10/21

Been super busy the last week (just bought a house) so my lunch time/after work was filled with obtaining financial documentation and seeing mortgage brokers. Back to it today:

Press
wu+ 5/5/7 x 112.5 (+2.5 lbs)

I have been stretching my left external rotator a lot more (wall slides and the like) and it is helping. It's still tight, but not nearly as much as it used to be.

Chins
2 x 7/6 x bw + 15 (+5 lbs)

Was pretty happy with this

Squats
wu + 5/5/7 x 150 (-5 lbs)

I had an epiphany -- the wall in front of the cage I squat in is about 6 inches from the back of the cage, and I never really paid attention to where I was looking. I figured out that I am looking downs (i.e. right where the wall meets the floor) and as such I can never stay upright enough and keep my weight back. Keeping my head and chest up with a better back arch improved my squatting experience a ton. Hopefully it's onward and upward from here (finally).

A lot of people are saying positive things about looking straight ahead while squatting instead of looking down. I may be tempted to try this soon; damn mirror in front of the rack!

I concentrate less on pulling my shoulders back as far as possible and more on squeezing my lats down and pushing my chest out as much as possible (which does what I think you're talking about). Having a big chest is one of the biggest parts of Ripp's setup (or any setup for anything really) so his setup shouldn't necessarily be the problem. But maybe your shin distance from the bar or butt level can be tweaked so things line-up and are tight optimally.

Yugo --

Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that my DL setup isn't optimal yet. Lats down rather than shoulders back seems more physiologically possible for me, I'll try that next time. Thanks!

CC -

I haven't really progressed much on the squat, and whenever I lift heavy (for me) my weight tends to shift to my toes. Maybe that's because I'm looking down too much, and maybe not -- I'm certainly not an expert. That being said, that little tweak did feel a lot better, and hopefully I'll look back on this as a turning point.

no

ETA: @ retracting shoulders (didn't see there was a new page)

I assume you're doing LBBS? Getting your chest "big" and not letting it "deflate" really helps keep your upper body stable under the bar and avoid Good Morninging on heavy reps. So yeah, that can for sure end up being part of your turning point in terms of feeling comfortable underneath at heavy weights. And looking straight ahead can help too, but I haven't fully tried it yet.

I have a mirror at my gym in front of the squat rack. I seriously am trying to remember to bring a piece of paper with a big dot in the middle to look at though for next time. The first time someone mentioned something like that I thought "yeah good idea but too ridiculous and unnecessary" but yeah, pretty sure it's just a good idea now. At least to try, .

Thanks!

Another thing that I feel helps keep my upper body stable is taking as narrow a grip as possible on the bar.

HS --

I feel like my grip is pretty narrow, but I will make sure it's as narrow as it can be next set. Thanks again.

My sleep/eating/workout schedule has been awful the last two weeks; need to work on cleaning that up.

10/26

Bench

wu + 5/5/6 x 247.5 (+2.5 lbs)

Wasn't even sure I was going to get the 5th rep, much less the 6th, in the 3rd set, but managed to get it up.

Pendlay rows

3x5x155

DL
wu + 1 x 5 x 215

Still some lower back rounding on the last few reps; the tip earlier ITT to activate my lats in order to get my chest up was money though. Just have to put it all together.

More bad compliance; first time in the gym in a week. Buying a house is hard.

Press
wu+ 3x5x 115 (+2.5 lbs)

Felt solid, shoulder still tight but whatevs.

Chins
2 x 6/5 x bw + 15 (- 2 reps)

Bleh, need to get back to doing my frequency chins again.

DL
wu + 1 x5x215

Really concentrated on keeping my lower back tight throughout the lift and it felt better; no video though

Glad your back felt tighter/better on the DLs.

Gl with the house!!

Been back lifting for about a month and a half. I've decided to up my squats to 3x/wk and DL to ever other workout because they both still suck. Resetting both to low weight to try and groove the form, and I'm increasing my number of work sets on the squat to 5.

2/13

Squat
wu + 5x5x135
Press
wu + 3x5x125
DL
wu + 1x5x145

Squat felt fine, my last worksets were at 160 and I did sets of 5, 5, and 12 reps so this went extremely smoothly. On to 140 on Wednesday.

Pressing felt pretty solid, this is where I stalled last summer when my shoulder started giving me issues. I've been doing a lot of scap mobility stuff and have a PT appt Wednesday because it's still a little wonky. Closing in on the 1 plate workset feels good.

DL went fine, I realized last week when I was doing my workset at 215 that I wasn't driving though my heels. I tried doing it (and lowering my butt) and it suddenly got a lot harder. Dropping back down to work on form felt good, I'll be adding 10 lbs per day so hopefully it's onward and upward.

Bench workset for 3x5 is probably about 245 now, but I'm at 235 on my reset so I'll just keep microloading my way up on that one.

OHP Question:

I see a lot of recommendations on here regarding elbows forward (i.e. under the bar); it seems to me that if I do that, my grip is going to necessarily have to narrower than my grip for my bench (because I'd need to internally rotate my shoulders more).

Do people generally have the same grip width for OHP as they do for bench? I've got pretty long arms, and I don't think my bench width is super wide (index finger just outside the thin smooth line in the knurling on the bar) but I'm not sure how much I can get my elbows under the bar at that grip width. I guess I'll experiment on Friday and report back.

Yes, OHP grip is much narrower than a "standard" bench grip. My OHP grip has my hands just outside of my shoulders (thumbs basically just to the right and left of the outside of my respective shoulder).

You definitely want your arms in front of the bar (or in line with it) - OHP is gonna be a bitch and you'd likely get hurt doing a bunch of OHP with your elbows back I think. This is an important point and I don't think is optional (like having a specific grip width for benching is essentially optional b/c you can go wider or narrower).

I don't know how narrow a "narrow grip" bench is for you, but OHP is closer to that grip imo than what you normally bench with (I also remember you having a relatively wide, not super wide though, bench grip).

You may want a very slightly narrower or wider OHP grip maybe, but from what I remember, it basically should be the same for everyone.

Thanks Yugo, that's what I suspected. Hopefully I'll get good news on my shoulder at the PT tomorrow, but it feels pretty good overall so maybe changing up my grip will get me over the hump on this exercise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJFjYyA40ss

This link was instructive.

Missed working out over lunch because I went to the PT. She assessed my shoulder mobility, and I am definitely have less range of motion in the left one (like 165-170 degrees as opposed to 180 in the right). She wants me to lay off press for the next few weeks (she's going to be working on loosening me up a few times a week for the next three or so weeks) and then hopefully I'll be good to go. I already feel a little looser than I did before, and I'm going to go to the gym tonight after work and see after that goes.

Should I just do light DB shoulder pressing in lieu of OHP, or cut shoulders out of my routine entirely?

If your PT said to do zero pressing, then I guess do zero. Or you could do very light stuff. That's what I've been doing but my chiro encouraged me to do light stuff until I felt I could put more weight on it.

Also, your grip may be the issue but I know what was messing my shoulder up was not keeping my shoulders pinned down when pressing up - sometimes letting them rise before the lockout. Your shoulders on an OHP should be pushing down until the actual lockout at the very top of the press.

I forget, have you been doing much regular SMR? Have you ever seen a chiro with biomechanical certification (or does your PT have that?).

I'm going to recommend (shocking I know) spending some quality time investigating all the areas around that 'bad' shoulder. I hurt my right shoulder a few weeks ago and it took me 2 weeks to zero in on the most messed up spot. But once I did a week or so ago, my shoulder has been making much faster progress.

Before then I didn't actually realize I could SMR my infraspinatus while lying on my back - I always was careful to keep the lacrosse ball in between my spine and shoulder blade, but you can go to the other side of your shoulder blade, apply pressure, and see if there are any really messed up spots there.

Also, above your lat there is the teres minor and other rotator cuff stuff that has been my worse spot, it's kind of "in the armpit" and that was the area I never really discovered was causing the most issues for me for a couple of weeks. The way I hit it is to lay on my side with the lacrosse ball hitting the very outside part of my shoulder area, just above my cushy lat muscle and between my armpit and less cushy infraspinatus area.

I'm not really sure, I'll have to investigate. My grip is definitely too wide though.

I asked my doctor for a chiro referral and he gave me a PT one first; I'll see how this works out but there are some good ART practitioners in the Indy area that I may check out if this doesn't work.

Both those spots you noticed on your shoulder were spots the PT zeroed in on for me. Also, she thought my left bicep was a little tighter than my right, so I'm going to work on stretching that out too. She suggested I hold off on doing chinups to but I don't really go to failure or anything, I am just easing back into frequency work so I'll keep them up. I feel better after our session today, and hopefully we can get the flexibility issue worked out easily since there doesn't seem to be any underlying issue with the tissue or tendon.

2/15
Bench
wu + 3x5x240
Had two or three more in the tank of the last set, but I"m trying to take it easy with the shoulder and all.

Pendlays
5x5x135
Smooth and easy.

Squats
5x5x140
Smooth and easy.

2/17

No OHP as per the doctors orders.

Squats
wu + 5x5x145

DL
wu + 1x5x155

Both were really smooth and easy, except for the fact I was having some wrist pain while squatting. I really concentrated on lifting my elbows up to flatten out my wrists and that helped a little, but I had to widen my hands out to take some of the stress off my wrists. Hopefully improving my shoulder flexibility will help a bit, but I have such long arms I don't know how close I can realistically get my hands together back there.

I would have done weighted dips or something but the apparatus was taken; I'll try and work those in next week probably.

Sounds like the PT may be useful and you could also have a rotator cuff issue - which I feel I'm now getting very good at SMRing. It turns out as early as a month ago I was confused as to what parts of my shoulder even were the rotator cuff, .

Out of curiosity, what does the PT have you doing while you're there? Are you doing SMR in those spots beforehand? If you aren't, doing that should really help you be able to stretch 'em up!

Yugo --

I'm doing some SMR and stuff (sticky scap and the like) on my own time, and that has helped my flexibility a lot. I still have the issue, though, although I suspect it is not as severe as at once was.

2/20
Bench
wu + 3x5x242.5

Pendlays
wu + 5x5x140

Squat
wu+ 5x5x150

Everything felt pretty good, all things considered. The bench was nice and smooth, although I've had a streak where my second set feels heavier than my third, which seems odd to me. I don't think 245 will be a problem, I had a few more in the tank I think. Pendlays were easy too.

Squats were pretty easy, with the exception that it is still hard for me to get my wrists all the way flat. It's getting better, but I just have to keep working on upper body flexibility I guess.

It terrifies me that you bench 242.5 and squat 150