Roll your quads & ITBs a lot. Don't stop until you either cant take the pain or all the pain is gone. If the muscles & tendons don't hurt doing that on a foam roller, get a 4" pvc pipe & use that instead. That should help your knees.

Muscle adhesions/ tightness have little to do with why my knees suck. It's mostly structural; the patella on my right knee has a flat bottom and my groove that it sits in is abnormally flat as well. On the left side the patella issue is not as bad, but my MCL and LCL are not as tight as they should be so there's a lot of play laterally. Having well conditioned quads do seem to help with the patella issue, but there's not much I can do for the lack of ligament tension that isn't surgical.

I like to think about exploding more vertically. This seems to fix it for me.

yeah you do have some additional problems. Adhesions do pull on the patella and make things worse though.

3-1

Squat- 135x5, 185x4, 225x3, 275x2, 315, 335, 295x2
5/3/1 Deadlift- 242x3, 286x3, 309x5, 331x5, 353x5
Close Grip Bench Lockouts- 135x5, 165x5, 185x5, 195x5, 205x5, 215x5
DB Skull Crushers- 5 sets of 10
Barbell Curls- 15x45, 12x55, 8x65, 6x75, 12x45
Band Triceps Extensions- 3 sets

Still pretty sore from sprinting so squats were tough. I'd say my true max now is about 345, so -25 lbs from my prior PR. Deadlifts were rough, I'm still worn out from Sunday so I skipped doing assistance work.

I think I more or less have a handle on my programming for the next couple months.

Alright so going forward I think I'm going to be doing the following, at least until I injure myself or decide to refocus solely on powerlifting:

Day A:
-Light power Oly work
-Squat 2x5
-5/3/1 Bench
-Bench Assistance

Day B:
-5/3/1 Press
-Heavy full Oly work
-Pullups
-Kettlebell Work

Day C:
-Squat doubles or triples
-Deadlift 5/3/1
-Press assistance
-Deadlift assistance

When feeling good I'll do 3 days a week, but realistically it'll probably get stretched out to 8 or 9 day cycles. I'll also throw in some additional arm work and core work when I feel up to it. Hopefully this will be enough to keep my deadlift going up, and get to a bodyweight snatch, which is around 20 lbs away.

3-4

Power Snatches- a few doubles to 108 lbs
Power Cleans- a few doubles to 120 lbs
Squats- 110x5, 154x4, 198x3, 220x2, 240x2, 264x1, 274x5x2
Bench- 45x5x2, 135x3, 145x3, 155x3, 165x5, 175x5, 185x8, 175x8, 165x9
Pushups- 5 sets of 20
Pendlay Row- 135x8, 155x5, 185x5, 195x5
Cable Row- 120x12, 110x12, 100x12 continuous, 100x12, 90x12, 80x12 continuous
Band Extensions- 3 sets
Band Curls- 3 sets

Squats were fairly easy.

you training at tufts?

Yeah. Open invitation is still open.

You can tape it as shown in this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTpn27Qs8ao

The tape basically acts as external ligament to support your MCL (the video shows MCL taping, LCL taping would be the same thing on the outside of your leg). While this won't cure your problem, it will support it during training so you don't have to worry about it as much.

Wow that's a lot of taping.

3-6

5/3/1 Press- 45x10x2, 65x5, 88x5, 110,2, 115x3, 120x3, 125x6
Drop Snatches- Up to 135
Hang Snatches- Up to 132, bunch of fails at 142

****** workout. Elbow and shoulders felt like crap.

3-8

Squats- 45x5x2, 154x5, 220x3, 264x2, 309x1, 329x1, 339x1, 309x2
5/3/1 Deadlift- 220x3, 264x3, 309x1, 329x3, 353x3, 378x4
Close Grip Bench Lockouts- 135x5, 185x5, 205x5, 225x2, 230x1, 225x1
DB Skull Crushers- 30sx8x3

Elbow doesn't feel good enough for any flexion. Extension feels ok. Had hoped to get 5 deadlift reps, but 4 was expected.

Won't get a chance to lift again for sure until Tuesday, so hopefully over the next couple of days I can motivate myself to do some pullups and KB work at home.

3-9

2 pood Sumo Squat Hold- 60s, 50s, 40s
2 pood Goblet Squats- 5x2

Felt good so did a little extra work. Tried the sumo squat holds as described here. Will try to work up to 3.5p for 60 seconds.

3-15

Squats- 45x5x2, 135x5, 185x3, 225x2, 275x1, 315x1, 335x1, 345x1, 315x2
5/3/1 Deadlift- 242x3, 309x5, 353x3, 397x3
Leg Extensions- 120x12x3
KB Swings- 2P 8r, 8l, 12 both 1.5P 12r, 12l, 18 both

3-16

Hanging leg raises- 2x15
Paused swiss ball situps- 2x15
Band triceps extensions- 3x15

My back is trashed. Everything from my traps down hurts. Hopefully I can recover in time to do some snatches, front squats, and more KB work by Friday.

3-19

Cleans- up to 206x1, 216xf, 220xf
Squats- 176x3, 220x3, 262x2, 291x5x2
Bench- 135x5, 155x5, 175x5, 195x5

Haven't done full cleans in over a year. Would like to get up to 242 eventually.

Also my gym got 3 sets of new boxes for jerks/snatches. Which is lol because I'm the only one in the entire gym that ever does any jerks/snatches.

boxes fr snatches?

Yes. Just a slightly different way of working on the second pull.

3-22

Easy Row 500m- 1:55
Broad jumps 3x2
Easy Row 500m- 1:50

Hang Power Clean, Power Clean, Full Clean- 88x2, 110x2 132x1
Clean and Jerk- 154x1, 164x1x10
Front Squats- 154x3, 198x3, 220x3, 230x3
Pullups- BWx5, +10x5, +20x5, +25x5, +30x5, BWx10

Rows were super easy. Felt like I could've done sub 1:40. I'm going to try to follow Dan John's beginner olympic lifting schedule, which is basically 10 clean and jerk singles or 10 snatch doubles done whenever you can. When you make all 10, add weight. 164 was pretty easy, I'll try to get a video up.

Clean and Jerk- 164 lbs, 3rd, 5th, and 8th reps: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irRmRsKIWgY

I almost always lose my pinkies to the wrong side of the bar when I catch the clean, hence the adjustment before the jerk. I'd like to learn to drive myself under the bar more than driving the bar upwards, and also to keep my elbows down more at the start of the jerk.

3-25

Deadlift- 110x8, 220x3, 286x2, 331x1, 375x1, 419x1, 463xfx2
Snatch- 110x2x8
Squat- 110x5, 220x3, 264x2, 309x1, 329x1, 349xf
DB Bench- 65sx12
Rage Kb Swings- 2px10l, 10r, 15 2-handed
1.5px15r, 15l

Kyle B, **** you and your kryptonite shirt.

How close were you on the 463?

what was the purpose of putting the snatch work in there?

also, i am surprised your squat isn't higher now. i think you have been focusing on the bench press lately. for an intermediate, do you think it is possible to train the bench press and the squat hard in a month training session, or only possible to do maintenence on one while progressing on the other?

I'm weak right off the floor and I just broke it from the floor on each rep. So pretty close I hope. 419 shot up like it was nothing so I figured I'd go for the 10kg pr.

I'm doing Dan John's beginner olympic lifting progression for a bit. Which is basically 10 clean and jerk singles one workout and 8-10 snatch doubles the next. Add weight when you don't miss any reps. I'm also starting really low on the snatch because I think I need to rework my second pull a bit so that I don't bash my pubic bone into the bar so hard. If I were doing something heavier like 145+ I definitely wouldn't have tried to do them post deadlifting.

I was definitely ready to commit to the bench 100% for awhile and try to make some progress, but right around then both my shoulder and elbow started to bug me a lot and I just couldn't do any real volume even with lots of icing. I've had some minor squat setbacks and tried 5/3/1 for a bit (which dropped my max by about 30 lbs in 1 cycle). At this point the only lift where I'm making progress on my PR is the deadlift.

My current maxes are probably around 350 squat, 215 bench, and 450 deadlift (estimated since I went for a big PR today).

My all time PRs are 370 squat, 230 bench, 441 deadlift.

Yeah, I was surprised to see the snatches in there because it was such low weight for you and also it is kind of a hard exercise to do inbetween squats and DL. But I guess if you are just doing it as technique work those aren't problems. (Not that 110 is so low for doing ten snatches in a row, but I remember you said you were looking to hit 165 which is quite a difference)

It seems like your elbow pain came about cause of bad programming(?)... I don't do a lot of push/pressing cause of shoulder pain, and to fix that I do a lot of pulling stuff. What are you gonna do to fix the elbow problem though? I guess Eric Cressey did this six part article on elbow pain, maybe it will be helpful for you, http://ericcressey.com/understanding...ain-in-lifters.

Nice job hitting over 1,000 pounds on your totals : ). I've had a similar experience I guess. No matter what I do, my deadlift goes up. It's been harder for me to improve my squat. I don't know if there is really anything you can sub for a squat, and so assitance work may not help so much. From what I've read, even a front squat, the closest exercise to a backsquat, won't improve the BS. Why did doing the 5/3/1 make your squat go down 30 pounds? I'm guess you already decided it wasn't just temporary fatigue that did it to you...