Adarq.org

Well it's interesting because the longer the plant, the "straighter" the first leg you plant is going to be. Straighter = higher hamstring contribution. At least in theory.

But usually it means you're just recruiting the whole posterior chain better and/or your shock absorption has improved.

Haha told ya you were there!

And you still have a ways to go until you can say "I'm very good at movement efficiency now" - meaning, you can still jump higher by continuing with practicing jumps and whatever else that you currently do now that got you here.

But how do you do it then? I mean you only have both of your toes in contact with the leg press plate... how do you establish full foot contact with the plate in order to lower the plate down? Without raising one leg off the plate?

I don't know... my leg press has some "rail" in the middle that just makes you put your legs very wide and weird... and it affects ROM.

I don't like either the Smith machine nor the leg press.

In the Smith machine I have to "roll" the bar back on the pins, and that roll must occur by me bending my back. I've had TERRIBLE lower back pain from that TWO times. So no, thanks.

In the leg press there's a huge risk of the "plate" of the leg press against which you push against will slip off your toes, since that's all that is in contact with it, and then destroy you. It doesn't feel safe at all. Plus the ROM is very very low on the leg press.

So my only option is with a free barbell, but it's hard to keep balance.

It actually looks good... I have two observations as well:

1) Do you always have this tendency to walk/stand around in a bent knee position? It looks to me from the way you walk around, stand etc that you prefer to take away some tension from your hamstrings/your hamstrings are tight/you prefer to walk around with some tension in your quads? Is any of this true?

2) If you pause at the moment of hip extension, especially with the ball in your hand, you don't go "all the way through" with it. You're better without the ball but looking at it it feels like there isn't a lot of hip HYPERextension ROM going on. I have the same problem.

So what does that mean? It means either the glutes don't fire properly in that particular movement and/or the hip flexors are tight. Have you ever been consistent doing hip thrusts and then stretching the hip flexors?

I think for both you and me, if we solve this hip hyperextension problem, because it's so glaring and obvious, it could make a ton of difference even at our current levels of strength. It messes MORE up than just the power output - it messes positioning, coordination, what the arms do when the legs do something etc etc etc. It's more than just power leakage.

As for what Today is saying, I totally agree. It's like driving a car. First you need to learn to drive a car. A slow car is good for that. It's better (in a way) to start weak and start getting coordinated. If you're strong and you're not coordinated and you start applying a lot of power in an uncoordinated movement you can more easily get injured.

Then as you learned to drive this slow car you can start working on upgrading the engine (strength train). And then once you have this faster engine you can start working on trying to drive the car faster, as the new engine allows that to happen.