ya I thought it was supposed to be before. It just feels very awkward for me. But there is always next time. And I have a hard time keeping my lower body tight because im so focused on my upper body

canadianlbs wrote: »

mizzzc wrote: »

Also I can't figure out his hip driving thing either. Do I hump before or after I throw the bar in the air ?

def before. i've picked up that much; i just can't seem to get to where it doesn't feel like more work and confusion than just staying planted and doing the thing. but i get the idea. you want to get a kind of slingshot effect going on through all the muscles down the front of your body - anterior chain, i guess and you're supposed to use the release of that tension to launch the bar up.

i have gotten it right occasionally, and i definitely felt the bar bounce. there's a nano-second as your body comes back to its original position where the bar feels like it has no weight at all. that's the freefall window you're supposed to catch and incorporate as you push the bar up.

but most of the time i just fear that hip-bounce. i think what scares me off is it relies so heavily on keeping the core and quads really really tight, because if you (me) let that slip for a second then suddenly i'm hanging out there with my lower back overextended all over the place, and a big extra weight leaning downwards on it from above.

how cool is this?

. . . actually, i don't know yet as i just started it. but still i can't see how this could be bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdEw3SuaK4c

i like rippetoe's resident guinea pig. of course, half the world is called brian but i'm pretty sure that's the same kid who was part of his squat-grip session. he does definitely have his elbows out in front of the bar.

what i took away from this is that the setup for the drive is nothing like i'd been thinking it was. all this time i'd been thinking it was a fast-front-then-fast-back thing- a bounce in both directions. what suggs is showing is a bit of a revelation to me.

the other difference from [what i got out of ] ss is the method of getting under the bar. rippetoe says drive it up and as soon as it passes your forehead 'slam your torso' under it. if you watch what this guy is doing and what suggs is coaching, he actually puts his hips under the bar first, as the start of a second bounch. and then he re-bounces to push the bar the rest of the way and get his shoulders underneath it. so it's a different body part, and it's also slow in the suggs form, where the the ss one is fast.

i also really like suggs poking rip in the groinal zone at around 9:40 for a change.

I tried the hip bounce, too, and was a hot mess! I noticed that I do it within a smaller range, already, but starting out like the video demonstrates (with hips far forward) did not go well. I'm going to experiment with just the bar this weekend and see if I can coordinate better...after practicing some air presses this week.

i tried it yesterday too. i'm completely uncoordinated at it - and weak. couldn't get a thread of a bounce onto even the 20lb bar and the bar path sure feels different. but with all that said, it was almost disconcerting how evenly the bar seemed to go up and keep right on moving, compared with my previous form. it's a lot more like lifting the bar with your whole body instead of just from your armpits up. and the lockout felt different too, somehow.

one note i made was that 'quads' was a little too imprecise for me. when i tried it, i kept that whole discussion with rippetoe in mind, where tommy's saying 'the very top of your quads' and poking rip in the seam of his boxers almost, and rip's going oh, hip extensors. if i don't keep that in mind i found i was letting the epicentre of my quad tension point move down my legs a little and centre more in the middle of my thighs. but really i think suggs is saying it's a much smaller area of tension than that and it should be much closer to your hipjoint.

i'm kind of torn but i have a feeling i won't be able to leave this idea alone, at least for a while.

MissHolidayGolightly wrote: »

Instead of deadening my lower body and using only the upper body, everything was a part of it.

exactly this, yes. i never could get rippetoe's version of it right, so all this time i've just been standing like a stock and pushing the bar into the air. i was using every muscle i've got, but most of them i was just using isometrically to keep myself straight. it's not uncommon for me to get a quad cramp while i'm standing around with the bar over my head, actually. so far ime with the suggs form, there's a lot more glute than legs going on.

(ima be boring and think out loud here) in my old style, i keep my hips stacked right over my feet and my shoulders right over my hips, except for a couple inches of deviation at the start to make sure that i don't take my nose off. with this one, it looks like your shoulders stay over your feet but your centre of gravity doesn't. it moves out in front of them, then back behind them a bit. and then it comes forward again until you're re-stacked by the time you lock out. i'm pretty reluctant to lose that stacking because of all those fragile little shoulder muscles, but when i was doing the suggs thing it didn't feel like i was out in front of myself. i think i ended up with the bar further back than you seem to, but maybe the camera angle's deceiving me.

did it feel okay on your back, to you? the main thing that worries me about this style is not trusting myself to to know the difference between what's right for this lift and lumbar overextension that would be well bad for me.

I posted above and didn't post the link to what I was reading! Here it is: http://startingstrength.com/articles/olympic_press_starr.pdf . The pictures at the end show something like what we see in the Tommy Suggs video above. But it's not what I think I see in the book (where there's just a slight lean back), or the wiki http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ:The_Lifts#The_Press (slight hip extension and no back lean) or the videos: http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/Press_Videos. So I was wondering if the Tommy Suggs video is showing a different lift, or a different technique. I can't seem to put the two demonstrations together.

I suppose that in competition, you'd want to lean back more so you could push extra weight? But that it's not needed in the Starting Strength programme, where you're just building strength (and have the bench press as part of it too)? Or is this an improved, updated technique that I should be using instead of the old one? (Or am I just reading the book wrong - ha ha!).