Adarq.org

If I could back and not see coach on friday, i probably would lol and continue thinking I was on the right track. Haha. But i srsly i didn't believe that proper squatters must have such a stance so much wider than mine. I had to see it from his eyes to realise it and then it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Watch Михаил Кокляев

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L1z7afvB8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6L1z7afvB8</a>

That's a wide as stance! Or is it? The inside of his shoes up near the heel are pretty much shoulder width. He's still hitting good depth and staying upright. I'm also noticing how wide his grip is on the bar, i should experiment with mine too instead of just taking it on faith that close as possible best (mine is very very close).

Over the weekend i practiced a lot with the empty bar. Shoulder Width (SW) stance, slightly wider, more wider, toes straight, toes turned out a little, more, with plates under feet, etc. I found that I couldn't do my usual ATG on front squats with a wider stance, for some reason i run into huge buttwink issues, back rounds completely just after breaking parallel. This was paradoxical to me why with a narrow stance I can keep a flat back and go proper deep and with a wider stance it becomes close to impossible. I obviously haven't got the mobility to squat properly with a SW stance right now, and if i switch over to it immediately i'll likely get injured. So that's what I won't do. I may gradually increase my stance, hopefully while preserving depth and get stronger over time.

Here is a mindfuck though. With a SW stance, I can do a perfectly deep, upright OHS!!  How can you explain that? I have no idea. It must be my hamstrings/hips tightening up on FS/BS which doesn't happen in OHS? I found I need to tighten up my groin muscles to keep a flat back on BS. Wider stance brings a whole host of issues with it, it's no wonder I came to prefer narrow.

I have picked up some injuries since wednesday. I wore my worst pair of shoes on my postworkout cooldown run/jog and they have given me a nasty dose of Achilles tendinitis. It flared up on friday and coach had me do some stretches and rolling but i think that just made it worse. It wasn't something to stretch away but needed to be rested. You never know about these things, some niggles go away from working at them, some get worse. I also think my lowerback didn't like the heavy good mornings i did with coaches technique. His squat technique leads to way more squatmorning than my usual method. It also hurt my right knee. I completely believe that his way is more quad dominant.

I measured my thighs and was surprised to find them come out as 25" - that was my goal size. So now i'm thinking with my FS+BS combo and everpresent quad soreness, i was on the right track, perhaps suboptimally and didn't really need to make drastic changes. By veering off course, i just caused myself unnecessary stress and possibly injury! So small subtle changes from here on, back to way things were on my last good workout (wednesday). nothing drastic, just incremental small improvements from here. Yes I need a wider stance. No I wont go all the way to SW right away.

Training
FS 3Fx127 (PR), 3x126 (PR)
BS 4x127.5 (PR), 5x125(PR), 10x110 (PR)
BP 5x86 (PR), 1x87

FS notes:
I didn't FS on friday, wanted to make up for it by adding 2kg instead of the usual 1kg. Didn't get the 3rd rep but on the 2nd set got 3x126 I would have done on friday. Body is able to produce 1kg PRs a pop (3kg a week) but no more than 1kg at a time. Noted. Really dirty 3rd rep on the 126kg. If I posted the vid you'd all rightly chastise me. I reason that if I had not attempted a 127kg triple before that it would have been cleaner. Upper back rounded a lot, lower back was ok. Have to strengthen upper back. And yes coach would say it's because your quads are not strong enough, totally true, stronger quads mean you can get away with less upper back strength by driving the rep hard but since i'm already working very hard on quads there isn't much I can do about that but upper back can be strengthened via other exercises.

BS notes:
I kinda figured out a way to make my normal technique more quad centric. Just by re-oriented myself on the way up to drive straight up via quads. Bad news is I didn't have my 6 reps in me for 127.5 - my thought was to continue from friday's 6x127 ugly squatmornings to give myself motivation by getting a 1/2kg PR. But really I should have done 126kg or something instead since the 127kg last week was too dirty for any use. So. Next time go for 6x126kg topset and then resume 2kg jumps from there. Also that 6x126kg will be a PR set - i'm not counting fridays squat mornings with coach as backsquat - they were good mornings!

Also for next time consciously tighten up adductors. Just to get more stability into the hole. It's one thing I can do to reduce the horizontal instability that comes with my narrow stance.

Happy to get the 10x110kg milestone PR - 1RM calculator puts that as a 147kg max, which is close to 150kg = 2xbw for my ideal bw of 75kg. So that's something i guess. I would like 10x120kg just to make sure I have really covered the 2xbw goal, or at least mean it's a smooth athletic lift rather than a slow grindy one.

BP notes:
Think i've hit the wall on 6s. Have got as far as these could take me. Now I will try 5s for a while. If that gets me unstuck up to 90kg it will be great.

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So subtle changes are the way forward. I'll make that the watchword of the day. Slowly and gradually i'll improve my form but in the meantime stick to the program and get my 140kg squats (FS 3x140 and BS 6x140) in the next 3 weeks. If  I fall 5kg short on FS that's ok. If I can't get 6 reps of BS - that's ok too, 5 will do. I may switch to 5s for my topset if necessity deems it so.Then come september, i'll start dropping bodyfat back to baseline.  Work tirelessly on my form, slowly and steadily widening stance, getting more upright, maintaining depth. Add in accessory work and close up any strength and muscle gaps in my kinetic chain. Become a beast.

^Hmm. He's right! He's right! Lol.

I'm trying to figure out my sizing for nike romaleos 2. I tried out nike free's in 13 and 11.5 which were obviously wrong. Also tried out 12s and 12.5s. Hard to decide between 12 and 12.5. 12's are snug. 12.5's are slightly roomy. So not sure which to go with out of those two. If I wear 2 pairs of socks i'll def need 12.5s (been doing that because i thought my right foot ankle mobility is jelly like).

In case anyone is interested, this is the program/plan coach sketched for me :-



I'm not yet doing 100% what's written, just because I want to finish what I started first. But also because I can't do some of those things right now due to injury and what not. But eventually I will do it as written.

What do you guys think btw? Is he mad? Good? Bad? A lot of it resonates with what Lance has told me along the way and I respect his views quite a lot.

His reasoning for squat jumps (not jump squats) which are unweighted squats into a jump is to teach my body to recruit the quads out of the hole. I'm not doing the plyo exercise you guys use with a barbell, which to my understanding is an advanced exercise. Too strong a back means giving up finishing a squat with the legs allowing the back to take over (squat morning) when legs aren't strong enough or just lazy legs giving up too easily. btw he's totally right about my quads being weak as fuck. I had a solid convincing reason for that but now i've forgotten it for the moment, will edit when i remember.

This is the same problem i had, since i heard you don't want quads stronger than the hams all i concentrated on was the hammies and now i have that problem of leaning when in the hole and coming with heavy weights, someone told me that when in the hole if you curl the weight a bit back it should place weight on your p-chain rather than your torso so you can get up more upright.

maybe i should try the front squats. but don't want to add more to my workout yet.
unless i feel like i can add more than maybe

Quote from: Raptor on August 14, 2013, 03:30:15 pm

If you can do strong front squats then you know how to recruit the quads out of the hole (and the glutes).

yes. IMO, problem here is weak BW.

you get our of this twig mode, you will improve your squat ratio and potentially be more explosive.

This^^^

You're already probably very high in terms of neural efficiency and movement efficiency in the squat so... getting up in bodyweight should help at this point.

But you're still PRing so...