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Haven't read your journal, but have you been doing GHRs? I noticed an immediate improvement in how my knee felt after getting them in for a few sessions. Nowadays I have no knee pain from ME jumping/sprinting barefoot. Before I really had to ice everyday, lol.

Yea I don't have a GHR machine/set up at my gym so I do natural GHR's. I notice my knee feels immediately better after doing about 3 sets of them supersetted with quad stretches. Plus I foam roll before and after doing them. Definitely notice an immediate difference.

I was about to suggest GHRs but they're the reason I messed up my right knee. Sure he was messed up to begin with but to do natural glute ham raises, even on top of 2 or 3 folded aerobic mats was overkill for my knee. The knee cap gets caught in one position and gets compressed when you do them so... I would reccomend against them. If you have a machine though, I have no idea how that feels/works.

I feel comfortable doing natural GHR's. Maybe my mats have less friction than yours, because my knees are never a concern doing them. If they are in the future, I can use shorter mats that will let my knees track off the edge of the mats and then the knee caps are free to move.

Wish I could try out a GHR machine though. I can't even do one rep with a natural GHR. ALMOST up to doing a full negative with no faceplant!

I don't know how much you can stimulate your hamstrings with your squats

Almost not at all lol (for me). Maybe they do get stimulated, but not even close to the amount my quads and glutes do.

I am with raptor , keep RDLs in using higher reps , sth like 3x6-8.

The thing is, I want to do the 5/3/1 program as planned. I read the entire book (~100 pages) the night I got it and I don't want to change anything. Basically, the bottom line is this:

1 year ago I was benching 210x5. 1 month ago, I was benching 210x5.

It's time for slow, consistent gains that won't go away. And that's why I chose 5/3/1. Slow progression, but it will add up over time. 5/3/1 pretty much guarantees a 5lb gain every month for upper body and 5-10lbs a month for lower body. That's 60lbs on my bench press in a year, which is more than it's ever gone up (not counting noob gains my first year). And lets count it as 90lbs on my deadlift in a year, so I can go from like 350 to 430 in one year.

That's excellent progress. Once my knee heals up, I can put 90lbs on my squat in a year and go from 380 to 470 max. AND KEEP THOSE GAINS. I've made a 70lb gain in 7 weeks using a 4/7/7 rep scheme squatting 3x a week, but those gains diminished soon after. I've done smolov jr for 9 weeks and gained 80lbs off of it, but those gains diminished as well.

Time for me to just make slow, consistent progress without even having to go overboard with frequency and stuff.

About setup , i use something different than you: i load the bar at the ground , make the 1st rep a regular deadlift and then carry on with the RDL reps , very easy and convenient.
Just my 2 cents.

Oh I see... do you count that first deadlift as part of the set? Meaning 1 deadlift plus 5 rdl's equal one set of 6?

What was your concern with deadlifts if you didn't start the program with them lol?

Deadlifts have been given a bad rep for injuries lol... but then again, everytime I see people do them on youtube they do it with horrible form.

Well the question is - do you REALLY need to get that heavy when doing your RDLs? Use them more as an assistance exercise in the higher rep ranges.

Yes I do! I need to continue improving my hamstring strength, not just get them to a certain point and stop. Since I've neglected them for so long, I've been hit with jumper's knee (along with other reasons... basically quad-dominance ruined me).

I'm switching to regular deads next week.

Man I always screw my de-loads and end up losing strength.


 

May I ask what is the purpose of your twice daily squatting? Is it maintenance? Are you increasing your squat?

Seems like your top single for a few months now has been 440... maybe 455 a while back. I'd like to know what this little experiment is looking for.

I hate the American style of squatting once per week also. But dammit, I got jumper's knee in both knees (but heavy in my left knee) and gave in.

I'm doing 5/3/1 now. You should look into that. Slow, consistent gains.

Yea I might do one-armed flys and unilateral tricep extensions to have my lagging parts catch up.

I did that for my rear delts and it worked awesomely (it's in my log). Don't see why it wouldn't work for my other body parts, except for the pecs, which is probably caused by a postural problem.

I would go to parallel so it's easier to gauge your depth.

If you're going slightly above parallel, how do you know your hitting the same depth all the time? If you are increasing 5lbs/week on ur squat, how do you know you're not also squatting slightly shallower each time?

On the other hand, if you hit below parallel on every rep, then you are good to go. As long as you're hitting below parallel you know if the numbers are going up, it's because your strength is going up.




Now, you may be thinking: "So? What if I go deep (but still below parallel), and just get more shallow and shallow in my deep squat but still stay below parallel. It's the same thing!"

Here's the difference:

In the first situation where you're above parallel, you don't have something "set" to judge whether or not your depth is acceptable. In the second situation where you're going to just below parallel, you know that if you go above parallel it's too high, so you can easily just never go above parallel. That's your limit and it's easy to gauge depth by that. It's harder to gauge depth if you're half-squatting.