Pages

Friday, August 19, 2011

Sipping a delicious spinach juice and herding cats.

As one does before sitting down to log in yesterdays workout. The synopsis of tips received from my squat form check clip include, sit back more, widen your stance, keep weight on your heels rather then toes, and look down. Guess what? That is a lot to think about when one is struggling with a heavy weight on ones back but I gave it a go and discovered that actively looking down as I came up tends to make my upper back collapse at the top 1/3 of the lift.

Squats were, 1x10x air, 1x8x bar, 1x4x 65, 1x3x 85, 1x3x 105 (these felt heavy) 1x2x 115 (again, heavy) 2x3x 120, 1x2x 120 because my form completely disintegrated at the end there. 3x3x 115, also messy, 2x5x 95. I'm not sure whether to go for another 3x3x 120 tomorrow or not. Way back when I was stuck at 65 lbs it was due to trying to perfect my form before going up in weight. I'll try to film myself tomorrow and see how it goes.

Having gone down in standard bench weight recently these went well. Warmup 1x5x bar, 1x3x 65, 1x2x 75, 5x3x 80, challenging but not too much of a struggle.

Deadlifts need to be filmed again for a back check, were 1x2x 135, 1x1x 145, 3x1x 155. Then I was DONE. Switching to Tues, Thurs, Sat rather then lifting Mon, Weds, Fri is much better as far as avoiding fools in the gym. The crappy water pressure in the gym showers sucks, but taking one right after a session is conducive to getting things done on the way home. I didn't bring towels and clothes to change into, and instead of picking up a yoga mat I wanted to get home immediately to wash up. Moral of the story, when I have things to do after the gym, bring shower stuff.

Tomorrow's session will be, squats, 3x3x 120, 3x3x 115, raising the weight on my back-off sets to 100 lbs, so 2x5x 100. Then, the dreaded overhead press 3x5x 62.5, Romanian deadlifts 3x5x115.

5 comments:

  1. When you look down, think of bringing your upper sternum to your chin. Don't crane your neck forward and down--it's a slight chin tuck, not a stretching out of the neck. I hope I'm making sense.

    -spar

    ReplyDelete
  2. How do you do that spar? You described exactly what i was doing without seeing the action or anything. Are you some kind of exercise savant? Ok, tomorrow I will add the chin tuck in and report back, thank-you!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Avoiding fools in the gym is good. The best time for this is mornings generally; fools don't like getting up early.

    Saturday afternoons you will find 6 guys come in together to do some tandem lifts, the bench-press-upright-row and the two-man-preacher-curl. But mostly they're just chatting and checking out the cardio bunnies. So try Saturday mornings.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ah Kyle, you have me laughing at the two-man preacher curl. It is practically a religion at my gym. Lifting in the morning on weekdays makes me want to nap all day, which isn't good as far as earning a living goes so I have to make do.I'm aiming for Saturday morning after the first rush of guys who lift while their woman is taking a cardio class.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Teri-- The vast majority of people who report their chest caving in while looking down are craning their necks instead of "tucking" the chin. It's like Rip knowing that people are most likely not keeping their knees out when they report that they're not flexible enough to hit depth.

    ReplyDelete