to the thread seven days later in sheer admiration.

kevpants

Tonight was my last session before the IPOs on the 5th. Couple of vids below.

Experimented with wrap style on the squat. Think I'll go back to my old way for the comp though. Mother of god the walk out, I just cant walk out heavy weight in wraps. My feet got set up completely wrong. Thankfully the IPOs are monolift. Confident I'd have picked up a double out of a mono. I also didn't descend as quickly as I would have liked, tendon at the bottom of my quads is badly beat up and gives concerning tightness and pain on the way down. I'll need to massage the jaysus out of them for the next week and possibly pop some anti-inflams on the day. Don't want to lose kgs due to a slow descent.

Very happy with the bench, especially since it was straight after the squat. I moved my grip out to "tall man" (I havekids shut up) on the rings and I think I'm stronger.

Now to rest and su su su su suuuuuuuuupercompensate!

Hanley

You're my hero.

Come one 700+!

kevpants

podge57

Jesus, watched it 4 or 5 times and didn't see anything wrong. Your head might have dipped, but it didn't look like the bar ever did.

Was the other red for missing the hooks when you were racking it?

Great squat though, just a shame you won't get credit for it on paper!

COH

kevpants wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG4W0LbIvW0

RidleyRider

COH, that's disturbing!

Pavel66

What makes that particularly heart breaking is that you are the type of guy that if you squatted high and got 3 whites you wouldn't claim it.

I feel sick for you dude

kevpants

Running as follows

The calf I made sh1t of dropping the bar a year or so back is plaguing me slightly. I land on my forefoot when I run meaning my calves and achilles act as shock absorbers. The fact that my left one is gnarled with scar tissue means it generally complains for the first km. It hasn't gone on me yet though so... onwards.

Lifting is continuing as well. Heavy low rep sumos and front squats and then a total bro down for my upper body.

Couple of vids.

This was the day after a fairly hot 10k so I was very happy.

This is my best ever front squat. Was grand. Just setting a benchmark really.

I've signed up for the 40km race below through work. Boss is all into his triathlons so work are covering entry and buying the beer afterwards. 21 of us entered, it's all jokey jokey at the moment but needless to say I will destroy my team mates.

8017506.png?899

kevpants

3 PRs in 24 hrs.

Hybrid is the new raw.

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

kevpants wrote: »

3 PRs in 24 hrs.

Hybrid is the new raw.

Nice!

(It worries me that I'm focusing more on the km/mi PRs than the pull.)

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

This also made me check my PRs. We have almost identical times for 1km/1mi. Your 5km/10km times smash mine though.

kevpants

Pacing is a b1tch. If you settle in to a slower/faster pace than you wanted to run its hard to change it i find.

I must have a crack at a mile time. Apparently theres this 6/6/6 criteria which means youre elite and your facebook page automatically changes to likes instead of friends.

600lb pull, 600lb squat, 6 minute mile.

Belt and knee wraps on all 3

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Yeah, the pacing thing is rough alright (although I always seem to find it possible to slow down...).

I saw the 6/6/6 thing alright... whatever chance I have I the squat and deadlift... LOL on the mile.

Hanley

THe 6 minute mile should be easy enough right?

...relatively speaking like.

oq4v3ht0u76kf2

Relative to building a 600lb squat?

COH

Jesus, that first rep on 250 went up smooth as butter... Fair play, f*ck you, but fair play