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He should have advocated 100% blood flow restriction for no less than 5 minutes while performing as many 10RM reps as you can within those 5 minutes. Actually no, even as a joke that's deadly. HEH!

Let me send that as a challenge to Donald Drumpf on twitter. brb

Yeah back to the hip thrust argument - there's such a big variation into what people "consider" to be a hip thrust. I was watching LBSS's videos of his hip thrust, and he uses such short ROM. When I do the hip thrusts, I go to full hip hyperextension (I try, at least), pause there for a second or two, then go all the way down. I don't go 1 cm and then back up, I go all the way down so the plates touch the ground, and then do the exercise again. Plus sometimes I feel the exercise in the lowerback, meaning I wasn't actually using my glutes properly/I wasn't getting into posterior pelvic tilt, I was trying to "back extend" - so the completely wrong movement, and also with injury potential.

Sometimes I like to just touch the ground with the plates and go straight back up, so that I maintain continuous tension in the glutes for the entire set, sometimes I rest the barbell on the floor for a second and do the next rep (maybe I'm repositioning my back on the bench etc). But there's a tremendous amount of difference in TUT (or the total amount of time it takes me to do say 5 reps) vs what I've seen around here, with 1-inch humps of the bar being called "hip thrusts". Certainly a lot less time spent per set for the same amount of reps, a lot less stretching of the glutes, a lot less range of motion etc.

This makes me think about chinups or squats or whatever - when you ask someone how many chinups they do, they might say "15". When you tell them to show you how they do them, they do 2 inch chinups (similar to 1/4 - 1/8 squats that you see the regular gym idiot do).

So yeah, it seems that we have completely different understanding of what a properly performed hip thrust is. And yeah, there's definitely variation going on depending on how you position yourself.

I remember doing the hip thrusts with Olympic lifting shoes on (I think LBSS did so, too) and they felt totally different than the same exercise without OL shoes on. I even reported that to Bret Contreras some time ago (I think he said he hasn't studied the difference).

Also, you can kind of push through the "toes" (or the front part of the foot) or through the heels. Personally, I feel weird pushing through the heels. You can also kind of pull the ground back with your feet while in that position (although that would activate the hamstrings as knee flexors, especially when the bar is resting on the floor and the hamstrings are not in active insufficiency).

So I agree, there's a ton of stuff going on with the hip thrust. I think properly performed KB swings would do a lot of good for maxent, as would depth jumps for height with a target straight overhead (this will force him to hip extend a bit more, IMO, than a regular DJ that for him would be so quad-dominant).

Quote from: Raptor on April 05, 2016, 04:03:20 pm

When he gets some glutes? Wasn't he saying that he's hip thrusting 200+ for reps? Doesn't sound like lack of glute development to me.

The problem with using an exercise to gauge power.  He can't jump more than 30'' and he is incredibly slow.   Watch his dunk videos and you see a guy who has undeveloped glutes that don't fire.  Hip thrusts are a good glute activator but they use a small range of motion and the load doesn't necessarily equate to power very well.  I can get a good workout hip thrusting 225lbs or 505lbs - I have never "maxed" my hip thrust and don't need to.  One of the biggest evaluation mistakes you can make (and usually it's self evaluation where we make it) is when we assume that an athlete can do "X" so therefore that part of the body is clearly not the problem.   It usually comes from an athlete doing an isolation exercise of limited range of motion and assuming that means that muscle is not an issue.  Classic example is a slow sprinter with weak hamstrings who can do something silly like a "Natural GHR" assuming that "I don't have weak hamstrings so that can't be the issue" but not realizing that using your hamstrings as a knee flexor with your knees on the floor doesn't have much to do with hamstring power or development in hip extension during a sprint.  Watch an athlete move dynamically an locate where he has weakness rather than referring to a gym lift as evidence of anything.   

I agree with that. But you can't say he "has no glutes". You can say he isn't using the glutes that he already has at a pretty good level in terms of strength (yes, isolated movement strength, gym work strength, whatever) well in dynamic movements. That I can agree with. On the other hand, he doesn't seem too fast in ANY movement so I'm not sure it's the glutes' fault - it's either his desire to be fast (he is just "sleepy", "lazy" when he plays or whatever), or his CNS is slow.

We can test that if he agrees to film some "glute unrelated movements" dynamically (can't come up with an idea now) or that keyboard type test (where you press the spacebar as fast as you can for 10 seconds and see what kind of numbers you come with to test "quickness" or CNS speed). I know, silly tests, but they might provide some information (relevant or not).

Back to the glutes idea, I would do dynamic glute movements if I were maxent - KB swings (a ton of them, focusing on the "hip snap"), med ball tosses (focusing on the hip snap), double leg bounds, depth jumps for length etc. I know a lot of these things have a horizontal component in them in terms of hip action - if anybody has any idea about a vertical hip dynamic movement... I'm all ears. Maybe SVJs to rim with little knee travel and a lot of hip bend/hinge (like what Toddday was trying to do in his depth jumps videos).

Plus sprints. If I were as slow as maxent, I would say "fuck this, I will do sprints like crazy" and try different distances and give 110% effort on them. Not only are they great plyometric exercises but also train the hip hyperextension, the posterior chain dynamically, the calves dynamically, stiffen the Achilles etc, all the good stuff.

Obviously, all these besides playing actual aggressive ball (especially on defense, since you don't have the ball and can move freely, you can be quicker/faster defensively and you'll benefit from that type of multi-directional "plyo work").

These are what I feel are the most sensible things for maxent at this moment.

50-65 $ an hour? Wait... so that would be the salary I get per month in one day.

Quote from: Raptor on April 05, 2016, 02:43:15 am

How can anyone be 6'3 165? I don't understand. I mean it's really hard to imagine someone like that, I've probably seen in the far past one or two guys like that but they could barely stand on their feet and were slow and uncoordinated as fuck.

By the way - I've rarely seen people use their hips properly when they do backwards med ball tosses. The VAST majority of them use their arms with the hips barely doing any work. Of all the people I know, I really really use the hips. Which is weird because of all the people I know, I don't use the hips at all on the powerclean. Very interesting how this is so different.

Well you feel like you use your hips... but how do you know that?  And who are the vast majority.   These NFL guys toss the 12lb ball almost 30 yards.   That's impossible if you only use arms...

Try to take the word "only" less literal than you currently are taking it. Of course they use their hips, it's not 100% arms and 0% hips, just like in my case it isn't 0% arms and 100% hips. How do I know that? Watching video and feeling the complete extension/hyperextension. Some people end their hip extension movement and then they still continue moving their arms, and then release the med ball at the moment their arms stop moving. So it's a sequence where the hips aren't doing anything and if anything, they just added some "momentum" to the arms or whatever (try not to take this literal again, you know very well what I mean). The difference in timing might be (very) small, but it's there, and it makes a difference.

In my case, and a few other cases of a friend I was training with, the timing is perfect and it looks like an Olympic lift, a continuous movement where the medball is "launched" by the hips through the hands, but most of the time what I see is this lack of timing and the overuse of the arms to throw the ball.

He was a big fan of sickening vendetta + avishek = love

How can anyone be 6'3 165? I don't understand. I mean it's really hard to imagine someone like that, I've probably seen in the far past one or two guys like that but they could barely stand on their feet and were slow and uncoordinated as fuck.

By the way - I've rarely seen people use their hips properly when they do backwards med ball tosses. The VAST majority of them use their arms with the hips barely doing any work. Of all the people I know, I really really use the hips. Which is weird because of all the people I know, I don't use the hips at all on the powerclean. Very interesting how this is so different.