Weight lifting

Lol, that's an April fools post, Jordan. Squats and squat variations are your friend. After my working sets I like to do pause squats, 1.5rep squats, front squats, goblet squats, bottoms up squats, etc...The key is determining your weakness and working on them. Most people are quad dominant. So anything that hits your hamstrings and glutes are a place to start. Glute bridges, glute ham raises, lying leg curls, pull throughs, stiff legged deadlifts, romanian deadlifts, etc...
Re: deadlift, I can almost guarantee it's a form issue.
Lower back pain in beginners when squatting usually stems from a hip or hamstring mobility issue. Knee pain (specifically in the patellar tendon) usually indicates a quad dominance. Mobility, icy hot, and getting blood to the area before squatting will help. But you're likely covering up a form issue.
Lower back pain when deadlifting is usually due to not engaging your posterior chain. I.e. You're picking the weight up rather than driving through the floor with the weight.
Come train with me some day or post up some form check vids and we can figure out what's going on with your form.

 

My upper back rounds every time I dl. The problem is when your lower back rounds.
Where did you learn how to squat? Were you coached or did you learn from the SL ebook?

 

Do you ever record your lifts? Seeing what you're doing vs feeling what you're doing can be very helpful. Being able to identify what you are doing right and wrong is also a huge benefit. Of course a coach with a good eye who gets to know you is even better. Have you watched the efs series on youtube called "so you think you can squat?" It's geared more towards the intermediate lifter, but there are a ton of gems in that short series.

 

Up your protein intake and take 5g creatine daily. At your height/weight and mostly upper body strength I'd guess you're in the high teens bodyfat? If you're already pretty low bodyfat (clearly defined abs), you can manipulate definition with carbs... I mean you can really play some fun tricks with your body and dry out in 2-3 days.

Kinda off topic but you know those late night fitness commercials? All the before/afters are actually mostly after/befores. You can go from cut as hell to sloppy in a day and back if you're already lean. Water and carb manipulation works wonders (carbs hold around 4g water per g). This is almost a year old and I wasn't super lean in these pics, but here's an example of what I mean:

 

This one work? http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc202/sheenis_/carbmagic.jpg

hydrostatic is good. Use it as a baseline and calculate rmr/vmr from that. Take your morning weight and track that. You'll see fluctuations but the net weekly result should be directional. Take some measurements once a week or so as well (waist at hips, waist at navel, legs at thickest point, chest). Consistency is key. Good luck with your goals and keep us updated!

 

What do you mean?

Good read. Although calling it fat loading is a bit misleading. At its core its a tried and true low/no carb diet and he's filling his calories with fat (more calorie dense than protein, so less overall food consumed). I prefer loading protein since I'm a fat kid at heart and enjoy eating my face off.
Do you follow layne norton, lyle mcdonald, john meadows, skip hill, etc?

 

Damnit! Are you on a mobile device? Ill try uploading it a different way tomorrow. There's also a good youtube video on the subject. Ill see if I can find it.

 

Nope. Weekly carb backloading. Don't eat carbs for 6 days except a tiny amount to spike insulin post lifting. This depletes your glycogen stores. Then you supersaturate on one day and hold in absorb more than you typically would. Are you familiar with how adh and water retention works? Similar concept except manipulating glycogen uptake.

 

Oh gotcha. Yeah I'm not familiar enough with the fitness industry to know if I want to work in it. As far as personal training goes I just want to effectively apply my knowledge and experience to myself lol. Tbh I don't think id have the patience to train others. The **** that we learn about nutrition and exercise is so far off that I feel like you'd end up spending more time re-educating clients than actual physical training. Well, at least if you cared about real change and long term success. So kudos to you for the dedication!
The thing I like about the bb phd's like norton is that they understand the physiology and biochemistry and also have the personal experience (through time under the bar and through their clients). The other guys are more realistic than your typical "eat nothing but brocoli, yams, and chicken" guys. Their methods are sustainable for tuhe average person with a job, social life, family, etc...

 

edit: I need to preface this by saying this is all based on 2 sets. I have no idea if these two sets are typical, but assuming they are, here's what I see...

Solid base to work off of, Jordan.
3 main things to work on:
1) Tighten up. You need to be tight from toe to bar. Rewatch the video (2nd angle) and watch just your feet. The slide in/out showing you aren't firmly planted. Part of this is your shoes. Squishy soled cross trainers are just about the worst possible shoe for squatting. Try a thin flat sole adidas/chuck taylor or barefoot. Now watch your upper body. There's some movement there as well. Your head/neck angle is pretty neutral and solid. You're chicken necking a little bit. You can fix this by pulling your head back into the bar as if you're making a double chin (neck angle remains neutral). This will in turn tighten your upper back. Your elbows could stand to be down a bit, which will also help develop a stronger shelf for the bar to sit on. This is all about shoulder mobility. Can't really see your grip, but this could be part of the issue. Pull "through" the bar with your thumb and index finger.
2) Sit back. You're currently sitting almost straight down. Notice the forward knee flexion on the way down and the shift to your toes on the way up? That shows a strong quad dominance. Even with high bar squats, you want your posterior chain to be your primary movers.
3) Depth/mobility. Be consistent with your depth. The first several reps you bomb well below parallel. Rewatch those reps (more evident in the 2nd angle) and you'll notice your tailbone duck under. Part of this is hip mobility, and the other part of this is due to position. Based on your proportions, you can't physically get lower while maintaining the same spine angle. If you want to squat that deep*, then you need to change up your descent angle (down and back rather than straight down) and work on your hip and hamstring mobility.

On the subject of depth. High bar squats are great for oly lifters. If that is your focus, then by all mean lift high bar and get as deep as possible (but watch that pelvic tuck). If you aren't training snatch, clean and jerk, etc... then a more natural squat for you (well, most people) would be a hybrid high/low bar position. For low bar, in competition, you just need to break parallel. Parallel is defined as when the hip crease is even with the top of the knee. You can definitely go below parallel in training if you want to, but there's a trade off in that the lower below parallel you go, the more you lift with your back rather than your hips and legs (below parallel your hamstrings are at a mechanical disadvantage). You also can't lift as much weight, so your overall work is decreased. Beginner programs like SL account for this by incorporating a decent amount of volume (warmups plus 25 working reps). IMHO, once your form is sound, you want to get to the point where you can decrease reps and increase weight to accomplish the same amount of work in less reps. Certainly there's a point of diminishing returns where working near your 1rm is going to be too taxing on your CNS, but there are several schools of thought on the appropriate waving of volume over time to promote growth and minimize recovery time.

Oh, one last note... nice work on the walkout. You can tell you're deliberate and consistent. You can work on cleaning it up a bit, but it's a very good starting point. Use the setup and walkout as a way to generate tension. Don't wait until you're already squatting.

 

Do you have access to a reverse hyper machine or a low enough pulley for pull-throughs? How's your breathing/core bracing? Honestly, direct ab work usually isn't needed unless you're really weak there. Strengthening your back will probably net you better gains across all your lifts. If you want to do direct ab work that's cool. I'd recommend things like standing cable crunches though since your balance/stability isn't quite there yet. Planks are alright. When I used to train abs I would do them
Personally, I wouldn't drop the weight. It doesn't look heavy enough in the vid. Too light (below body weightish) and it's a different lift imho. Your consistency breaks down towards the end but that looks like fatigue, not lack of strength. If it were me, I would continue with the program and work on 1 or 2 things each session until you get your form down.

Box squats are alright as a training tool. They can help you reach depth and learn to sit back (especially if you position the box/bench so you have to sit back to reach it). I wouldn't replace your back squat with them entirely though. Also, my depth changes day to day depending on ankle and hip mobility. Some days I'm stiff and need to sit back more or adjust stance width to hit depth comfortably. So something fixed height like a bench isn't the best option. An assortment of of boxes or those aerobic step up things work better for box squats imho. Be careful not to sit all the way down on the box if you are using it for depth. You have the tendency to shift your weight to your toes to get out of the hole so you could do box squats where you sit all the way down, but you have to be very careful to drive through your heels to get up. Otherwise you're just reinforcing an existing bad habit (shifting to your toes and using your quads as the primary movers).

If you can get a bench and dl vid I'm interested in seeing those. Especially bench. That's my one decent lift.

 

I mean, use every rep of every set to work on form. Execute every rep with purpose. Right now it looks like you're just going through the motions. Building muscle memory through reps is definitely part of it, but you are capable of generating a lot more force than you currently are. A lot of your strength is dissipating from your loose connection with the ground, your lack of abdominal bracing, your upper back looseness, etc... These are all things you can clean up on every rep of every set and they are especially important for heavier weights where a form break can lead to injury. Think about staying tight from the floor up (or the head down... whatever is easier to connect with) and generating tension. On the descent, I think about pulling myself back and coiling up like a spring.

Re: bench. Alright, so I wasn't there so can't say for sure but that sure sounds like a crock of ****. Bench pressing is a full body exercise. Really, your back should be doing more work than your pecs... and this is coming from a guy who is genetically very pec dominant. Again, like with the squat and your posterior chain, it's a larger muscle group so use it. bench press is not a ****ing "chest press" :lol:. Do machine chest presses for that. Really, if you want to isolate your pecs, do accessory work like wide grip smith, flyes, etc... Or you could do like I did and press 3x a week for 3 years lol.

For someone your height, I would expect an index finger on ring grip to be about right. Now if you were flaring your elbows (which looks like a wider grip for above), that's a different thing altogether. Make sure you are tucking slightly and keeping your elbows and wrists in line. A wide grip reduces your rom and loads your front delts more than your chest. I don't like narrow grip inside of shoulder width bc it's impossible to line up your wrists and elbows. Too close of a grip and your elbows fall below the bench and can cause all sorts of issues. For example if your shoulder externally rotates at the bottom your medial delt is gonna get pounded. It also puts a lot of unnecessary load on your elbows. Either way, no matter what width grip you use, you're loading your pecs. Just at different points of the press. So on wide grip your pecs may be maximally loaded at the bottom vs narrow grip where it's maximally loaded around 6" off your pecs. Yes, your triceps are loaded differently (and for a longer duration and range) in a narrow grip. This is going to differ for everyone since we're all built differently. For example my arms are long for my height but it's because my humerus is long and my forearms are super short. This is going to effect my grip width since the amount of elbow tuck is limited. This is also going to effect rom (to my advantage) since the distance between bar and elbow is so short.

 

Oh, here's the video I was talking about, Medic


pretty easy to manipulate definition with carbs and water. I did the same experiment except in 10 minutes and with 4 chipotle burritos. Now that was definitely a massive dump the next day lol

 

Is that your way to boost test lol

What about foam rolling?

 

lol true. cardio after weights anyhow right.
Yeah, asking Stuck. Looks like trolling.

 

Gotcha. It could. Depends on a ton of factors specific to the individual. Are you getting back pain after squatting?
Personally, I use my roller for my chest and glutes. Sometimes to loosen up my upper back, but my tight spots are typically easier to get at with a theracane or lacrosse ball.
Butt wink can be from poor mobility but in Jordan's case it looks like a body position/form issue to me.

 

post a vid. You can expect form to break a bit on an ME/near ME lift but if you're breaking all the time at a sub max weight, you probably have an easily identifiable weakness or a form issue.
Foam rollers (and pvc tubes) are a good tool. Short of ART, it's about the only way I can get my chest to open up some days.

 

Lol I'm turning into the accessorizer. Didn't used to have any gear (not even a bag) till recently and now I have 2 belts, 3 pairs of shoes, wrist wraps, deadlift socks, chalk, mouth guard, lacrosse ball, yad yada yada in my gym bag lol.