Adarq.org

Quote from: LanceSTS on August 20, 2012, 03:41:33 pm

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.

appreciate the kind words man. We are glad to have you here man, I see big things coming from you in the future if you keep  busting ass and training the way youve  been.  Keep up the good work in here, always like to read this log.

What if you ditch the bench press completely and focus on the overhead press? Anything bad with that approach? Do the dips do anything for your pecs in terms of whatever hypertrophy?

 Thats a reasonable approach, we cant do it that way since most of my guys get tested on the  bench press, and it can impact the rankings at school/combine testing.  We use the football  bar a lot though, which allows the hands to be in a neutral position.

 For pure performance in sports though, I would focus most the time on push press and press, using a close grip  bench press every now and then to aid the other two lifts.

For shot putters we use a close grip incline along with push presses.

Dips done with a forward lean hit the pecs hard, have to  be careful there too though.  Dips tend to be a little more shoulder friendly than bench press due to the scapula not  being pinned down underneath you.

 If pec hypertrophy is the focus, you will generally do well with dumbell  bench, on a slight incline works really well. 

You should do a video^^^ it's hard to understand.

Especially at 1... narrow grip, and "less" for longer armed athletes? So if you have long arms you should use an even narrower grip? Doesn't make any sense, so probably I'm getting it wrong...

 The longer the arms, the more detrimental a wide grip is to the shoulders and pectorals. Again, thats MY experience,  but if you look around raw lifters, youll find that to stand true much of the time as well.  Search youtube for "glenn chabot  bench press".  Or look at konstantinovs, etc.  There is a reason they do it this way, and its definitely not due to it making the lift a shorter movement.

I also have different looking bars at my gym (olympic bars nonetheless) with different markers on them... not sure what "knurling" means.

 Where the rough part of the  bar starts.

Yo Lance, I'm gonna switch things up; I've been sl box squatting for a while, but now I want to progress my full pistol squat. I had a workout session last Saturday where I lowered to a full pistol squat depth (broke parallel and then some), but then I saw this. Would something like that be better than going to full? Just curious.

 Im confused as to what you mean man, in the video you linked hes definitely doing a full squat...

Quote from: Mutumbo000 on August 21, 2012, 02:23:25 am

I still prefer the bench press though since you can throw up more weight on it

Yeah, it's also safer. It's not like too many people die bench pressing or anything.

how is  it "safer"?

 some more stuff on the ohp and shoulder health. 

I Don't Agree...
by Christian Thibaudeau - 02/09/2011
Good coaches can sometimes disagree on some points even though they are generally in agreement on other subjects.

And both can boast a wide range of success stories, making them reliable in their opinion (you can't argue with success).

Doesn't mean that one is "more wrong" than the other or that both are going at wr against each other.

Joe DeFranco's latest article includes an opinion that I don't agree with, and I'm saying that while having nothing but tremendous respect for the guy.

He mentions that we should avoid the overhead press if you are trying to build your shoulders. That only one out of X athlete can perform it safely.

Since the overhead press is the cornerstone of most of my programs, I don't agree (obviously).

My shoulders were never healthier than when I competed as an olympic lifter, a time where overhead pressing, the push press and jerk were roughly 25% of my training.

In fact I never had any shoulder pains before going away from doing a lot of overhead work. And as soon as I started putting an emphasis on various forms of overhead pressing instead of bench pressing my shoulder problems went away.

And I'm not the only one, Jim Wendler told me the exact same thing when I visited him and Dave in Ohio.

Glenn Pendlay, who is an amazing coach who works with athletes from many sports also put overhead work at a premium, specifically the push press.

And as a group, olympic lifters generally have VERY healthy shoulders despite doing overhead work for 50% of their training volume.

It is my opinion that those who have shoulder problems when overhead pressing simply use bad technique or have flexibiility issues.

Yesterday 01:09
Personally I tend to agree with Glenn Pendlay and believe that the push press is the suprior overhead movement. It bypasses the weak zone, which is also the position where most injuries can occur. From experience it's the best movement to build the shoulders.

I also noticed with myself and dozens of clients, that gains in overhead strength are highly correlated with gains in bench pressing strength; I had my biggest bench press gains when I did an overhead press spec.

another question, what if one day im about to do a workout and i notice something is off, like my core, potentially from another workout from the previous day or X days ago, would you say that's a good excuse to either wear a belt when doing core lifts like squat/hang cleans, just for that day, or skip the day altogether?

Your "core" will be fine.  You dont have any reason to need a belt right now.