Who Squats in Front of the Mirror????

Despite the debacle of training last week on a Monday and waiting  20 minutes for a bar I decided again to brave the masses  tonight.

Heavy dead-lifts tonight translated to a triple at 90% of my 1RM. By the numbers it was a good session tonight but it did feel a little grindy (yes I know I made that word up). The positive is that I am still 4 months out from Nationals so I am more than happy to be pumping these numbers up so early. However I need to manage the intensity. Given I am flying cross country for business next week its an opportunity to de-load and work on active recovery.

My final movement for the night was front squats and as I make my way to the rack it dawns on me the gym staff have moved the rack so they can install a mirror in front. Now I do get this because the majority of lifters here are bodybuilders but thankfully the muscle motion rack allows you to flip the J-Hooks around so that I can face away from the mirror so no harm.

I will finish off posting Dan Green's RUM 7 squat, another insanely strong effort. I met Dan Green at our Nationals last year where he was the guest lifter and was blown away by how densely built he was in person.

Stay Strong

Thomo

Correcting Butt Wink in the Squat

I am envious of people with perfect squat form. As someone with shocking butt wink I watch enviously as those with perfect form just sit down then focus on nothing more than exploding out of the hole when squatting.

The challenge for those of us with poor squatting mobility is three-fold. First you need to work through the laborious process of diagnosing the issue, then identify the pre-hab movements that will assist it rectifying the issue. Then finally you have to graft away and slowly regain range of motion. From personal experience I can attest its quite a frustrating process and it is easy to simply not work hard enough.

For the last year I have been trying to eliminate the dreaded butt wink and half the problem for me is not having access to those that can assist. Unfortunately Cressey Performance or Mash Elite aren't around the corner. Consequently it's taken longer than expected to try and work through the issues but recently I sat down and decided to review the issue logically and run a process of elimination.

As I worked my way through the various tests I started to hone in the things that clearly have been impacting my squat. These include:

• setting up with too much anterior tilt in the mistaken belief I was keeping my back tight. I now keep my pelvis tight and focus on keeping it stacked neutral
• Shitty ankle mobility namely dorsiflexion

They are my top two and recent daily work with bands has seen a slow but demonstrable improvement. Again the challenge for me was to find the right videos/articles to so I had the right corrective movements to work with.

Coincidentally yesterday I spotted a great article by Quinn Henoch on Juggernaut JTS. It talks in detail of fixing butt-wink and runs through most of the movements I am now using. It's a nice little article and I wish this had been written earlier would have saved me plenty of time.

If you struggle with Butt-wink in the squat take a look at this article:

http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2014/02/06/bottom-position-squat-defining-characteristic-human-existence/

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More Funny Shit in the Gym

Saturday afternoon and the last training day of the week. I like Saturday afternoon training, it feels far less rushed and given its a day session I have plenty of time for post session recovery meals.

While finishing squats I noticed 3 young lads heading to the deadlift platform, interestingly 2 of the three had gold gym singlets on and what looked like old fashioned weight lifting gloves from the eighties. Based on the gloves alone I knew I would seeing some interesting lifts.

After 10 minutes of arranging bars on the platform the first guy starts doing clean, front squat, press combo. Though he performs the whole move in slow motion so the clean is really just a grinding upright row. The second guy follows up with a deadlift which brings us to lifter number 3.

This poor bastard has been left to his own devices for too long and his mates clearly haven't got a clue either. He attempts a deadlift but starts with a completely rounded back but get this, he first elevates his heels on two plates?? With this ungainly starting position he almost topples on the first rep while on the second he falls back stumbling off the back of the two plates under his heels.

This crazy trio continue on in this fashion for 5 mins before satisfying themselves they are done, high fives all around and heading off for the day.

Next time I am going to bite the bullet and provide a little guidance because I cant ever see one more  kid deadlift with elevated heels and lifting gloves!!

Stay Strong
Thomo

Squat Fixes

Well it's Friday night and the family is out catching Springsteen playing tonight and here I a thinking about my squat session tomorrow! It's been a crazy week with work but I am keen to nail my final session of the week. Tomorrow is my heavy squats and I am still spending a lot of time working on mobility to improve my squat. Actually if you ever want a good laugh ask me to do an overhead squat, it ends up looking like I am bending at the waist laying a sword at someone's feet!

I think the biggest challenge for those of us with average movement patterns is actually just diagnosing the issue and then working 2-3 movements to get it right. I am doing plenty of goblet squats, lying windmills etc. It's coming together now but hell at 44 just when I get one thing right something else pops out.

Actually I can hear those of you in your twenties laughing now but remember this shit is easy when your younger. Your test is running high and life isn't so serious. Just know that half of you in your twenties won't be training in your forties. You'll just be that fat annoying guy at the barbecue or pub that bore's people senseless telling them stories about when he 'used to lift'!

I came across a basic article on common squat movement pattern issues and diagnosis. I thought this was a nice articulation for newbies so check it out.


http://bonvecstrength.com/2012/11/21/4-steps-to-fix-your-squat/

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Injection of Bodybuilding Wisdom with Damon

Spotted a little gem of a post by one of Australia's great recomposition coaches. I had the pleasure to be trained by Damon and visited his old gym in Qld. I can vouch that he is one of the rare smart guys in the game. Someone driven by empirical evidence from successful results in the gym not random anecdotes.

Check out this link

http://www.damonhayhow.com/the-bodybuilding-religions-10-commandments/




Stay Strong

Thomo

Damn Some Days are Just A Struggle

Kicking back tonight catching up on some powerlifting sites on the net and I am absolutely stuffed. Last nights session took a lot out of me. Its not so much post workout soreness (though traps are screaming at the moment) its more the accumulated fatigue. Of course waking at 2:30am and struggling to get back to sleep then heading to work at 5:30 probably didn't help.

I'm watching Jon North's latest training youtube and he is having a bitch of a session and struggling. Check it out below as watching  it I get deja-vu as it mirrors how badly I felt during my session yesterday.




Stay Strong
Thomo

Rule 1: Don't lift on a Monday night

Tonight I made the fatal mistake of performing my biggest session of the week on a Monday night. I had forgotten just how busy the gym gets. Now at a typical garage gym that is not a problem because everyone is hitting the big three lifts and understand how to work in. Not so at a commercial gym where tonight the platform was taken up by a guy bent rowing and his girlfriend deadlifting 50kg with straps for almost 40 mins.

In fact for the first 20 mins of my warm up there were no Oly bars free at all. When I did get to lift the bar I used may well have been the smoothest shortest bar I have used. On my warm-up at 130 I spotted another free bar and quickly reloaded this so I could perform my top set with comfort.

Following dead's I had front pause squats which felt fantastic and rounded out the session with my bench volume work. Despite being heavily fatigued from pulling and squatting I had a super strong session with good paused repsat 86 and 88% of my 1RM.  Sessions like this keep reminding me how important mental strength is in offsetting fatigue.

I did note today that I need to get another pre-workout meal in prior to training. Typically I will eat at 1:30, get away on time at 4:30 looking to train by 5. However what invariably happens is I get delayed at home playing with my daughter and then by the time I have warmed up and gotten to the gym its 6:30 and with a 7:45 finish I  am only running on my pre-workout and intra workout shakes to keep me going. From now on I will  slip an extra solid pre-workout snack in 1.5 hours out from gym time.

Now I am kicking back digesting some chicken, potatoes and broccoli while tweaking my numbers for Wednesday's session. Post workout feeding one of life's simple pleasures!

Stay Strong

Thomo