crabada wrote: »

Pain is usually on the push up, and while I feel it down the inner thigh, it's mostly concentrated in the groin region.

if your feet are parallel, you might find it helps to do the 'shove the ground apart with your feet' thing. for me, this turned out to be what protects my knees best, and the effort comes from the gluteus medius and also the muscles down the outside of my thighs. - but i'm not squeezing my glutes, i'm sort of pushing outwards from them. you would think that your knees would collapse inwards that way, but mine don't. you make a kind of cradle of rigid muscle all down the outsides of your legs, and let the weight of the lift travel through that instead of letting it go through your joints.

i'd try it cautiously with just bodyweight for a while until you get the hang of it and then see how it helps. for me, squeezing my glutes for any part of a squat except the lockout at the top is a bad thing. it torques my whole thigh inside the socket; my hip joints hate it.

@crabada re: job. i wish they would just let me test, but it will get better once i do that. or if not test, then get started on writing test cases for them. they hired me but they don't trust me but meh. qa ain't really a conflict-free gig at any time, and nobody really knows what we do enough to know who to micromanage and who to just leave alone and let them do it.

****anyway, i am back. workout (mostly) a. and a strong argument for rest weeks*****

squats: 1x5@45, 1x5@65, 5x5@85. i tried 90 but it was too much for me to hold to good form. i can really feel now how much stronger my back is than it was before i took my break. i can just get underneath that bar now and stand up, and i had no trouble with keeping myself nice and tall even underneath 85. compared with a week ago - i was folding over like a bad paperclip.

i spent the morning letting mark rippetoe inspire me again with the idea of hip drive, and i found a video where he actually explains the role hamstrings play in the squat. whenever i remember all that, my squats get stronger. i might still make my end-of-nov goal of 90 lb by next week.

ohp: 1x5@45, 1x5@50, 1x5@45, 1x8@30, then later on 2x10@30. the stronglifts approach of 'heavy as you can' just doesn't work for ohp in my case. as soon as i bring the weights up, my form goes to hell. my left shoulder in particular wants to roll forward and then shrug with my whole shoulderblade and clavicle too, to get away from doing its share of the work. so low weight means i can actually put that side into the joint socket properly and make it stay there throughout the whole lift. and high reps means i can rewrite muscle memory (hopefully). i feel like i'm doing the right thing, because after 3 honest sets of 10 the left side was at failure but the right was nowhere near that.

deadlifts deadlifts. oy vey. still with the knee fear, but i put in a lot of time on my deads. i didnt' really count reps because the whole thing was more of a long form exploration/workshop for me. i started out at 100 and lifted there until i felt like i had it locked at that weight, then i did a few more like that, then i added 10 and did it all over again, added 10 . . . i THINK i did my working set at 130 but it may have been 120 or 125. at the higher weights the bar felt like it kept getting out in front of me and i still don't know why. but i did a working set at one of those numbers, and then i deloaded progressively back to 100 again. i can't remember where, but i do know i strung together two separate sets of 5 at either 100 or 110 at the end. i'll tell ya something, on the really good feeling reps, i could FEEL my lower abs taking part in it all. i did my two 60 sec planks with side planks as well, b ut i think if wake up sore i'll be blaming the deads