Adarq.org

Quote from: T0ddday on August 24, 2012, 04:25:11 pm

Quote from: D4 on August 24, 2012, 01:42:37 am

T0ddday, when you didn't bench for a year and just did those other exercises instead, I know your bench strength went up after utilizing the exercise again for 3 weeks, but in the mean time did your chest atrophy?

If anyone else has experience with this, I'd like to hear it too.

I'm happy with my current physique, and upper-body wise I want to focus on getting my push press way up since I want carryover to basketball and it'll also get my bench up anyways, so I'm considering taking out the bench press since I'm already pretty decent at it, but not at the cost of chest atrophy.

If it did, it wasn't obvious.  Everyone's different but generally I tend to hold on to muscle mass pretty easily.  However, I would bet you wouldn't see much muscle atrophy from dropping bench unless you are either extremely muscular right now OR you also embark on a very restrictive diet. 

What you will see when dropping an exercise like that is a loss of muscle tonus which will happen pretty quickly but also resume pretty soon as you start targeting the muscle group again.  I don't know your training history, but I would wager that most of the people on this msg board (though there are exceptions), have added (or lost) very little actual muscle mass as a result of their weight training and incorrectly assume gains or losses in strength, muscle tone, and body weight are the direct result of significant gains or loss of muscle tissue.

This may be a stupid question, but what do you mean by loss of muscle tonus exactly?

Maybe I should just do some 3x5 Bench once a week after my push presses

Think of it as semi-permanent pump.  For example, if you don't work out at all and then do a bunch of close-grip pullups your biceps will fill with blood (post workout pump) for a couple hours after the workout.  If you continue to do this the pump will always reduce in size following the workout but the between pump muscle tension will be greater than before you lifted at all.  This adaption to a semi-tense muscle state (muscle tonus) is very often misinterpreted as actual hypertrophy.   

If you go on vacation and sit around and drink pina coladas for a couple weeks you will lose your muscle tonus (that bicep vein may become less visible)  but actual muscle loss will be minor provided you didn't have an extreme amount of muscle or go on an extreme diet. 

If you want to keep your muscle tonus in your chest you will need to do some movement that involves the chest.  This doesn't have to be bench press.  In fact if you don't intend to add mass or strength high-rep dumbell flys could even be better.  I don't train bodybuilders but I do know they know every trick in the book as far as which exercises do the best job in getting blood flow into muscles to maintain tone.  It's very crucial for them when dieting.

Quote from: Raptor on August 21, 2012, 03:47:44 pm

Wasn't Rippetoe saying that out of 11 yearly fatalities in the US due to weightlifting, 9 are during a bench press?

No idea what he said.  The thing you have to take into consideration when looking at statistics involving exercises, is that the ones that show up as causing the most (insert anything), are often the exercises which are most common.  The  bench press is one of those exercises that most everyone does, even if thats all they do when they first get a weight set, so its going to show up high on any of those lists. 

Although I would also prioritize overhead pressing over bench pressing for athletes who are not tested in the bench press... It's important to note that a statistic like this can be REALLY misleading (As is a lot of what Rippetoe espouses) and not just for the reason stated above.  While the relative rate of injuries to the muscle groups involved in the lift (pecs, shoulders, etc) are usually indicative of the safety of an exercise, fatalities and traumatic injuries are indicative of poor execution of the movement. 

Not only is the bench press the first exercise that most people attempt it's also one of the most ego-driven lifts performed.  Walk into any college rec center in the US and you are bound to see a 160 pound kid "benching" 225 pounds with his spotter (or "partner") providing a huge amount of assistance on each concentric rep. 

However, you will rarely see people overhead pressing 50 pounds more than their max while a partner hangs above them pulling the weight up.  If you did... there would be a whole lot of traumatic injuries occuring during OHP.

Additionally, the bench press requires a spotter.  In the event of a muscle pull or cramp you can't simply dump the weight like you can in the squat, OHP, deadlift, etc.  Of course if you don't lift with a spotter then a pec tear can turn into a pec tear + a crushed windpipe.   


Bottom line is: If you bench, do it safely.  If you OHP do it safely.  If you do both safely then the bench press may be more likely to cause injury or strain to muscles used in the lift but neither should have a higher likelihood of fatality or traumatic injury.

BW = ???
SORENESS = lats, abs
ACHES/INJURIES = none
FATIGUE = moderate

- warm up
incl a bunch of layups

- broad jump x 4
~35'6"

- DL bound x 4,4
both ~35'2"

- squat 310 x 5,3,3
might have had four on second and third sets but they would have been very grindy, not worth it. first set is a PR.

- SS1: ring push up x 10
- SS1: DB row 75 x 10e
- SS1 info: 3 rounds, ~90s rest between exercises/rounds

- hanging leg raise x 10,10,10

- stretch

There you go, T0ddday, jumped just under 36' on the broad jumps and a few inches short of that on the DL bounds.

Nice job.  I knew your reactive ability would bring those numbers closer together.  I finally got a video up of broad jumping, bounding, and my terrible running vertical jump, any advice is appreciated:

http://www.adarq.org/forum/progress-journals-experimental-routines/t0ddday-journal/new/#new

Im not very sure but, from the vids it looks like gatlin and blake legs movement are faster than bolt; but Bolt being taller gets and advantage for all the steps he gives.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions that's repeated over and over by the media as an attempt to somehow describe Bolt.  Yes, Bolt's strides are longer than the other athletes.  But his advantage in stride length is largely a result of his superior power that he applies to the track and not simply because he is taller.  Ryan Bailey is pretty tall as well... how come he doesn't have this advantage over Tyson Gay?  

Bolt's main advantage is his otherwordly top-end speed.  If you watch any major final (2008,2009 worlds, etc) you will notice that when the athletes hit max V (around 65-70m) Bolt seems to pull away from the entire field.  If it was simply larger steps as a result of being taller then he would maintain an incremental advantage after each step that would grow linearity throughout the race...  Instead Bolt is incredibly elastic and able to continue to apply force despite extremely small ground contact times and reach a just ridiculous speed that nobody else can match.  The next two guys who come closest to applying this force and hitting high max V are two of the shorter athletes (gay and blake [gay was injured but watch 2009]), the other tall athletes (Bailey, Powell actually have pretty poor max V).

Stride frequency (legs movement) really has little bearing on sprinting speed.  Obviously shorter guys will have to reposition their legs at a faster rate than tall guys when moving at the same speed... but most world class sprinters have stride frequency which isn't much better than an amateur runner.  A simple towing drill really proves this: attach a band to a  stretched resistance band to a low level athlete and pull them forward as they run and they will have a stride frequency much greater than that of any elite athlete.... The problem isn't that they can't reposition their legs fast enough it's that they can't create enough force to get them going fast enough to need to reposition their legs that fast!  


***Note, while the point of this post is that Bolt's advantage isn't stride length as a result of his height.... that's not to say that those extremely long lever arms don't help him generate force... Additionally, remember that this is true largely for the short distance sprints.  In the 400m and especially 800m where ground forces have to be limited to avoid fatigue, exaggerated stride lengths of taller runners may provide an advantage.

If you really interested heres a paper:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11053354

I think the same applies in terms of deadlifts vs squats.

That's why some people have such good deadlift numbers and such poor squat numbers, especially if they high bar squat - you can't cheat using the lowerback as much in the squat as you can in the deadlift.

So obviously people with great lowerback strength but weak leg strength will deadlift much more than they can squat. Think Mutombo on this forum.

That's a great point.  I know I am a little late to the party but I don't know why Steven thinks you can't use your back to a large degree in squats and deadlifts.  Mutumbo's problem is actually common in track athletes (I think he has a sprinting background) who develop pretty intense isometric back strength but generally don't put their quads through a full range of motion until they get to the weight room.  I trained with a 135lb triple jumper who could easily deadlift 440lbs and powerclean 250lbs but couldn't squat 315 to save his life.   Long legs short torso and strong back and glutes will make an athlete find a way to perform every lift without using his quads. 

That said it's really all about the individual and the individuals athletic background.  Qualifying that you perform the lifts with "correct form" is somewhat silly IMHO because ideally compound strength lifts should be performed with the technique that allows you to lift the most weight safely, not the form that makes you "feel the burn" in your quads.  Lifting with form which doesn't allow you to handle the most weight you can makes an exercise lose it's usefulness as a measuring stick for strength improvement.

For me this involves performing a lot of front squats.  I first started squatting and powercleaning (using my back almost completely) in college as part of poor strength and conditioning program for sprinting,  I have deadlifted 560 at 195 without focusing on the lift and when I perform high-bar pause squats with more than 365 pounds on the bar I often end up turning the lift into a hybrid squat/good morning about halfway up.  My back is strong enough that holding my torso erect on the front squat is never the challenge (my weak quads and hamstrings are). 

Raising my max front squat triple from 275 to 325 over the last 6 months has done more for my quads than backsquatting would have.  Additionally, I am now able to perform pause back squats with more weight with less goodmorninish form.  I've raised my max standing vertical from about 34 to 36.5 inches as well despite gaining about 10lbs.   

Don't know if it's made me faster... Really don't believe weight training has that much carryover past about 50 meters and before 50 meters it's only tenths or hundreds of seconds that can be improved anyway.   

The point is... Maybe I could have made the same gains doing Low-Bar back squat with the form Steven prescribed, ie. trying to keep my torso upright and making my LBBS look more like a vertical movement.... But this would have been extremely difficult and hard to accomplish especially when dealing with fatigue.  Front squats allow an athlete with my characteristics to get to the weight room, throw some weight on the bar, try and lift as much as possible, and get stronger legs which carryover to things like vertical jumping.  That's a huge advantage IMHO. 

Quote from: T0ddday on August 03, 2012, 07:56:16 pm

Quote from: hyperdunk1 on August 03, 2012, 09:17:11 am

is it better for your leg to be longer above the knees or below the knees as a jumper?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22090004

do you have the full paper? was it CMJ or running vertical?

The paper's not open access?   I believe it's CMJ, can email paper.

Quote from: T0ddday on August 02, 2012, 04:47:18 pm

Your limb lengths are why you might go from 135 to 405 rather than 225 to 495 over the course of 10 years, but they are not the reason for being stuck at 185lbs!     

You kind of lost me here.  Is this a fact that, all other things being equal, an absolute beginner with shorter limbs will be able to start w/more weight than one with longer?  I can see the advantage for smaller limbs in terms of making gains but I wouldn't have thought that it would affect beginning levels of strength.

If you took all untrained people and tested their initial max lifts then there would be surely be a correlations between different limb lengths and weight lifted, especially weight relative to bw.  Limb lengths, limb length ratios, bone structure, and differences in muscle insertions will make a large difference between the strength levels of untrained people. 

Quote from: T0ddday on August 01, 2012, 04:01:23 pm

Agreed! Anything close to a plate is difficult actually seated vertically.  I can push press and bench over 250+ but find 135 really challenging in the seated vertical press.  No chest, no legs, just nothing to push with!

That's odd, even w/little direct training my press has always been about 2/3 of my bench going all the way back to when I began weightlifting in college.  Can you do handstand pushups and is your incline bench also significantly lower than your bench?

I can do handstand pushups but I was a gymnast as a kid and am pretty comfortable upside down.  I don't really do incline bench, but the last time I tried I squeezed a few reps out with 225, my max bench is between 275-295.

I think it's something to do with the barbell when seated.  I can do seated shoulder press with a couple 65 pound dumbells but anything more than a plate gets really impossible with a barbell.  I think it's something to do with getting your face out of the way that makes it so difficult for me, for some reason raising it from delts overhead when sitting makes it feel like it just gets stuck.  Really hate that lift!