Sheesh, I can keep up with your squat, but you made that bench and deadlift look way too bloody easy at those weights! lol

Good bench sessions this week (just as well as still not squatting or pulling due to my knee).

PRd my paused bench - first time in forever. Actually PRd twice - once at 155lb, but my *kitten* cam up a smidge, then added another 5lb (as the prior attempt was not that grindy) and got that - butt stayed down. Pause should have been longer, but heh! Its a 10lb PR.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7voDVAiL1o


Followed that up with another PR - 115lb x 10,10,10.

So, we have vids of lifting, and lessons learned, so I thought I'd share one on one of my first coaching experiences.

So I have a friend who asked for my help about 10 months ago. He could not squat. He'd gone to all the PT's in his commercial gym, was scared of spit and sawdust gym's. Each PT had made no progress with him on squatting. Each time he would break at the knees, go onto his Toes, and fall over most of the time.

So we tried wall Squats. He could not translate them to free standing. I got him into third world squat progressions. Could not translate them.
Then I got him to sit on a bench that was at depth for him. I got him to inch forward, and sit back down, eventually, we got this close enough to squat stance, and finally we got something he could translate to free standing, bodyweight squats. We hit the next issue - Consistency
My next step was mental queue's - He responds to these a lot in life, so I thought it could work. I tried standards (He has OCD, so I used that at first), no joy. I tried a few other queue's, and then he came up with his queue "Do you mean sit on the "bench"?" I said ok, and he went to squat. Exactly as he'd learnt to sit on the Bench. But we still had the consistency issue.

I got frustrated, and shouted at him "Sit on the F***ing Bench!". Low and behold, A perfect rep!! He then proceeded to continue the set, shouting out loud "Sit on the F***ing Bench!"... 9 reps later, Still good form. 3 more sets later, still good form!

10 Months on, He's running the EXACT same queue's to this day... He's 3 weeks into GVT (You do 10 x 10 on Squats on that!). Never misses a rep, Never squats High, but shouts the exact same line....... Every single REP!

Had to bail out of a set of squats today for the first time in over two years. I was only at 82% of 1RM, and the first rep felt good. But when I got to the bottom of the next rep, it's like my strength just disappeared and I had to bail. That's what safety bars are for, but still, I haven't needed them in forever.

A fellow gym rat suggested the problem was from a combination of lifting in sneakers (which give in the heel) plus squatting on an Olympic platform (which also gives). Stupid gym replaced my power rack with the Oly-setup, and won't let me squat in socks or barefeet. No chalk, no chains... guess power lifting is frowned upon there. But I can't get past the convenience of the gym being literally a hundred yards from my front door.

nossmf wrote: »

Had to bail out of a set of squats today for the first time in over two years. I was only at 82% of 1RM, and the first rep felt good. But when I got to the bottom of the next rep, it's like my strength just disappeared and I had to bail. That's what safety bars are for, but still, I haven't needed them in forever.

A fellow gym rat suggested the problem was from a combination of lifting in sneakers (which give in the heel) plus squatting on an Olympic platform (which also gives). Stupid gym replaced my power rack with the Oly-setup, and won't let me squat in socks or barefeet. No chalk, no chains... guess power lifting is frowned upon there. But I can't get past the convenience of the gym being literally a hundred yards from my front door.

I got a pair of flat-soled canvas topsider knock-offs at a discount store for $8. Used only for lifting (my basement floor is cold!). Sorry i don't have an eight-dollar solution for the oly platform!

Sarauk2sf wrote: »

CarlKRobbo wrote: »

Sarauk2sf wrote: »

CarlKRobbo wrote: »

Sara, That Bench Arch is insane. I can't arch at all!!

My First attempt at video editing... I compete next weekend, so these are planned openers..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhTJra4CWLY

Nice!

Which federation are you competing in?

I would usually say that the bench was way too light for a opener as it flew up = your pause was really really long. but bench is an odd one as you also need to deal with the equipment which is likely different to what you train with.

I compete in the UK - GBFP (Great British Powerlifting Fed...), I'm in the 93KG class (<205Lbs).

Bench is under orders of the gym staff at the minute, as I've just got over a shoulder injury i had for a year, Plan on Comp is 120KG, then 145KG, No third attempt.
Plan is to get the bench into the 160KG Range for Nationals later this year

The pause was overdone as a bit of banter TBH, and on the argument, if i can handle that pause I'll handle any. We'd normally train a slow 3 count for Paused comp Reps

Injuries suck - trying to get past my knee injury at the moment.

Training for a longer pause is definitely better training for one that's too slow. I think the most amount of red lights I have seen have come from jumping the press (and rack) instructions on the bench. Luckily its never happened to me...yet anyway .

Yeah, This is the second time I've had this (Left) shoulder injured. I think It's been properly fixed for a month now. I'm lucky that the gym owners\staff\trainers know me well enough. They're just protecting me with an extra month, and a program to ease back into the heavy weights slowly.....

Hope your knee is better soon. I can't imagine having to handle that (I cycle into work, as well as being on my feet all day in work!).

We have the same issues on fails - Red lights are mainly for commands.. So many don't pause\Rack early.. My last attempt at 145KG, I pressed the weight into the rack... Judges said I'd have possibly got a 2-1 if I'd waited for the rack command.... It's the only lift I've red lighted in comps (5 completed so far) That weight was a crazy PB attempt though, this time, It's a lot safer, and I've trained a lot closer to it this time..

2x3x350, 1st time; here's the first set.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnjNZIUPX4k

TheNewKristin wrote: »

Hit a PR of 200 on my deadlift. Wooo. Stuck @ 160 on my squat though.

You'll get past it; how's your form?

Been lifting since 2009. I always though dead lifts were stupid and a waste of time. After a torn back muscle that plagued me for a year I began to stretch and squat and dead lift heavy. I started dead lifting the middle of April this year. My 1RM on May 2 was 365. Saturday I pulled 365 for 4 sets of 5. Today I was going to do singles at 385 but I felt really good and ended up doing 4 sets of 3 at 385. It was a good day. I never thought deads would be my favorite lift.

And by the way. I have no more back issues.

This threads too quite ATM... So Lessson - KEEP Going... Be Patient... It takes time, but is sooooo Worth it....

2 years ago, as a stupid Newb, i did this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTyjOvFZi48&amp;list=PL49Vbkb_-jP9jiTJepLFl8PDt42nRloXD&amp;index=5

Last night i did this:

So after my shoulder injuries, my doc had me on a 30-day no-lifting restriction. After I was allowed back in the gym, I had to start ultra-light (25% max) and slowly work my way back up. The first few weeks felt ridiculous but pain-free, so I've been slowly increasing and now am up to 50% max. I don't know if it's just psychological or not, but it seems to me my muscles are smaller than they were before, so I'm looking forward to getting back above 75% again and making my muscles work for a living. My days of hitting PR's every few weeks are probably over, but I can still look forward to making strength gains, albeit more slowly.

Several changes.

--> I used to go for powerlifting totals, doing sets of 1-3 on my main lifts and 4-6 on supplementals. Now it's sets of 5 on my mains and sets of 10 on the others.

--> Also some programming changes; when my work schedule changed and limited me to twice per week lifting, I broke my body parts up as chest/back and shoulders/legs. This caused a double-whammy on my shoulders, especially if I didn't get a day of rest between. Now I'm upper-body vs lower-body/abs/deadlift.

--> I used to be guilty of walking from my car to the bench press. Now I spend ten minutes to jog an easy-paced mile before I do some rotator-cuff warm-up exercises. THEN I go to the bench.

--> One of my old favorite exercises was the DB front-raise to work my anterior shoulders. However, between my chest work and OHP my doc says I'm already hitting my anterior delts hard enough, I need to spend more time focusing on my non-show muscles: rear-delts and hamstrings specifically. I also am upping work on my lats just a touch: I used to do a 1:1 ratio of chest reps/back reps, now it's more like a 1:1.5 ratio.

Previous actual squat 1RM tested in the gym (earlier this year) was 325. Today, I knocked out 5 sets of 5 at 325.


edit: Clarified that it was squat that I was referring to.