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Feeling disillusioned with backsquat. It's clearly the superior exercise for all those wonderful reasons that are well known. But on the downside, i'm finding it a terrible exercise for my lower back. It puts so much torque on my LB that I can barely walk properly most days. I have to struggle getting up from a chair. It hobbles me up. Question is, is it because the backsquat is too hard on my back. Or is my back too weak to backsquat? Or maybe I'm backsquatting too heavy too often. I dont understand what's going on. The lower back discomfort I have is asymmetric, it occurs on the left side only.

If I make all my PRs today then I might consider doing another week. Otherwise, i'll start cutting on monday!

Maybe it's not the actual back squat itself but rather the manner in which you do it? Or, you may have some issues with the left or right side of your body (tighness, weakness, etc) that place more stress there when back squatting. I know the BS has hurt my lower back before but I learned this was due to an excessive arch (anterior tilt) and also knee and ankle issues on one side of my body. If you are feeling the pain (force) in your lower back then there's obviously something breaking down in the chain.

Then again, maybe it's just not for you. Have you noticed the same thing when you have squatted with a wider or more narrow stance or different bar position?

Quote from: Mutumbo000 on August 23, 2013, 01:10:33 am

I haven't back squatted since 2012 because of the same reason. I ruined my lower back from doing high rep back squats. I didn't even go that heavy my PR was like 90kg for 15 reps but I'm 100% sure that high rep back squats along with physically demanding jobs last year was what fuked up my lower back.

Thing I am finding with those higher rep sets is you have the temptation to reach a milestone (say 8 reps) and you'll do the 7th, know that the 8th will be ugly/uncontrolled and have to make the choice whether to go ahead and get the PR or rack the bar. And of course you don't want to be a pussy, so you go ahead and do the rep, even with shit form. And that way you can write PR on your log, but is it the right thing? I would think not. Better to keep a rep in the tank, and do it safely and perfectly. But much harder to make that choice when the seductive prospect of a PR lingers. If i was training someone else, I would tell them to do perfect reps only and rack the bar if you know the next rep won't be technically correct. But i can't follow my own advice because i'm so focused on getting to my milestone goal.

Quote from: Coges on August 23, 2013, 01:44:40 am

Quote from: entropy on August 23, 2013, 12:50:19 am

Feeling disillusioned with backsquat. It's clearly the superior exercise for all those wonderful reasons that are well known. But on the downside, i'm finding it a terrible exercise for my lower back. It puts so much torque on my LB that I can barely walk properly most days. I have to struggle getting up from a chair. It hobbles me up. Question is, is it because the backsquat is too hard on my back. Or is my back too weak to backsquat? Or maybe I'm backsquatting too heavy too often. I dont understand what's going on. The lower back discomfort I have is asymmetric, it occurs on the left side only.

If I make all my PRs today then I might consider doing another week. Otherwise, i'll start cutting on monday!

Maybe it's not the actual back squat itself but rather the manner in which you do it? Or, you may have some issues with the left or right side of your body (tighness, weakness, etc) that place more stress there when back squatting. I know the BS has hurt my lower back before but I learned this was due to an excessive arch (anterior tilt) and also knee and ankle issues on one side of my body. If you are feeling the pain (force) in your lower back then there's obviously something breaking down in the chain.

Then again, maybe it's just not for you. Have you noticed the same thing when you have squatted with a wider or more narrow stance or different bar position?

Oh for sure. I have problems with symmetry, always have. Have been working hard on correcting the asymmetry. I remember when I was doing planks last year, i found my R side of my torso was much stronger and the L got tired faster for some reason even though my L side is my strong side. So it's def possible that my L side core strength is only now being dragged, kicking and screaming to parity. But I doubt it. I think I just end up putting more torque on the left side of my back when backsquatting.

Might go down to the shops and get some dencorub, when I used to backsquat a lot, i remember it being useful for making my back feel better.

As far as technique goes, my plan now is to get Nike weightlifting shoes for my birthday which have a 0.75" heel, which will help me be more upright. Hopefully that takes torque off the back. The more upright and highbar my squat, the better it is for my back and more useful an exercise for athleticism because it puts more of the work onto the legs and buttocks rather than the erectors and the spine.

Yeah exactly. That's where I went wrong when I was back squatting heavy (using heavy in a relative way) with low reps I never had a problem. Than I read up about doing 20 rep squats and that's when all the trouble started. I was trying to push myself too hard. So when my form was breaking down on the 13th rep I'd just take long pauses between each rep and aim to rep out 20. Of course what happens is your back starts compensating for your legs and the form deteriorates, which leads to injury.

Training
FS 2x129 (PR)
BS 3x134 (PR), 3x127, 3x120
FS 3x112.5, 1x112.5 (done with block under heels)
BS 8x115 (PR, w/ form change)
BP 4x88 (PR), 8x81 (PR)
WEIGHTED DUNKZ X2 (MAX EFFORT LOL)

FS notes:
Ok. Will go for a triple on monday.

BS notes:
Blah. Had zero bounce, had to quad-drive every single rep including warmups. Hips and PC chain are on holiday, quads are being overworked.

BP notes:
For the first time the 1RM calc puts me over 100kg! (=101kg) with that 8x81kg set. I am better at higher reps though but I do think i'm actually there, that has been a long time goal.

Jumps:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIFzho_u59Y" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIFzho_u59Y</a>

It's been over 2 wks since I tried dunking. LOLZ ive gotten so overweight that it takes max effort to land a dunk. I missed 8/10 attempts before finally getting 2 dunks on my 9th and 10th attempt. Relative strength is terrrrrrible right now. I came home and weighed myself to be just under 91kg. That's nuts, like being 16kg overweight from my TFmax as per Zatsiorsky.

Btw dunk above felt like how it felt when I first got a proper dunk, you know, when it takes all your will to land one and otherwise you would miss. Very reminiscent of that first time.

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So think that kind of sums it up, time to end this thing. Yes it's a week earlier, but I don't see any point in going any further when i've stalled hard. Time to stop cultivating mass and start harvesting! Will summarise my gainz in a seperate post.

Thing I am finding with those higher rep sets is you have the temptation to reach a milestone (say 8 reps) and you'll do the 7th, know that the 8th will be ugly/uncontrolled and have to make the choice whether to go ahead and get the PR or rack the bar. And of course you don't want to be a pussy, so you go ahead and do the rep, even with shit form. And that way you can write PR on your log, but is it the right thing? I would think not. Better to keep a rep in the tank, and do it safely and perfectly. But much harder to make that choice when the seductive prospect of a PR lingers. If i was training someone else, I would tell them to do perfect reps only and rack the bar if you know the next rep won't be technically correct. But i can't follow my own advice because i'm so focused on getting to my milestone goal.

Never a truer statement said regarding the squat.

Whoa I didn't realise you were 90kgs+ atm. I thought you were still around 80kgs. Like vag said in gif form, I'm confused as to why you think you're 'stalling'...getting a PR in every session lately is pretty much the opposite of stalling. But whatever, it's up to you in the end. I'll be interested to see what your SVJ is after you lean out a bit with all this new back squat strength.

If somebody would show me a picture of you and ask "how much do you think this guy weighs?" I'd be like "~70 kg".

I had something similar to this, i thought i was eating a lot but found out i was not eating enough as when they eat a lot, it means to eat more frequenty what i did was eat a lot but there were big gaps between my meals i.e. 5 hours in between so it was not about eating a lot but eating frequently.
just my 2 cents

Training
FS 3x90, 1x105, 1x117.5, 1x125 (just warmups)
BS 3x120, 3x127.5, 2x138 (PR), 5x127, 6x117.5, 3x115, 3x112.5, 3x110

FS notes:
I thought this was a good day to nail down technique.

BS notes:
I wanted 6x127.5 to start with, i didn't think that was happening so i racked it after 3, saving myself for the heavy topset. That turned out to be really easy contrary to expecation. Then I dropped back to 127, optimistic that taking off 10kg would make the sixer a piece of cake, and of course it wasn't, the 5th was goodmorned. So that was that. I wanted 8 with 117.5, that wasn't to be either. Did technique work for the rest of the sets, very productive as it turned out.

I taped from the side and noticed the bar was going down just ahead of midfoot but it was coming up even forward. That's not good. I had worked on just staying midfoot without any other change for the 115kg set. It was terrible because instantly i hit a sticking point out of the middle, shit. No wonder my instinct was to shift forward to get out of that sticking point.

For the 112.5kg set I made a change based on the following reasoning. If my hips were too far back, meaning i was leaning forward a lot, shifting me off midfoot, I had to find a way to get my hips closer to my ankles and bringing the bar into midfoot. How does one do that? Knees go forward of course, so made the conscious decision to break at the knees first. And then I had a bounce out of my hips as well! No more sticking point. I went deep and more upright and the best bit -- the bar stayed over midfoot on the descent AND on the ascent!

This has got em thinking, suppose I make another modification by adding a heel wedge under my feet. So now my knees go slightly further forward, thus bringing my hips closer to my ankles yet, making me slightly more upright again. This means I get a strong quad drive out of the bottom, rather than hitting the sticking point which arises from sitting back with the hips where I have no where to go but forwards to bring the bar ahead of midfoot to gain leverage. With all these changes -  my backsquat form might even approach decent this way and with the added bonus that i can move more weight AND see more athletic carryover. That would be ace.

So on friday, my last session i'm going to try the above technique for my heavy sets and hopefully that will mark where all my hard work in honing technique will come together and culminate in a PR with a heavy weight with sound form.

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