I've started with benching twice since starting the program. Both times the squat rack was used in a way that didn't make it managable to work in. (Using a bench in the squat rack and totally different loads). So it was either to wait for the one power rack in my gym or start with bench.

I decided to start benching and add an extra warm-up set with low weight. Worked fine, but I realized I had to be more careful, because of the smaller overall warm-up.

I will stick to chinups when my bar arrives. Until then (3-5 business days, so probably only this friday's workout) I will do those parallel bars on the "assisted pull-up machine..."

Haven't updated in a long time, so here it goes:

Wed 10th Dec 08:

Squat: 3 sets 80kg
Bench: 2 sets 50kg (5/2) 1 set 47.5kgn (4 reps) The jump was too big I guess...
Deadlift: 1 set 75 kg

Thu 11th Dec 08
Cardio: Running 26 minutes (outside)


Had a cold over the weekend and didn't go to the gym, felt bad enough going to work...

Wed 17th Dec
Decided to take it a little more slowly because of the one week break.

Squat: 3 sets 75kg
Bench: 3 sets 45kg Both felt okay
Deadlift: 1 set 75 kg Didn't lower the weight here, because I do them only once a week anyway...

Fri 19th Dec
Squat: 3 sets 80kg Went pretty well. I checked out some vids over the weekend. I guess I wasn't getting enought hip-drive on those. I will still go for another 5kg jump today.
OHP: 3 sets 32.5 kg (5/5/2) Should have stuck with 30, as I hadn't done these for ten days. Will do 32.5 kg next time. They were really very slow. While I was doing them there was a guy behind me deadlifting 200kg(450lbs) and he finished 3 reps for one of mine. Felt a little awkward.
Cardio: 26 minutes treadmill (usual speed)

At home: jumping chin-ups to parallel... (10,x,x) (10,x,x) (10,x,x) (see above for explanation)

Okay, now I am off to the gym for todays workout...

BUMP

Okay, this didn't go as well as planned.

I had been able to raise my DL and Squat into triple digits and my bench was aroung 55kg, press must have been aroung 40kg. Then I stopped SS in march and only went running outside. I was basically only able to keep my weight and after having problems to find the time when my wife was 8 months pregnant and not doing any workouts in the 10 weeks after my daughter was born, I gained 10lbs and am back where I started (almost).

So two weeks ago I rejoined the gym and do my second try at SS. I am again doing the Novice Program thing from the Wiki, which only has deadlifts on mondays and substitutes PCs with chinups.
It's been going pretty great. My weight hasn't changed and I still eat like ****, due to stress (blabla, I know).

My starting weights were:
Squat: 55kg
DL: 75kg
Bench: 42.5kg
Press: 27.5

Todays workout:
Squat: 85kg (any comments on my form?)
Press: 32.5kg
Chinups: 3 x 3 jumping chinups I wasn't able to complete

So being a fatass makes for a great increase in squat weight, but really bad Chinups.

On squats your bar positioning and overall upper back stability look very good. I watched the vids a couple times and your depth looks fine on most reps. There's a tendency for the weight to move forward at the bottom of your reps. I'd recommend trying to push your butt backwards a little more in the squats. This will probably slow your decent and will help you keep hamstring tension, which should help stop the weight from drifting forward at the bottom.

Overall though there's nothing really wrong with them, just try to think butt back, slower decent, and remember to push off the ground through your heels.

DFII is right.

I would suggest, as always, to try squatting to a box to work on sitting back more and staying tight in the hole.

So this workout (Monday 23 Nov)

Squat: 90kg
Was a little tricky, because I tried to focus on drawing up the hips a little further back, but neglected my upper body, which made it come up slower. So I swayed forward alittle and it was difficult to stay on the back part of my feet. Managed better on the other two sets (still tough), so I start adding only 2.5kg. Oh, and I will start those box squats on my off days. I guess I will just do them on my couch.

Bench: 50kg
First set went nice, but the manager of the gym tried to talk me into putting more weight on them or doing more than 5 reps. A little annoying, so I didn't take as much rest time as I would have wanted to and the last two sets were quiet hard.


Chinups: The usual pahtetic jumping ones...
I can still see progress, so I will go on with the jumping...

It kind of sucks because it is a machine, but you could try this. Just use pull up or chin up grip whenever it's called for in the program and increase weight in the typical SS fashion until your butt starts coming off the seat.

Nah, I won't use a lat pulldown. I've tried an assisted pull-up machine, but the grip variations on that weren't great, so I stopped. I realise I have a long way to go on my chinups and may look ******ed doing them at 105kg (250lbs+), but I can see progress there, so I will do it the hard way.

I am however sometimes a little awkward around people in the gym I know, as I am a high-school teacher in my town of 30000. So when a student or someone else I know is in the gym I usually go home and do them here (bought a chinup bar for this occasion, but stopped doing them, but I stopped doing them when I didn't do SS over the summer).

Missed yesterdays workout, but did it today.
Squat: 92,5kg
Press: 35kg
Deadlift: 86kg

Went okay, though the Squats were pretty hard and I wasn't able to focus too much on form. I guess I will have to tape myself again to see if form has changed...

I won't be able to make my workout on Saturday. I guess I will just do the chinups on Friday (after 30minutes of running) and do Squat and bench on Sunday morning. After that I will resume my regular Monday workout, but I just won't squat heavy, but go for 80kg workset on Monday. I guess that should let me recover enough.

if the squats are too hard to focus on form, might be worth dropping the weight a bit next time.

Friday workout on Sunday:

Squat: 95kg
Bench: 52.5kg
Chinups: The usual. But there is progress.

Squats felt much better today. But during the third set I noticed that I was only moving my hip upward and didn't initiate a forward movement for the last part of the movement. I guess that was due to the slow speed. Will focus on my hips during the whole movement next time.

I will take my mobile to the gym for one of the two next workouts to make another video...

This week:
Tuesday:
Squat: 97.5kg I ate some fastfood two hours before the workout and had to fart at the bottom of the squat. So it was very hard to focus on form and my knees went too far forward in these, because I didn't have to fart when my butt wasn't sticking out that much. (mental note to self: don't eat anything that has "chili" in its name before squatting).
Press: 37.5kg Las rep on third set felt really difficult, but I had moved to the olympic bar for this, as I couldn't find the small plates for the smaller bar. Will move back to that (maybe there is a small difference in weight, I don't know).
Chinpus: Getting better, but still only jumping.

Thursday:
Squat: 100kg. Finally triple digits. Felt really great, but looking at the video I 've made the form worse by trying to stick my butt out more. My torso is getting more forward and the forward movement of the bar is even more noticeable. I guess I should focus on keeping my chest up. Here is a backview of my third set. Any thought on width and knees? ( I have a problem uploading this, will do that tomorrow, same for a deadlift video).
Bench: 55kg Felt good.
Deadlift: 90kg Okay too. I think I will stop the modified program I have been doing and do SS by the book. I will do deadlifts every other workout and I guess I will finally try powercleans after finding a good video in the milesdyson log.

This is a video of my squat from the back.

Deadlift.

Any comments?

you posted the same video twice. to me it looks like you are bending too far forward, and it looks like you are going really really fast on the way down. i'm no expert though so take this with a grain of salt - i will defer to others who know more.

edit: the way i learned to squat, you go down slow and controlled and explode up. don't "fall" down and then stand up.

lol, I'm too stupid to copy and paste.

This is the deadlift.

I've heard the comment on speed before. I just feel comfortable doing it this way, but I have tried to focus on speed during my warm-ups...

I agree with bending too far forward. That is what I am trying to work on the next sessions.

i think the main thing with speed is to be sure you aren't going so fast on the way down that you have to catch a falling weight at the bottom before squatting up

yes, slow down on the descent. and really think of keeping the back locked in extension so you stop good morning-ing on the way up. stance width, knees, and grip all look good. just control yourself and keep the back rigid and it should be fine.

deadlift needs help. you need to not move the bar so much during set up. remember, take your stance, grip the bar, then touch the shins to the bar without moving it, and squeeze chest up, again without moving the bar. you bend your knees first on the negative, which is why the weight rolls down your thigh around your knees. hips back first, until the bar gets around the knees, then bend the knees. the opposite of up.

Worked out this morning.

Squat: 102.5kg Focussed on keeping my torso more "up". It felt pretty heavy and on two reps I lost it and "good-morninged". Additional problem might have been that I descended slower and got less of a bounce into the hip drive. Will continue to add weight.
Press: 40kg Used the smaller bar and it felt less heavy than the last workout.
Chinups: The usual, but it felt worse than the last few times. Probably also because I didn't get too much sleep last night.

As I haven't been able to meet my schedule three weeks in a row and my gym only opens for 5 hours on Saturdays, I will "reset" my workout and go again on Monday. This does mean no rest-day in between, so I won't add weight to the squat and just do 80kg (normally my last warm-up), but add to the rest...

Didn't workout according to plan but today ( so one day of rest)

Squat: 105kg felt pretty heavy, but went slower and my form only broke down (torso forward) on one or two reps. Will continue to add weight and video the 110kg.
Bench: 57.5kg Got heavy, but next stop: big plates! Yay!
Deadlift: 95kg Felt bad, but I want to try doulble-overhand on 100kg. I tried to focus on miles' advice and I think I got the knee/hip thing down, but I still have a problem with setting. I have rather small feet and that means that the bar is almost touching the shins when it is over the middle of the foot. So I focussed on not moving the bar during setup, but that makes for a very awkward starting position, as my back is almost vertical at the start. I will try to video this next time too.

Okay, it's been a really long time. But right around the time this thread ended, my daughter was born, then we looked for a house, then we bought a new house, then we had to renovate part of the house, ... (well you get the excuses for stopping to go to the gym).

Over the last three years I have done some exercise, but nothing systematic. My weight has increased and even though there was no huge gain, I weighed in at 113kg at 1.80m. So I finally decided to do something.

Right now my main goal is to lose weight. I have started to do three things to achieve that:

1. Change what I eat. I have thrown out processed food and try to pay attention to not eat too much during one meal. I don't want to count calories, but would do so if I didn't lose weight going forward.
2. Do some cardio. My goal here is to do 30 min 5-6 times a week. These are not supposed to be tough exercises, but mainly to make myself able to better participate in physical activites in general. Examples would be to take a brisk walk (live in a hilly place), swim with several short breaks, go to work by bike (around 2x15min) etc.
3. Do SS. Had to go on a business trip last week so I only tried around with the workouts the week before that. Finally started for real yesterday. I will do deadlifts every workout until 5kg jumps won't be possible anymore. Will substitute power cleans for them which I will practice "on the side" at home with a 10kg bar.
I will also put the chin-up bar above one of our doors this or next weekend, so I can do single negatives multiple times during the day. For my workout I have added sets of neutral grip assisted pull-ups.

15th Feb 2012:
body weight: 108.5kg

squat: 65kg
press: 30kg
dealift: 60kg
assisted pull-ups (neutral grip): -50kg 7,6,5

Will upload videos next week.

edit: in the spirit of my main goal I have made a personal avatar challenge:
I have changed my avatar and will keep it that way until my body weight is down to the double digits.

Nice avatar choice, H/F-approved. Good luck sir!

16th Feb 2012:
swim 600m ~30min

17th Feb 2012:
squat: 70kg
bench: 45/47.5/50kg (I based all the weights I started with this week on my workouts last week and subtracted ~10%. Wasn't necessary for bench apparently, so I added a little each set)
deadlift: 70kg (basically the same, 60kg warm-up just felt too light)
assisted pull-ups (neutral grip): -45kg 7,5,5

20th Feb 2012:
squat: 75kg
press: 32.5kg
deadlift: 75kg
assisted pull-ups (neutral grip): -40kg 5,5,5

22th Feb 2012:
squat: 80kg
during the last set my knee "unlocked" => it moved forward rather quickly on my way down. I could stabilize this and started moving down more slowly. => worked, but my left knee felt awkward climbing stairs later. Will only add 2.5kg and focus on going slow.
bench: 50kg
was a little insecure about gripping the bar for some reason. Will look at the bench chapter in SS again
deadlift: 80kg
better than the squat. Will add 5kg one more time and probably start alternating this with PCs next week
assisted pull-ups (neutral grip): -35kg 5,3,3
will stay here until 5/5/5 longtime plan is to start kipping pull ups after having mastered 20kg of assistance.

I am not really meeting my cardio goals, but will swim tomorrow. Will get a bike seat for my daughter as soon as possible so picking her up from daycare won't be a reason to take the car anymore.

24th Feb 2012:

squat: 82.5kg felt better was much slower on these
press: 35kg
dealift: 85kg will do 90kg on monday and then switch to alternating DLs with PCs
assisted pull-ups (neutral grip): -35kg 6/4/3

will upload some videos of my next workout.

27th Feb 2012:
body weight: 106.9kg

squat: 85kg
bench: 52.5kg
dealift: 90kg
assisted pull-ups (neutral grip): -35kg 7/5/3

will upload some videos tonight