Adarq.org

That reply actually made a lot of sense. Plus what Toddday said in his thread. The reason why I was doing more than 4 so-called bounds was, in my mind, to "teach" the body to accept many shocks, I guess I was doing something similar to Air Alert, except it's Bounding Air Alert haha

Yeah, if I could limit the number of them and just focus on the length and power, that would be more helpful (both in terms of power AND form). Maybe a good idea is to try a standing triple jump, LLL and RRR.

By the way, I was doing Joel Smith's program back then, and it called for LRLR, LLRR, LLLL, RRRR for ~20-30 meters. That's more than 4 bounds, so I did them for the length prescribed. That's another reason I did more than 4.

Happy birthday by the way. Wait 'til you hit 30, you'll see how old you'll be then!

I would have never guessed you're 2 years younger. You always seemed older than me.

^^^
Hahaha, exactly! If you see, my previous post is edited. The original mantioned long breaks are ok for maximal attempts but then I deleted it to avoid... implications 

Hey, wait a minute!

I have no idea. In terms of specificity, yeah, the RDL does indeed seem more specific. I think the thing with the deadlifts (of any kind) is that you can do them wrong - using your back. And if you do, you'll think you're training your hamstrings, hip extension, this and that, when in reality even a slight misposition of the pelvis is significant in terms of recruitment patterns etc.

In the GHR there's less chance for that (unless your form is horrible or something).

When I used to do them, natural GHRs, I didn't had that great of a form either but it was definitely the hamstrings that were recruited, since they were the only ones who could flex the knees (with assistance from the calves).

Also, what you do with the ankles is important too. If you plantar flex your ankles that puts the calves into active insufficiency and they cannot assist the hamstrings in flexing the knee (since the calves are then being shortened both at the knee and the ankle joints) - so if you plantar flex during your GHRs you isolate the hamstrings. If you dorsiflex, you put the calves at a more advantageous position, you negate the active insufficiency, and you're assisting the hamstrings with your calves and make the movement easier.

So, plantar flex the ankles = harder, isolates the hamstrings.
Dorsiflex the ankles = easier, hamstrings are assisted by the calves.

Something to keep in mind.

A few videos of my GHRs (that's the only place where I can do them, BTW, safely):

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9g5brtWUL0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9g5brtWUL0</a>

And one GHR with the arms overhead (extremely difficult):

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHBoX8B_U8g" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHBoX8B_U8g</a>

You can see in the videos I'm bent quite a bit at the hips. That's for two reasons:

1) I'm not strong enough so I shorten the length of my torso by bending at the hips and making the movement easier (since my head/upperbody is closer to the origin point and easier to move around);

2) It's almost impossible to keep completely straight hips since the hamstrings are biarticular and they enter active insufficiency when the hips are extended and the knees are flexed, meaning you can't have both. That's why the leg curls machine has a small bent at the middle - to flex your hips a bit to some angle (say 15-20 degrees) in order to prevent active insufficiency from occuring.

It's funny but I was looking through some of my old stuff in my computer and found a picture called "adarqui baseline plant" where I took a screenshot of adarqui before his plant, with his legs thrown almost parallel to the ground in front of him (mid-air). Weirdly enough, that followed his regular extremely quad dominant position.

That screenshot was from the clip above.

As for the relaxed part - it's only true about the run-up. If you're stiff during the run-up, you're already consuming a tremendous amount of energy and the muscles arrive at the plant point already fatigued/exhausted, being subjected to a very high tension with each step you took to get there in your run-up.

So the "relaxed part" is really an euphemism for movement efficiency.

Oh, so they're not free barbell calf raises?