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Back feels pretty fresh next day thankfully! Will try to get my recovery perfect today and make scheduled PRs tomorrow. I ate ~250g of protein yesterday which is a lot more than I would normally eat (~150g). Also ate a variety of sources, dairy, chicken, eggs, beef and grain. Will do the same today. If it's the last day of this impromptu bulk then might as well go all out. If i have another week after tomorrow then i'll have to play it by feel.

Well like I said - if I were to keep the elbows high then my reach with the palms/fingers would be behind my back... somewhere around the trapezius. So that's where the bar should be in order for me to keep the elbows high. It's basically impossible to do with the bar on the shoulders.

It sounds to me like what you think is 'high elbows' is too high. It's just a stupid cue man, stuff white people say for no good reason. The actual goal is to have the elbows perpependicular to your torso, that's all, nothing more. If you take the cue too literally then you'll indeed find it an impossible position to maintain. But without seeing what are doing this thread is kinda pointless so i'm bowing out, you're so frustrating to help man. lol.

Yeah I still don't understand what happened or who was at fault. Was it the jury or the audience or the chinese coaches? As I recall they thought they had 2 mins before Lu cud lift. But the judges thought the other chinese lifter was up, and so he only had 1 min. So stupid. They should have just left him have the WR attempt. Gutted! I was looking at his results, he could easily place in the 85kg class he's that strong.

Many ppl struggle with the FS rack even professional oly dudes. I've heard of SHORT arms being a problem with a good rack but first time i've heard of long arms being one? I suspect you might be mistaken partly because I have long arms and the rack has never been a problem for me but mostly because people always struggle with mobility, flexibility and comfort when they start doing FS - I think that's pretty much universal. Like Joe suggests a wider grip might be more comfortable to start with it and then slowly over time you can bring your hands in as you gain the mobility. Otherwise try straps.

if you are careful and deliberate about your diet, you can add a lot of weight without putting on a lot of fat.

Is it diet or training? I'm eating enough to gain weight but not seeing much mass gain. Perhaps I'd see better results by doing a traditional BB program? Suppose I ate the same but did a bulking mass growth routine, I'd probably have more muscle to show for it. Actually i'm skeptical of even that. Could it make *much* of a difference? I'd probably need to take drugs to grow muscle. I was going to say to KF, I don't think I would be a very strong 100+kg lifter. Probably a very mediocre one. But I can be a good, strong 75-77kg  (basketball) athlete. My top competitive weight class for lifts might be 77kg or 85kg rather than 94 or 105-110kg that might be suggested by my height. Also not a powerlifter, not very good at lifting, doesn't come naturally, don't have the bone structure for it. Long limbs and small joints (ankles, knees, elbows, wrists).  So have to be realistic and embrace a more realistic ceiling. I can get very strong around 75-80kg while being lean. Getting over 80kg and i start getting sloppy. And by 85kg i'm pretty fat and unathletic. It's a balance I seek.

Quote from: entropy on August 15, 2013, 02:27:19 am

I just want to make a note in the log that this week I've been taking an extra 4g of fish oil per day for a total of 10g. Even with a decent amount of squat volume, i'm dom free. This is new for me, i've had leg doms for the last 6-7 weeks of this squatting program. It's also made a lot of the usual pain and niggles disappear. Knees feel good. Back feels almost 100% now after the deadlift misadventure. Achilles tendinitis is reduced every day. I've not changed diet much, if at all, so the one thing which I can point to definitively is fish oil. 

What kinda fish oil you take?  This is complete broscience but when I was taking the caps I didn't notice much but I swear I felt a bit less joint pain when I was drinking the liquid version.  It was disgusting though...  Probably coincidence but wanted to get your experience.

Just 1000mg caps. It's called BioSource. New brand for me, i haven't taken this one before, it was the only one I found at the pharmacy at the time. I tried the liquid one too last year, that was good stuff, tasted funky even though they tried to mask it. Also fairly expensive compared to caps. I have stockpiled a lot of caps in the fridge lol cause I found it on special that's why since ramped up to 10g intake. Oh yea and i keep it in teh fridge, a friend of mine told me it's better stored that way, i just took it on faith.

Btw I meant to ask you on what you thought of the Marion Jones saga?

Training
FS 3Fx128 (PR), 1x127.5
BS 5Fx130 (PR), 3x125, 6x120, 7x115 (PR), 8x112.5 (PR)
BP 5x87 (PR), 7x80 (PR)

FS notes:
So I tinkered with my rack pos a bit. Made it much more comfy. But the downside was I couldn't maintain it thru a hard 3RM set. Perhaps it's not as strong?  So for the first time in my life, I failed a FS set with the bar leaving my hands. I also maintained a very relaxed tempo in this set which might have cost me a bit of extra aggressiveness. The other thing was my rack was a lot weaker today than normal from wednesdays chinups. Which really annoys me because I couldn't give less fucks about my chinup and my front squat means everything to me so it's frustrating that it cost a PR attempt.

I reviewed the video and yep my grip on the right side gave way, this sucks. I notice my R hand was a bit too far from shoulders. Bringing it in wud have made the difference probably. Like I said this never happens to me, my grip is rock solid when I fail a FS i always remain in control of it all the way down. I had already done 3/4 of the lift when R side of the rack gave way. This sucks! Should have had that 3PR man. Next time grr.

BS notes:
Stripped the bar of 29.5kg of small plates and replaced with 2x15kgs. Thought it was time to use big boy plates. The set was very hard, even the latter warmups of 120x2 and 127.5. MY HBBS being so quad dominant as it, quads were noticeably less rocket powered as wednesdays. I think i might have bitten off more than I can chew in terms of recovery last workout with my eagerness to try hipthrusts and do a lot of upperbody work. Still, I punched in the squat volume.

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Progress summary:
2 weeks down, 2 weeks to go. Only 6 workouts left!

Plan from here:
The next 6 workouts will be different.

I'm doing away with all the accessory stuff and only focusing on my squats. I don't care where my bp or chinups are for the duration of this period, i can always bring them up later, there is plenty of time. My reasoning for not wanting to do any more accessory work? For example if I do a lot of chins, there goes my FS rack in the next workout. Abs are too torched to squat heavy. That's not good. So to avoid that i'm going to take it easy while i'm focusing on my squat.

So here is what I'll do. Maintain my bp. Maintain my chinup. No other exercises, no deadlifts, rack pulls, good mornings, hip thrusts, etc. So that means one or two sets per week of bp/ohp/chinup and that's it. And mo squats.

The majority of my energy, effort and recovery will now go towards squatting HBBS-5x140kg and probably FS-3x130kg.

FS is taking a backseat because it's kind of a pointless lift right now. It will be done 2x week only. My backsquat is much better for building quad strength, FS displays it.  And even that, not very well because it's currently limited by my rack strength not my leg strength. Actually FS would be much better mass builder due to the bounce - but it's very hard to do lots of volume of FS with heavy weights whereas I can do a lot of volume with heavier BS so bit of a catch 22 there. Still I have full confidence when I lay off BS volume later, i'll be able to ramp up my FS easily all the way to a 3x140kg triple at some point this year without much fuss (=2xbw, 75kg BW w/ rock hard abz too). My reasoning is this :- if I add 12kg to my BS in 6 sessions, that means my quads are a lot stronger by the end. And that will def translate to at least 6kg on my FS so long as rack strength keeps pace.  So. That's the plan going on from here! B00m!

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ps. PR 1000 posts lol.

If you can do strong front squats then you know how to recruit the quads out of the hole (and the glutes).
Interesting that he noted "hip thrusts" there. I'm becoming a very big fan of them the more experience I have with them.

Yeah but I still have NO IDEA what muscles are responsible for my front squats. I know what muscles SHOULD be responsible for front squats, but I don't know if the same applies to MY front squat lol. It will remain a complete mystery. Re HT - came out of the blue when he wrote those down. But if you think about it, I used mainly FS for a long time. BS sporadically when healthy.  No deadlifts. No RDLs etc. So maybe I am deficient there? He must have noticed something in the way I squatted? Not sure. But I like them a lot already. Just need to work on doing full ROM and setting up the equipment properly.

Quote from: Raptor on August 14, 2013, 03:30:15 pm

If you can do strong front squats then you know how to recruit the quads out of the hole (and the glutes).

yes. IMO, problem here is weak BW.

you get our of this twig mode, you will improve your squat ratio and potentially be more explosive.

lol. I'm working on it man. It's getting harder to put on weight though ;(, and i'm also afraid of a long demoralising cut after if i gain too much, so i'm reluctant to step up the eating. But i've already gained a good amount of weight, sadly half of it was during downtime due to injury and what not. I have gained enough mass to get my goal lifts I think (>>2xbw HBBS and 2xbw FS). But no where near enough to move some serious weight (~180kg). So that will have to wait til next winter. I can't gain too much now because I need to be in shape for bball in april and if I bite off too much, i wont be able to cut to sub 10% to be maximally athletic on the court.