Author Topic: chasing athleticism (Read 1464018 times)

LanceSTS · « **Reply #825 on:** April 06, 2013, 09:18:44 am »

Quote from: entropy on April 06, 2013, 05:01:04 am

Quote from: LanceSTS on April 05, 2013, 12:34:19 pm
Quote from: entropy on April 05, 2013, 11:47:09 am
i'm reconsidering the notion that the front squat is a quad only exercise. It's not.

Where did you get that from? The front squat is in many cases a superior glute exercise than the squat, since the low back and hamstrings do not contribute as much to the lift. Think of exercises in terms of movement patterns, not muscle isolation.

It's a commonly heard claim that the front squat isolates the quads. Logically that's not saying it's quad only - but it's not far from saying that. I dont agree with that at all, it's a very much full body exercise, you can't come into it with fatigued lower back or hamstrings or whatever and hope to get your programmed worksets - from my experience. Hell even if my chest is too fatigued from benching the previous day, i can't stand up with the bar thru the whole set!

There are several performance camps that exclusively use the front squat as the primary lower "push" exercise now, they hold that it enables a much more complete transfer of power through the kinetic chain to the hands, like athletes need to do. I dont disagree with the correlation there, as with most athletes I work with a front squat increase not only means snatch/clean increases, but also push press and many times the PRESS.

Quote

I have a question - if the glute soreness is just purely incidental in the low bar squat - not associated with hypetrophy/strength, how come those vocal guys who do lbbs a lot usually have big asses?

They are fat.... One of the first things you notice with fat gain is people claim their glutes are growing. They are, not with contractile tissue though, and definitely not as fast as they are slapping on the pounds.

Quote

Yeah on the internet i've seen people with say a 400+ lowbar (belted) backsquat, maybe just to parallel, maybe struggling with, maybe getting, a 300 front squat. If the LBBS squat is a double bw one, then the front squat isn't, it's like 75% of their low bar belted squat. So double bw front squats are kinda rare on the internet. You do have to be training specifically for it, otherwise you'd have to be a, i dunno, maybe, a guy weighing 200 with a 540 low bar belted squatter to do it, and that's kind of rare too, especially with an athletic bodyfat, and then I dont know if it would be a proper deep atg front squat of 405 either. I'd like to see that I guess. But I digress. Of all the athletic rules of thumb, the double bw front squat seems like the most honest ,most meaningful one. It kind of forces you to have a decent bodyfat % - because excessive bodyweight really makes the job that much harder, you can't fudge your way to it with depth/assistance/excess bodyfat gain like with other squats. High bar double bw is probably the next best goal, and then i dont even know what a double bw lowbar squat means, it's not something I can realistically hope to achieve but for those who can it seems too easy. I'm rambling, sorry.

agreed, also, most people who primarily low bar, especially with the shit "drive your ass" goodmorning form, cant front squat shit. Its like comparing a deadlift with a squat. Imagine trying to jump, throwing your ass up and leaving your back angle parallel. Picture that, it made me lol just now.

entropy · « **Reply #826 on:** April 06, 2013, 11:59:55 am »

Good comparison with the deadlift. No one bats an eyelid at a 2xbw deadlift, i'd say the same with the lbbs double bw as well, only you can use a belt and there is more room for creativity in terms of depth than the deadlift hahaa.

I'm not saying it's easy though. i'll never be able to do it, either from wanting to, or being able to risk the back problems in attaining a >>2bw DL/LBBS just because it puts so much tension/torque on the lower back and i have prexisting back problems to avoid so it's not very meaningful to me. Having said that, before I knew what I was doing, i have done a belted (velcro) lowbar backsquat to about parallel which would be about my current double bodyweight, for whatever it's worth, could probably get back there again, just not worth the risk and i dont know if there is any reward to it either.

2xbw FS is the main thing i'll concern myself with in the gym, by next years tournament I want to have a 40" vertical, that would be amazing. I just want to add that would be amazing for me.. i'm not very athletic, and I know this more now than ever after spending time competing with people who are naturally gifted in athleticism. They're so quick and able to change direction and accelerate so quickly - it just blew my mind.

Raptor · « **Reply #827 on:** April 06, 2013, 04:19:33 pm »

Unless you can't frontsquat, like me. Then it all sucks.

Kingfish · « **Reply #828 on:** April 06, 2013, 05:09:57 pm »

Quote from: entropy on April 06, 2013, 11:59:55 am

Good comparison with the deadlift. No one bats an eyelid at a 2xbw deadlift, i'd say the same with the lbbs double bw as well, only you can use a belt and there is more room for creativity in terms of depth than the deadlift hahaa.

I'm not saying it's easy though. i'll never be able to do it, either from wanting to, or being able to risk the back problems in attaining a >>2bw DL/LBBS just because it puts so much tension/torque on the lower back and i have prexisting back problems to avoid so it's not very meaningful to me. Having said that, before I knew what I was doing, i have done a belted (velcro) lowbar backsquat to about parallel which would be about my current double bodyweight, for whatever it's worth, could probably get back there again, just not worth the risk and i dont know if there is any reward to it either.

2xbw FS is the main thing i'll concern myself with in the gym, by next years tournament I want to have a 40" vertical, that would be amazing. I just want to add that would be amazing for me.. i'm not very athletic, and I know this more now than ever after spending time competing with people who are naturally gifted in athleticism. They're so quick and able to change direction and accelerate so quickly - it just blew my mind.

i also believe that the front squats does many good things.. i don't do them often because i cannot get the same tonnage as compared to the back squat. i (back mostly) can't recover fast enough to do a lot more reps.

back squat is all right as long as you try to keep it honest - no aggressive leaning just to lift more weights.

entropy · « **Reply #829 on:** April 07, 2013, 07:35:12 am »

I think you're fine king, because you have great form on your olympic squats and then you're repping >> 2bw on them as well, so you've easily covered the strength requirements for being athletic. With your BS style, you don't lose much if anything by choosing the backsquat variant, it's the similar situation with olympic lifters who have front squats and backsquats very close to each other, over 90% or so correlation. The only time the backsquat doesn't help much is if your ratio to front squat is so disparate that you're effectively doing an exercise so dissimilar to the FS that it's not strongly correlated anymore. Interesting debate and i'm glad we had it, clarified my thoughts on the subject very well.

entropy · « **Reply #830 on:** April 07, 2013, 07:41:56 am »

Training
FS 2x90, 1x100, 1x107.5, 1x112.5, 1x117.5, 3x110, 5Fx106
BS 3x90, 2x100, 5x107.5, 5Fx105
OHP 4x57.5, 3x60, 5x56

FS notes:
So before I left I did 2.5 reps with 117.5kg. Today I did a hard single with it. So i'm a rep away from catching up to where I was before. Tripled 110kg which was my goal, but it was hard. Before I left I had tripled 115kg and was good for probably 3x116-117 so i have some ground to recover yet. And I wanted to 5x107.5 but decided it might be too much today, so went to 107, and then thought fuck it, lets go with a weight I will probably definitely get, which should have been 105kg but somehow my ego allowed me to leave an extra kilo on there and I failed the 5th rep of 106 lol.

Oh yea and I hurt my R knee by changing up my warmup protocol. I was going by something I read of Gary's which was a mistake, he does these funky bodyweight squats as part of a dynamic warmup. I tried them thinking they'd get me warmer better etc. Turned out to be a mistake, felt my ACL complain and it didnt go away thruout the workout. Worrisome. Not going to try that shit ever again.

BS notes:
Hurt my R hip on monday or wednesday. It's been bothering me all week. Thought it was getting better but this workout brought it back in full effect. So went with 107.5kg and wanted 6 reps but the 5th was a 10 RPE and I prob would have failed the 6th. Racked it, will prob try again the same weight next week, hopefully with happy hips.

Forced a 4th workout for the week, probably was a mistake. I was so desperate to get back where I was before leaving but it didn't happen and I hurt my R knee and R hip, was a mistake. A light week would have been better idea in hindsight. Rest and healing, next week will be conservative with workouts until everything is healthy and back to normal!

entropy · « **Reply #831 on:** April 10, 2013, 03:01:42 am »

Don't like being injured, i can feel myself getting weaker, slower, fatter, etc. Hip feels better today but not 100%, not sure if training is a good idea, it might just make it worse when it's been getting better..

entropy · « **Reply #832 on:** April 10, 2013, 08:12:58 am »

Training
FS 2x90, 1x100, 1Fx105 (lol), 1x105, 4x107, 3x112, 4x105, 4x103.5
BS 3x90, 2x100, 1x105, 2x107.5, 6x102.5, 6x100, 6x97.5
BP 2x6x77.5, 6x72.5

FS notes:
My body can't do 5s because it doesn't know how to anymore. But 4s are okay because i'm doing a lot of 4s recently. That 112kg was a 3RM - i reckon I can advance it to 115kg or so by the end of the week even with my injury, which is where I was initially.

BS notes:
BS hurt my hips a lot more than FS. I can go deep but it hurts a lot. I widened stance but then i'm weaker and depth is shit. Will make do for the moment. The remarkable thing was, having sacrificed depth for comfort, I found I was doing a very quad dominant exercise? Perhaps Lance is right after all - a deeper squat is a lot more glute driven than meets the eye.

Did a fair bit of experimentation today to find a way to train around hip problem. Kinda sort of have a workaround but they all still bother it. Anyway the best thing I found was widening the stance, this avoids pushing the hip muscles in at the bottom, which helps a bit.

Injury retrospective:
Have a fairly good idea how I hurt my hips now. What happened was when I went away for the tournament, I had 5 days off from gym. Then I came back to squat on the 6th day and went all out, heavy and hard, trying to 'keep' my gains. What happened ext was my body wasn't used to having hips stretched at the bottom of the deep high bar backsquat, and when I did that, it hurt me because I had lost that flexibility from the gym layoff. So my mistake was not coming back conservatively. Now if I was squatting regularly, nothing would have happen because that flexibility would have been there, and I would have been safe. Interesting stuff.

entropy · « **Reply #833 on:** April 11, 2013, 02:19:49 am »

I might have overdone it yesterday with the 40 squats not including warmups and was afraid I've beat the shit out of my already imflamed hips. But, magically woke up feeling 98% great. I've got more discomfort from doms in my hamstrings, glutes and quads than I do from my hip!! So. That's great. Problem solved. Time to become a beast.

Tomorrow i'm gonna destroy 3x114kg on FS and prob 4x110 as well. I want to get real close to 5x110 and 3x116 by the end of the weak.

update, got a ravenous appetite today, feel so hungry, maybe my body is telling me it needs calories to recover and rebuild. I've only had my first meal so far. But maybe that's just an excuse fat people tell themselves to drink GOMAD and eat a million double cheeseburgers......

entropy · « **Reply #834 on:** April 12, 2013, 08:44:14 am »

Training
FS 3x114, 4x107.5, 5x102.5
BS 6x107.5, 6x106.5
BBALL 1hr, conditioning, dunks and shooting etc

OHP 4x57.5, 2Fx62, 2Fx61, 3x60.5, 5x57

FS notes:
114 was a grinda on the 3rd but you can bet I was gonna make it some how! Feels good man. Legit 3RM effort right there. Was no hope of getting 5 with 107.5. In hindsight i coulda, shoulda, probably gone for 108.5 or so for 4 instead since i'm only getting 4s on weights around there. And in that spirit next workout will be 4x110 which is back to PR territory. I'll also have a legit PR in 3x116 next time as well. And just to get my body used to 5s, i dropped all the way back to 102.5 and got it, so next time i'll add a bit to that and slowly work towards 5x110. No dramas. Good solid front squat sesh.

Summarise - next time do the following: FS 3x116 (PR), 4x110 (=PR) and 5x105. I actually dont want to do a 3rd set on sundays because I have to go play ball - but.. this week I'll make an exception because I need to get my body used to 5s again.

BS notes:
Yes! Got the 6x107.5 - next time go for 2x6x109.5!

BBALL
Kinda shitty shooting sesshion, couldnt get my stroke

i took too many days off since last time. Sigh. Have got practice on sunday, hopefully i'll do a lot better. Got some nice dunks, esp on this rim i think is slightly higher than regulation. I'm jumping higher than I used to and hitting it pretty hard, even though i was a lot heavier today than back then. So that's a positive. I love that post-conditioning feel you get, endorphins and whatnot, you never get that from weights alone, i like it.

OHP notes:
Was ambitious thinking I could do something with 62kg. Even 61kg was too much, failing the 2nd rep. But 60.5 was aight, got the triple, even though it was a hard grind which i wish to avoid. So, next time i guess go for 3x61kg. And being realistic 3x65kg is probably my ceiling right now unless i start gaining some mass so when i get there, i'll go maintenance mode.

entropy · « **Reply #835 on:** April 14, 2013, 04:40:57 am »

Training
FS 3x116 (PR), 4x111 (PR)
BBALL pickup, 2 hours (exhausting)

FS 1x100, 1x105, 2x106, 5x103.5
BS 6x109.5, 6x99.5
BP 2x6x78.5

FS notes:
Back in PR territory. Had to lift in the morning quickly before driving out to bball. Didn't even have a chance to eat breakfast. So not ideal lifting conditions, certainly not my usual ones, but still got the PRs. Will try to get a fiver in in the PM session if i can manage it.

3x116kg (PR), 4x111kg (PR).

PM workout was as expected brutal. I somehow managed to get the 5 though. Form held up well. Next time go for 5x105.

BBALL notes:
Am prepping for a big game in 2 sundays time. Played too much, too hard. Haven't got much left in the tank now. But kinda necessary to get in ball shape. I hate playing with this team, so frustrating, guards are selfish, not very fun to play with. PG rakes more shots than everyone else combined lol. Whatevers. Still have to win it. Gonna put in the work over the next 14 days so i'm a beast.

BS notes:
Hard set of squats but somehow I got it and my form was ok. Not perfect but just ok. I mean, this is interesting. I can do a limit rep set of squats and still maintain ok form now - that's new. Thanks to high bar. I'm so sold on the HB variant now. It gives me more than FS - hamstring work, while not having the safety issues of lowbar squats. Fantastic.

BP notes:
So now i'm not far from failure. I might need to start lifting inside the rack again but I much prefer benching outside :/

Still need to come back and do the PM session later tonight. Have remaining 1 set of front squats followed by highbar backsquats 2x6x109.5 and then bench press. Should be a struggle considering I could barely jump by the end of bball. Really fatigued, was getting cramps etc. Will try rehydrate, eat, rest and see how it goes.

Raptor · « **Reply #836 on:** April 14, 2013, 11:55:31 am »

Quote from: fast does lie on April 14, 2013, 10:49:50 am

Hey, ppl ever freak out when they see u on an airplane? be kinda funny to see paranoid ppl's reaction when you step on a plane.

edit- i wasn't trying to make fun of u. being serious. a buddy of mine is super paranoid about middle eastern looking ppl at airports

This is actually funny and possibly quite real.

LBSS · « **Reply #837 on:** April 15, 2013, 12:29:39 am »

vids are private.

entropy · « **Reply #838 on:** April 17, 2013, 06:06:17 am »

Training
FS 4Fx113, 4Fx112, 5x105, 5Fx102.5
BS 6x111
OHP 5x57.5, 3x61, 5x58

FS notes:
Form was ok but weights were hard today. No PRs, not well recovered from sunday yet. That's unfortunate but unavoidable at this stage due to the focus on basketball.

BS notes:
Form was atrocious. And I only did the first set to save my legs for basketball.

Have a basketball game tonight, someone called me up, said they're short of players and asked if I wanted to play. Said yes, even though today is usually my high volume squatting day and not the best one to add extra work to. Will see how it goes. Either way i'll make it work by eating and sleeping well. Didn't end up playing the basketball game in teh end lol.

entropy · « **Reply #839 on:** April 18, 2013, 10:06:49 am »

Saw a doctor today about something else but asked about my hips and he thinks it's muscular and I should rest it until it's ok otherwise I risk making it a chronic problem. So i guess i'll be taking that advice. I might lay off high bar work until im 100% healed.

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Author Topic: chasing athleticism (Read 1464018 times)

LanceSTS

Re: chasing athleticism -- W1D3

entropy

Re: chasing athleticism

Raptor

Re: chasing athleticism

Kingfish

Re: chasing athleticism

entropy

Re: chasing athleticism

entropy

chasing athleticism -W1D4

entropy

Re: chasing athleticism

entropy

chasing athleticism -- W2D1

entropy

Re: chasing athleticism

entropy

chasing athleticism -- W2D2

entropy

chasing athleticism -- W2D3

Raptor

Re: chasing athleticism

LBSS

Re: chasing athleticism

entropy

chasing athleticism -- W3D1

entropy

Re: chasing athleticism