ya i notoriously under-hydrate.. i used to underhydrate on purpose too, for dunking.. lose an easy ~5lb water or so, one more inch.
but ya, when im underhydrated, i'm much more achy.. since you're doing fasted walks, down 8-16oz of some propel-like liquids.. it's basically 0 kcal so that's not a problem.
Truth. Okay, i'll try fasted walking again but on the provision that i have plenty of water before hand. And you're right it's zero calorie, so there is no reason to avoid it. I just am not used to drinking a lot of water on an empty stomach but it's dumb to train fasted while underhydrated. Thanks for that, makes sense.
ssbar is great.. i no longer have to worry about my shoulders while squatting & it feels more like a front squat, which i've always loved but hated racking the weight, especially when i was really lean/skinny, would kill my bony shoulders lul.. ssbar seems to hit "core" pretty hard too, it's definitely a great investment.
Haha! i have the bruises on my collar bone and shoulders to prove it but thankfully Wolfs law kicked in at some point, and even tho i'm pretty bony, it doesn't hurt anymore and I never think twice about the rack. Bones adapt pretty quickly which is good! When I started i used to complain about wrists too but now they're plenty flexible and i'm happier for it. THe only complaint I had against front squats was my knees hurting. But I think I have that fixed now, i just have to go into the hole a certain way, and then it doesn't hurt knees. It's brilliant.
can you swim good? i've never used swimming as a form to improve fitness, but it makes sense.. probably would be a great tool for people like us who have to be careful with join inflam/various aches+injuries.. i doubt i could swim good enough to get a decent workout.. i can swim fine but i've never felt tired when trying to swim 'fast+long'.
Funny you should mention swimming. I learnt to swim last summer and i was thinking of getting back into it now that it's warm again. But the only problem is for me swimming is an anerobic activity lol, im not a great swimmer (probably worse now that im less of a whale than I was last summer!). But i'll get back into it, and if I adapt and it becomes aerobic, i agree its a great way to get some extra conditioning in. Good suggestion. I'll ask my homies if they wanna join me again this summer.
one thing that always made me uber-achy was performing jumps after squatting, unless my volume was very low (such as with the crazy high frequency ltmp/rested max stuff).
Yep i dont jump more than a few times on concrete, it's just a bad idea. So i did about 5 SVJS and stopped.
nice on that SVJ.. good sign after not jumping or 2 months.
cheers! can't wait to get to cut to 10% bf and take my front squat up another 5-15kg hopefully by then, and I'm hoping it will give me some nice improvements in vert.
ya that's why I always half'd.. saved my hips/knees & hit my quads hard.
Well. I don't have any probs with hips, and now i've improved my technique at the bottom, knees are ok. But the problem is i'm not a natural squatter. A natural squatter will go deep into the hole and come out strong and then eventually quads kick in which are perfectly placed at the right leverage to finish the lift. I come out of the hole strong but my positions are wrong for the best leverage for quads, so while they work hard, if my position was better i'd be able to lift more weight and with better form. But we work with what cards we've been dealt. I just see myself using a piecemeal approach to improving my athleticism now. Deep squats for glutes, hams, adductors etc. And then parellel squats to give quads the best leverage and hit them hard that way. A natural squatter would do one squat that covers all those bases, but i'm not one of those. I hate you LBSS.
one other possibility is eventually investing in chains or LIGHT bands.. I used to hit quads pretty hard by going deep (light) and then really loading up the weight on those chains.. so quads would really have to work once I got above parallel.. accommodating resistance is definitely effective for improving 'the best of both worlds'.
i have bands but not a pair of the same band. i could try to get another one though? And i never thought of using chains that way but wow that makes so much sense. At the bottom of the lift half of the chain is on the ground, and as you go higher, they yank up, giving the quads more work. Brilliant! I never knew how that all worked lol. Thanks for the idea, esp with using a lighter weight to have perfect position coming out of the bottom, and then using extra resistance to make the latter half of the lift more challenging. That might just be what I need hmmmm.
otherwise, you could just do your deep sets and then just do one progressive workup above parallel.
Will try this next time I squat. Thank you.
PEaCE!
thanks bro. appreciate it.
Another thing that hit me, if I was using a higher heeled shoe, it wouldn't magically solve my problems I think. If anything it would make it worse. Why do you ask? I'd be leaning over more out of the bottom of the hole. Which would put me at even more disadvantageous position at the 1/2-1/3 squat position which is where quads are most active. But. If I were using the higher heel and doing parallel squats, then I could lift more weight and quads would be at a better leverage. I could be completely wrong about this since im just theorising though.
