Chapter 2 made a very good point about why everyone likes to do 'bro' exercises-all arms and chest-more than others. Because as humans, we have these nifty hands and we reallllllly like to use them!

Chapter 1 also included some useful info on why machines are so popular at gyms nowadays. It kind of pissed me off though. My current gym has a bunch of machines taking up space and only room for a power cage, bench, and smith machine(ugh). My work gym I don't even bother w/ as they have ALL machines. Grr. DEATH TO THE MACHINES!

Ouch how does she arch like that?

I will get on this this weekend and post.

i also think that's a posed shot that was set up for aesthetics, not a real working functional one. sorta pseudo-porn.

i'd be bookclubbing with you guys, i just haven't gotten my butt in gear to travel an extra couple of blocks to the store where i might be able to get it ordered. i hate missing chapter 2, but looks like it'll just have to suck to be me.

crabada wrote: »

The caption is simply:

"Don't do this, you fool."

okay, forget all the other considerations. i've got a crush

yup. ry cooder and paul simon have just been bumped.

Chapter 2 was much longer than I anticipated so I split my response to prevent wall-o-text as well as out of fear of losing my whole post on accident. It is like a text book but it's easier to read because I'm interested in the information and because I'm not worried about there being some test at the end This chapter did give me some flashbacks to physical science class though. I was also pleasantly surprised about how much I remember from said class.

What I'm finding that I love about Rippetoe is his ability to explain simple and obvious things. For instance, the reason people often neglect our posterior chain despite it being integral to our ability to do anything physical is because we can't really see it. I was like, Duh, that's why squatting is so important. Also, I need to start checking the back of my head with a mirror after I do my hair. This part of the book was similar to a lesson in NROLFW regarding how our bodies are often imbalanced between the front and the back because we focus on front muscles like abs, biceps, and quads, much to our detriment.

I thought the use of yoga squat to create muscle memory of the bottom squat position was interesting, especially because I did these in my yoga session yesterday. Reading through all the technical explanations will give me a lot to think about tomorrow when I squat, although, I don't think I'm doing anything overtly wrong. He provides a lot of tips to correct problems that I may notice, too.

I love that he uses regular looking people wearing sweats and regular shirts as opposed to other more gimmicky books that use oiled up Adonises and Aphrodites with makeup and the perfect "messy" braid

Also, I think I want to start power cleaning but we'll get to that in chapter 6.

heh.

first: "it would have been inconvenient during human evolutionary development towards a bipedal posture if the spine had come apart every time it was loaded at an angle. You can see how that might have happened occasionally over several million years." smartass.

second, if rippetoe knew where my nipples usually point he wouldn't be giving such silly advice. but i'm not going to go into details on that.

third. well, stap my vitals. it could turn out once i've processed all this that i could have been doing my squats a lot righter than i ever knew, until i got fancy a few weeks ago and started messing with them. i get pretty deep but i keep fairly close to vertical shins. and i USED kind of look to about where i could check the hip crease with peripheral vision. but i thought all that was bad form. along with the feeling that i shouldn't have my torso and quads touching when i'm at my lowest point. i may try going back to what i was doing before at these ow-i-hurt-myself-weights, and see what that does for my back.

@canadianlbs I was pleasantly surprised, too, that I haven't been doing anything really wrong. Guess my reading bits and pieces and collecting other information has made my form decent. Dying about the nipples comment! I was thinking, too, that people's nips may face different direction making that a bad universal example.

@TheMOC It helps me to look ahead but slightly down rather than down at the floor. I usually try to see myself somewhat in the mirror, at least for a rep, to make sure my form's looking alright.

well, i went the extra 1/4 mile to the bookstore i mentioned today, and get this: they don't have starting strength. not only not on their shelves but not in their entire effing system. and they're the monolithic-megalith-monopoly store that crowded out just about every other form of bookstore in this city, so just one big fat MEH to all that.

Great job @TheMOC‌! It's so great when you just get something all of a sudden.

just wanna say . . . some magical group member whose privacy i'll protect unless i hear it's okay to name her has ordered me the starting strength book (boo chapters book chain again), and i think it's coming along just in time. i'm planning to read hell out of the ohp chapter, and i'm expecting some revelations.

how is it looking to everyone else? i know most of us struggle with ohp, so i'm curious if rippetoe's take on it has helped any for anyone.

for me, the right elbow is fine. on the left, it was okay on sunday, but last night my rear delts on that side just went 'nope' so i felt really torqued. i've got followup tomorrow with the chiro-who-is-a-kinesiologist/physio-too, and i plan to attach hooks to his brain and drag out every piece of potentially useful info he's got about this, if i have to poke sticks up his nose like an old egyptian to get at the stuff.

but with that said and for right now i'm a convert and prepared to put in some time about this. it's not comfortable, especially on the left side, but it's helpful in so many other ways.

the big thing i got from it was re-validation about not relying on my hands (i.e. arms) to hold the bar up. i've been blowing that straight-wrist part of it off on the grounds that hey, my wrists don't do that so kthxbai. but on sunday i went and focused properly that whole 'bar crosses the palm' thing, and it wasn't easy to achieve but it made an astonishing difference in how at ease i felt once i straightened up and backed out.

from the little i've played around with it so far, i think my limp-wristedness has also played its part in all this back/shoulder stuff. when i was letting my wrists come forward under the bar, i think my arms were taking up some of the weight. and using the good ol' rippetoe talk about shear forces and so forth, that would have meant that the weight was travelling down my arms and it could have been getting into my shoulders. i know he talks about elbows as being the place where the buck stops, but i can easily see how a slightly different configuration could skip your elbows and transfer the force to the next joint along in the chain.

crabada wrote: »

Does anyone else watch this and think "Sorry, but my shoulders don't go back that far?!"

i liked how you called him a kid. that's my thought ;P

i said i'd report after my sports-chiro time and i'm reporting. well, sigh. he had a nice little stick in his room leaning against one wall so by the time he came in i was all ready to lean over in unrack-the-bar mode and start going 'see? see?' about my own personal asymmetries.

wish i could say he had some magic reply. in reality, he did do some prowling around me and some diagnostic experimenting and concluded i have serious strength/flex imbalances in my levator scapula, and that probably my left-side teres muscles aren't helping either. we spent most of the rest of my session arguing high bar versus low because he's not a fan and i am. fwiw, his position was low bar with the elbows back like that is 'really bad for the glenohumeral joint' because of the way it forces something-something out somedirectionsomething . . . or something like that. i'm such a mess in the shoulder area atm anyway, so i couldn't even refute it in any way by showing him how a good lowbar grip looks.

i'm currently being all stubborn on it because i like low bar and until i got tightened up on the left it felt like it was harming me a lot less than any other squat mode i've found. but i guess yeah, the takehome from my morning fwiw is that if you don't have the mobility, you maybe don't want to risk it too much.

he also thought 100lbs was 'a lot', which half makes me preen myself because finally i've found someone medical to impress, and half disappoints me because it makes me feel he and i are not really reading the same page in this 'weightlifting' book.