Damn dude, awesome post on the knee up top and strong as hell squats! Started following your youtube channel....beast.
Thanks! I want to record my squat workouts from now on since I've started hitting PR's recently. They may slow to a stop soon. May also record RDL's but from the angle I usually record at, you'll just see a whole lot of my ass and not much else. I'll see what else I can record. I feel like there isn't many spots to put my phone down.
Cable Rows 160 x 5 >> 60sec rests. 180 x 3 >> Eh... 200 x 10 200 x 8 180 x 8 180 x 6 180 x 3
Lateral Raises 35's x 5 >> 60sec rests. 40's x 2 >> Woohoo! 45's x 1 50's x 1 45's x 9 PR 45's x 5 40's x 8 PR 40's x 6 PR 35's x 5 PR
Pull ups BW x 15 >> 60sec rests. BW x 8 BW x 3 BW x 4 BW x 4
Ab Pulldowns 95 x 5 >> 60sec rests. 155 x 12 PR 155 x 8 PR 155 x 4 PR 130 x 4 PR 105 x 4 PR
Incline Rear Delt W Flyes 25's x 5 >> 60sec rests. 30's x 1 35's x 11 PR 35's x 6 PR 35's x 5 PR
Great workout overall. Progress has been very slow lately. I still have no explanation for how my squat exploded from 365x3 to 395x3 in just a couple weeks (this happened like 6 weeks ago?). I'm still PR'ing inch by inch since then. It's also harder now since I'm cutting. Not logging my food though; it's just a ~5lb cut.
How have you de-loaded in the past? Do you drop the intensity, volume, density, etc? Did it work okay?
Just saying that every time i've de-loaded by lowering the weight, i've lost strength when I come back in and it takes some time to get it back (CNS). I have found de-loading to be more effective if i just cut all the sets in half, and rest a tiny bit longer between sets.
Another way i've found is very effective for me is to take an extra rest day or two. I don't mean skip workouts! I mean push the workouts back by a day. So if you lift mon-wed-fri, after lifting on mon-wed do sat-tue- and then push back again, fri-mon-wed-fri. You'll be back on schedule like that. This may not be feasible depending on your non-gym schedule though.
BUT if lowering the weights has worked for you in the past for just a week, go for it! Usually if de-loads don't work for me, I do a reset where i just lower the weights on all lifts by 10% and i slowly work back up to where i was and hopefully surpass my PR's after that. But i'll never do a de-load week where i lower weights by 20% or whatever just for that week. I always regret it.
ATG Squat 135 x 8 >> 2min rest. 135 x 5 >> No emotional arousal but still...knees caved on last TWO repts of 395 this time. 185 x 5 >> Probably had only 5-6 of the 325 in me today. 185 x 3 225 x 3 275 x 1 315 x 1 365 x 1 395 x 3 325 x 3
Romanian Deadlift 225 x 5 >> Hamstrings still sore when I do these... forgot to log it but I did this Tuesday too.
Bench Press 45 x 15 >> 2min rest. 95 x 8 135 x 5 185 x 3 225 x 1 245 x 3 205 x 8
Calf Raise Machine 465 x 15
I needed this de-load. Maybe I'm weak because I'm glycogen depleted? Already dropped about 3lbs in just a couple days from restricting calories and carbs. I don't consciously restrict carbs -- i just try to get a lot more protein when i'm cutting, so it happens by itself.
Eyes on the goal I set earlier this year: June 1st, 405x3 consistent, 195lbs bw or less.
Pretty cool. I think it's a good way to increase GPP, and it's nice that the supersets don't interfere with each other. Only cardio would interfere with the second of the supersetted exercises I guess, but you get better at that. I was thinking I wanted to try something like that in my training to cut workout times. How long do your workouts typically last?
Weighted Pull ups BW x 5 >> 60sec rests. +20lbs x 3 +40lbs x 10 PR +40lbs x 3 PR +35lbs x 4 PR +30lbs x 4 PR +25lbs x 4 PR
Lateral Raises 35's x 3 >> 60sec rests. 35's x 2 >> Can't exactly remember how all the weights and reps went, but the first 3 sets are correct for sure. 40's x 1 45's x 8 PR 45's x 6 PR 40's x 8 PR 40's x 5 PR 35's x 5 PR
Cable Rows 170 x 5 >> 60sec rests. 190 x 1 >> I can't remember and I'm too lazy to go back and see what my PR's here are (at my gym not others). 210 x 10 >> So from this point forth, anything that beats this will be labeled as a PR. 210 x 6 190 x 8 190 x 6 190 x 5
Ab Pulldowns 95 x 5 >> 60sec rests. 150 x 15 PR 150 x 8 PR 150 x 8 PR
Incline Rear Delt W Flyes 25's x 5 >> 60sec rests. 30's x 1 35's x 10 PR 35's x 6 PR 35's x 5 PR
^^ I should mention that I felt my pain at the very bottom of my kneecap.
Also, it could be that your patellar tendonitis isn't caused by maltracking like mine was, but by something else instead. You'll have to find out what it is.
hey man, am i correct in thinking you had some problems with quad tenodnitis?
how did you get around it in the end?
I had patellar tendonitis. I'll try to make this as simple as possible.
The problem: - Patellar maltracking. Aka my knee cap was shifted over laterally a bit. - This was caused by too much tension on the lateral side, and too litte tension on the medial side to counter it. - The effect of this is that the top of the tibia scrapes the cartilage under the knee cap since the tibia it's not fitting in the "under socket" of the kneecap perfectly.
The solution: - Relieve tension on the lateral side by foam rolling the IT band - Increase tension on the medial side by activating VMO and strengthening it
Longer explanation: Relieving the tension on one side is simple. However, increasing tension on the other side was pretty cool to do. During the time I had tendonitis, I was squatting to parallel. As you know, this doesn't activate the VMO very much. What does activate it, however, is either extreme of the range of motion. So this means things like peterson step ups (http://www.jumpusa.com/PetersonStepup.jpg) and ATG squats.
Unfortunately, peterson step ups caused some pain in my knee. To mitigate this, I would foam roll my IT bands a ton before performing them. This made them nearly pain free. I also switched from parallel to ATG squats to further strengthen my VMOs. After this switch I noticed my VMO's getting crazy sore for the first few workouts, but nothing from the peterson step ups. I ditched the peterson step ups since I found them not effective enough.
But this part was damn interesting... I needed to ACTIVATE my VMO first! Take a look at this vid of my quads. My LEFT knee was the painful one. My right knee was okay. Notice how the left quad flexes all at once, but in the right quad, the VMO flexes just before the rest of the quad!
On the RIGHT quad (the okay one) the VMO contracts first, stabalizing the knee, and then the rest of the quad contracts.
This tells me the VMO on the left quad was a bit under active. Anyway, I learned (forgot where I read this) that the best way to change movement patterns are using NEGATIVE lifts. So what I would do before I played basketball was foam roll the IT band, and then perform negative knee extensions beforehand on my left quad. Then I could play pain free, temporarily (for as long as the effect lasted).
Over time, as I continued to foam roll the IT band, the effect became permanent. Also, my VMO's got strong as hell from the ATG squats. Finally.... see the vid I just posted? Well, once my pain was all gone, and still to this day, when I flex my left quad now, the VMO will contract just before the rest of the quad, just like my right quad!
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