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I agree, it's fantastic. It's coming back next month.

I've not benched "heavy" since Friday but i've had doms around my chest. This is probably a good sign. Im putting it down to squatting upright.

I think i'm close to moving from average to fitness in bodyfat

Ripped (<10%) --- Athletic (<13%) --- Fitness (<15%) --- Me --- Average (~20%) --- Fat (>20%)

I'll prob be in the "fitness"  category when I get to 82kg. And athletic at around 80kg.

On a tangent, if I were to start doing a lot of cardio, my bellyfat would go down appreciably and i'd look a lot leaner but without changing my strength/weight ratio much. But i'll do that later, even though i'm sick of being fat :/

For what it's worth my recent strain went away the day I did sprints. Like literally the moment after sprints I noticed it was gone. Before that it was lingering around annoyingly refusing to heal. I could have taken time off and maybe that would have done the same thing but it worked out well for me just training normally!

Quote from: entropy on August 20, 2012, 12:19:03 pm

Here's my argument for (F)SQ over BS

Have only been doing SQ for a short time but already

1. SQ is quickly catching up to BS, last wk I did 105x3 on SQ vs 110x2 on BS - very little to differentiate them
2. SQ form is better than BS form
3. progress in BS comes at the cost of form - squatmornings happen because legs are weak and back is much stronger, lighter backsquats do nothing for legs, and heavier backsquats are too much for legs and eaten up greedily for breakfast by much stronger back
4. SQ is remedial for squatmorning BS pattern - it fixes that and it teaches uprightness which will carry over to BS, in fact already has to some degree

fwiw, youre not nearly the only one thats come to this conclusion.  As long as youre keeping balance in your legs with the hams and quads, go for it.  

I much appreciate your by-needs approach to training. It's suprisingly refreshing in this world of hard and fast internet experts. From stumbling thru pitfalls ive grown wary of dogmatic 'you must do X or you are pussy' thinking which doesn't take into account what's best for a given individual. And done, i'll heed your refrain to keep hamstring work. Either an extra day of RDLs to make 2x weekly - or try to setup a makeshift GHR or just keep one day, probably wednesdays for backsquats.

RDLs and Front Squats are my two special lifts. They come easier to me, form is good, and I am progressing well while enjoying my training. Compared to conventional deadlifts and LBBS backsquats it's a world of difference. I'm going to stick with them and make them my bread and butter and see how far they take me in becoming athletic.

Today was a bad diet day. I blew it both meals, meal 1 - I had a slice of cake and about a bowl of creamy chicken pasta. Then for dinner I had another slice of cake after eating dinner. It doesn't sound like much when i've written it down, but that's on top of my usual meals. It just brings home the lesson I learnt earlier today - that while cutting I have no business touching any food with excess dietary fat. Pasta is ok but that rich pasta was bad. Dietary fat will just go right back as bodyfat.  Eggs and lowfat milk fat is ok, even a teaspoon of butter for cooking is ok. What's not ok are fatty foods that do not belong in my day-to-day, nutrition as a (wannabe) athlete. Lesson learnt I hope. I want to salvage the week/month and still hit my goal of being ~82.5kg. Will need to lose a just under a kilo in 10 days.  Should be do-able.

Btw I realised I've actually looked leaner about a month and a half ago even though fatter and weighed more!  How does that work you ask? It's because I was doing a lot more cardio then. I was playing basketball regularly and that preferentially burns bellyfat for me (maybe not for everyone in general). So I've got that trick under my sleeve in my battle against bodyfat. I've also had good success in the past with keto diets - I lost the majority of my weight from a heavy ~250lb/110kg using low carb diets. Another weapon I've not yet used is using stimulants. I was hoping to get under 15% before pulling out any special tricks but we'll see how it goes, the option is always there. I'd rather save them for when I need them though. That way I still have them under my disposal to break plateaus.

Training
BS 3x90,2x100 (these were just warmups but cos I didn't do anything heavier than this i'll log these)
SQ 4x87.5-95 (nb notation for 4x95,4x92.5,4x90,4x87.5)
BS - 87.5x0 (didnt even do one rep lol)
BP - nope lol
RDL - 3x122.5 (PR), 10x97.5 (PR), 10x90

I only did front squats, wasn't planning only doing front squats, it just happened that way. Btw from now on I shall call the FS just a plain squat. To me it's the real deal, the only genuine squat. The other one is a BACK squat =  back/hamstring exercise, just an assistance exercise for the real squat.

I have to say a word about higher rep (reminder = front)  squats. I found these a wonderful exercise. After I was done squatting, I couldn't do anything else though. It fatigued all my back muscles, so much so that I could barely unrack 87.5kg (!!) for a backsquat warmup. In fact I just racked it, cos it felt so heavy on my back just walking it out. So a weight I could rep 4 times in my 4th set of squats, i couldn't even walk out of the rack on my back. Weird.

It goes on, the same thing happened with bench press. I got thru my warmups ok, but first rep of my workset and I hit the pins. It wasnt happening. Squats tired out my upper body (!) - i cudnt bench press.

RDLs were a struggle to start with, warming up, i could barely grip the bar with my 2nd warmup - 3x90kg. I somehow got 122.5x3 with good form, and then after that, the last 2 sets were real easy. I had made a conscious decision that if my grip was my weakness, then i'd try to get thru the set quickly, cos the longer it went, the more my grip wud suffer, and i'd fail not cos of my hamstrings but becos of grip. Turned out real easy when done quickly, i could have probably done another 10 reps that way!

But this changes everything. Squats, real squats are the antidote to the shitty excuse i'd been doing before. And i need to put the backsquat on the back burner, i'll do them dont worry, but just as an afterthought, i'll maintain my strength and slowly increase them over time but it's not a main priority now. The priority is to progress squats and once i get them up i'll have taught my body the right way to behave.

The darkness is finally over.

prob obvious to you lance but when you look at the right pic, if that guy kept going deeper, his back wud get more vertical (this is prob true for any squat regardless of bar placement?) as well as his knees more forward. of course that might not possible with low bar with hips way back. I only just made that connection recently. Am thinking when I switch to highbar, i'll work on mobility so my squats are deep and upright.

Think about it this way man, your body is getting into a position it needs to be to use the muscles that are the strongest, or the movement patterns its most familiar with.

That makes sense but are we on the same page. I'm not talking about the last half of the lift which is a definite GM. I'm talking about the segment consisting of moving out of the hole up to 1/4 squat position, which then finishes with the GM in the next segment. To get to the 1/4 squat position what musculature is responsible for the movement out of the hole. That's not the lower back is it. The last segment (GM) definitely is all back without doubt

In most cases, the lean happens when guys want to use their lower back more to aid the lift.  Plenty of quad dominant people squat upright as hell, in fact, they tend to miss the lift very quickly with even a slight lean.  

In my video, at the 1/4 squat position after coming out of the hole, my back is fully horizontal. No doubt whatsover that the rest of the lift is all good morning. and if thats my body getting itself in a position to lift the weight then that's happening because the bar went fwd and i lost the back angle

I havent read  the article your referencing, but if he is talking about a low bar squat it would make more sense.  

its titled "Powerlifting, Year One" - by gary gibson if you're interested

When ppl do 1/4 squats, their back isn't horizontal obviously, but if it was, then the lift wud not be a quad dominant movement. but in my case with a horizontal back, it was all GM, no quad. I think Gary is wrong anyway, quads dont move the bar out of the bottom of a LBBS. And in later years he changed his mind on the LBBS and he thinks HBBS is better become its more leg dominant than is LBBS

Shit thats a lot of reps haha. I might have to back off the backsquat volume then if I wanna increase front squat volume. Not sure I care, I have started to think the backsquat is a complete waste of time now. I should have joined a gym and used a leg press all this time. fucking barbell propaganda man.

Sunday jumping practice .. did about 40 jumps, no pickup games, got lazy

5 SVJ, 5 dunk attempts
2x8 band swings (yellow, a bit too easy, i was trying to save my orange band by using yellow more but yellow is close to useless)
5 SVJ, 5 dunk attempts (best SVJ attempt was when I hit the rim with my arm under my wrist, thats very close to my best two step vertical)
2x10 yellow band jumps
Got my first SVJ dunk, it was bullshit

seems the band stuff actually helps add a few inches. i was jumping pretty mediocre before I used the bands. and yes i was warm and i did lots of jumps before trying banded swings/jumps

not bad an effort for a day i was feeling far from 100%

but i stupidly left my band behind so gotta drive back now at night to get it before someone else takes it. gives me an excuse to take a measuring tape and see how high those rings are, my friend said they're low, and i suspect as much but i'd like to know for sure