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I was studying the front squat for the first time in forever and I ended up watching johnymnenomic on youtube. I remember watching his video when I initially started front squatting and I was very impressed with the way he maintained a vertical back.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NRmdtSvmQQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NRmdtSvmQQ</a>

This time around I noticed how wide his stance his. I bet if I had such a wide stance I could have nicer form with less violent movement into the bottom position. But I think at some point I decided I liked a narrow stance because it felt more comfortable and strong, and because it was more applicable to athletic endevours. I looked at my stance just before a jump and I pretty much have the same sort of stance in my squats as well.

I was also browsing pendlays forum and came across this post by one of the guys theree

Quote from: Koing

Oly squats you DO NOT WANT TO DIVE BOMB IN TO THE SQUATS. This WILL RUIN YOUR KNEES IN THE LONG RUN. Not a question of IF BUT WHEN.

NO COACH will tell a lifter to dive bomb in to the squat. Descent should be controlled and fast up. You want to get STRONG and not use the bounce in the squat to squat more.

Your knees will take a huge amount of a beating in the OLifts as it is.

This will hurt the smaller guys A LOT MORE. The smaller guys will have less muscle/ fat around the joints and will be able to get deeper and this will ruin your knees if you drop from a greater height in the squat. It really is a recipe to injure yourself longer term.

Ask Glenn/ Don about this. You do not want to drop in fast in the squats to get strong/ get use to the bounce. Practice the bounce by lifting and getting the timing. You will use less weight and you will be dropping from a lower height.

Koing

And it got me wondering, am I doing what Koing describes above? I really should get those knee sleeves as well.

No, youre not even close to dive bombing your squats.  Second, Pendlay is a HUGE proponent of catching a bounce at the bottom of the squat.  Watch any of Norths squat videos and you can hear him scream it on every rep. 

Looks like youre still improving your front squat and athleticism, that vid looks great. Good shit.  Fastest way to stop those improvements is start changing shit up and get on some of those glute bridge/deadlift/cns efficiency pistol low bar glute hypertrophy rdl hyperextensions and stop focusing on the shit that actually matters. 

a 2 x bw front squat at your height will mean 30000000 times more for your athleticism than anything else you can do with a barbell.   

Yeah I did actually see those. Not bad price-wise, about $110AUD with shipping to Melb. I guess if you only really need a solid elevated heel in a good pair of shoes, you're just paying more for brand/look with the AdiPowers/Romaleos.

Yeah i think diminishing returns happen when you go towards highend shoes. Switching from ordinary shoes to (any) lifting shoes is like 95% of the improvement. And then going from an (ordinary) lifting shoe to a high end lifting shoe probably gives you an extra 4-5% improvement or something. I'd imagine. But yea see if you can get a pair of those maxwell barbell wei rui warrior shoes if they come back in stock. The reviews i've read had put them at the level of expensive shoes but with the price of a budget shoe without compromising quality. The UGE ones seem to be the same.

Hey Entropy, when does your ball league start? I remember posting a while back about lifting and playing on the same day and said I'd get back to you.

Well, squatting and playing on the same day seems to work out really well. I've been doing 5x5 at 115 and then 120 (didn't get all reps) and felt great for the game. Deadlifting though, not so much. Tried to play about 5 hours after deads a few weeks back and had absolutely nothing. I was doing 5x5 there too so maybe more of a reason but either way it was shit.

Ah yea I remember. Good to hear you've got a nice balance going btw weightroom and game time. Your suspicion of DL compromising performance is probably correct. You'll notice a lot of people here recommend to avoid the deadlift completely for various reasons while persisting with squatting if doing other things outside the gym.

Will be interested to see how you structure things once you start playing.

I'll let you know when I start playing, still a while away from now! My focus atm is to get ready for this basketball tournament i've got during easter. It will be ~9 full court games in the space of 3 successive days during easter. should be crazy, death by basketball. I haven't got much time left to prepare but hopefully i'll manage somehow.  Thanks for stopping by.

You'll notice a lot of people here recommend to avoid the deadlift completely for various reasons while persisting with squatting if doing other things outside the gym.

That's interesting. I was actually thinking about moving to trap bar DL and cutting volume to 1 max set per week so you could be onto something. Thanks for that.

dude the last BS vid you posted looked like best yet. it's like t0ddday said a few pages ago in this thread: before it just looked like you hadn't practiced it much. lots more confidence evident now.

^That's a highly specialised situation dude, not regular training. I get the same effect out of banded swings, but I'm not going to put them into my regular programming! But you have a point, everything has a use, I just don't think the deadlift has a place outside the PL's training. If you need to recover for a sport etc then you have to choose the exercises which give the best bang for the buck (where the cost is recovery and perhaps injury). Having said that, my experience with the trapbar was very favourable. It got my front squat moving right away which had been stuck for a while, so it seems like a friendly exercise for athletes.

In other news, I was training every other day in the lead up to the basketball comp but i've burned out or something because yesterday I had a fever and even though I was tempted to train thru it, I thought to take the day off and see how I felt the next day. Better. But lots of shit going on in my life right now which is affecting me badlly. She's killing me. Not good.

On the bright side, i've been eating like a teenager back when I went to university, loads of carbs, loads of icecream. My body loves it. Sleeping better than before, my mood is great again, i have developed a ferocious appetite for life. And if you think i'd have gotten mad fat as a result, it hasn't happened. I think all the cutting i've done has made my insulin sensitivity and p-ratio very favorable. So i'm actually not gaining any weight while eating loads and training hard. But my muscles look fuller and i'm as strong as i've ever been. While weight is around 76kg now with all that glycogen storage. So it's pretty awesome. But here is the most crazy thing - my waist is now a legit 32" - like close to get into the 31"s, i look lean. I took Kingfishers advice to heart eat more to squat more lol and it's been working, PRs every workout afetr being stuck for weeks when cutting.

Oh and I forgot to reply to

dude the last BS vid you posted looked like best yet. it's like t0ddday said a few pages ago in this thread: before it just looked like you hadn't practiced it much. lots more confidence evident now.

Yea every time i've done the lift i've gotten better. My best attempt was the last one 6x112.5kg PR! That's better than I ever did with low bar and I had great form. High bar fits me like a glove now. It's uncanny, i went from backsquat retard to highbar stud overnight. I can't explain it. Can anyone?
 

more supplemental work for back? i know KF has made great use of rows and hypers.

it might, sure.