thread of getting sw0le

i've been consistent now for 3.5-4 months, probably my longest stretch.

i will go four days in a row and then suddenly stop for 2 weeks. need to work on that.

today i saw these two boys doing close-grip benches with their thumbs touching. i thought about telling them that was too close, they could hurt their wrists, but then thought 'they only have 25-lb plates on they aren't going to hurt anything' lol oh snap.

though i did not go heavy today and felt a little slow and old i still did a lot of pull-up sets to super-good tunes 😎

I've been doing 3 sets of 8-10 front squats lately and I think I hate it. Really missing heavier back squats right now.

For the hell of it, I've also experimented with overhead squats — it's made it clear that I have some mobility issues, because halfway down I pretty much /have to/ tilt my torso a bit and let the bar drift forward.

been out of the gym for two weeks now d/t sickness and then work stuff and then, the indignity, showing up at the gym w/o my gym bag

:(

ugh forgetting clothes or shoes or yr entire bag is the worst

i felt pretty stupid

it happens to everyone. i forgot all my stuff just yesterday.

on the advice of a PT i'm doing some more *whispering* isolation work. i have a severed right lat from a lung surgery i had as a kid. nothing ever feels out of balance in motion, but after rehabbing some weirdness in my right hip, apparently some things are a little cockeyed. and my flexibility is measurably different L to R.

so i'm doing dumbbell bench presses to save some lower back stress, and 1-arm dumbbell rows to work that twisting stabilization. ngl it's pretty fun.

i love both of those things and you don't have to wait for some douche to stop using the flat barbell bench to finish quarter-benching 225

lol otm

i muddled that sentence bc sick but you can understand

ugh that sucks, the sick part not the sentence part

yeah no gymming for me until sometime next week prob. so weak feeling.

i've bene so spotty w/ the gym over the last few months. I tried to read Starting Strenght but bcz i have v v limited range of motion in like all of my joints I can't bend my arms or wrists or things far enough to get the proper grip for a squat or a clean & jerk. I feel discouraged! I guess I have to stick to machines and dumbbells and find something that works for me? I might also get a trainer and be like "ok look help me figure out what i want and also help me achieve it with this unconventional body that i have"

still torn btwn:
a) lose belly fat and get some abs by idk a mix of limited food intake plus weight and cardio
b) gain muscle mass by eating a lot and working out really hard
c) doing (b) followed by (a) to like build muscle and then "shrink wrap" it

For the hell of it, I've also experimented with overhead squats — it's made it clear that I have some mobility issues, because halfway down I pretty much /have to/ tilt my torso a bit and let the bar drift forward.

― Rimsky-Koskenkorva (Øystein), Wednesday, October 12, 2016 4:22 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've been doing light weight overhead squats as a warmup to back squats, in part to improve mobility and form and activate support muscles and I have a similar issue, very hard for me not to tilt forward at least a little, although I can get pretty good depth.

I've been finding longer warmups before squatting helps, including both mobility/stretching and active stuff. One mobility warmup I find really helpful is to sort of do punter kicks, swinging my leg all the way forward/up and then all the way back/up while keeping my leg relatively straight. My squat is still weak compared to my other lifts and has progressed less quickly, mostly because of the mobility issues.

A trainer told me I had tight IT bands and I suddenly became super aware of my IT bands and could really feel how tight they were, so I've been doing a lot of stretches focused on those on my off days. It has definitely helped. There is still some weak link in my squat that I can't quite identify that causes the slight fall-forward.

choose c) stevie

i seem to be doing b) indefinitely with no intentions of doing a) so far

I started working out interested in something closer to a) but now I'm more in the b) camp. I'd say my goal is to gain as much muscle mass as possible without getting much fatter and overall looking better. Going for strength gains but not doing what I'd probably have to to max them out in terms of calorie intake and workouts. On the whole I definitely look better and have bigger muscles now, and am maybe a little bit fatter but can still p much wear my old clothes.

ok opinions coming

steve you should definitely do what works for you. dumbbells and machines are great. hack squats, leg extensions and leg curls will give you thighs. dumbbell lunges are hard as fuq. my very personal opinion is if there's one barbell lift that's really worth learning it's the squat. clean and jerk, bench, even deadlift (gasp), who cares. if you do some sessions maybe just ask the trainer to teach you how to squat. you don't even need to do them with a barbell. it's probably a good way to judge if a trainer is worth their salt maybe.

the more i lift weights, and to be clear i'm just an amateur with passable form on squats, presses and deadlifts, the more i feel like it's basically window dressing to the ability to move, carry myself and inhabit my body that even the most basic yoga routine gives me. i have no idea if you've tried it steve but if you're at all interested i would totally recommend giving it a shot. it will give you strength and abs and muscles and all that plus work with your body as it is wrt flexibility. if you want to add in weights too, those two things are completely synergistic ime.

another opinion is, it really doesn't matter so much what exactly you do, just as long as you do it consistently or establish a routine of doing it, so you might as well do something you know you can enjoy doing.

also re: yoga, it's the only fitness thing i do that makes me better at sex, so that's another plus.

i love to deadlift
since i got sick and i have two trials in the next 7 days i am giving up on october. i'll be better in november. fuck jobs.

october has been a total wash for me, too, after a few months of pretty regular 2-3x/week

:(

xp I've found the benefits of lifting to be pretty substantial, although I could definitely imagine diminshing returns after a certain muscle mass.

For one thing, I just feel way more confident, like it gives me this solid, rooted feeling. I'm not that big a guy (about 5'9") so having the muscle packed on makes me feel more substantial. I've noticed a difference in the way I carry myself at work, especially with male coworkers. I lost some of that old under-the-surface "what if they don't like me bc I'm not a jock" anxiety leftover from middle school, which was probably mostly in my head but in any case is much better now.

I've also found it makes me much more aware of my body, because of the focus on form. I notice my posture, I notice what parts of my body are tight and what's moving well or not so well. I'm sure the same would be true of yoga, but I just enjoy lifting. Relatedly, it's also gotten me to start stretching a lot more, whereas I used to just find stretching skippable. Knowing that it will help my lifts motivates me to stretch.

everyone says that abt the squat but the prob is i can't bend my arms back far enough to get the bar on the back of my shoulders, like it winds up just sitting on the base of my neck

i've done yoga a few times and i don't hate it! there's a monthly or bi-weekly trans & queer yoga nearby that i wanna do. and i've been skimping on my routine :-/ I'm supposed to go 3x a week but it's been a lot of weeks of only 2x bcz i keep skipping and not making it up the next day

Stevie have you tried spreading your arms/grip wider out? If that still doesn't work you may have shoulder mobility issues.

also when I say "I have limited mobility" i mean "I have a bone dysplasia that prevents my joints from working properly" and not "i can increase flexibility by stretching and doing exercises". I can't even do regular pushups because my fingers won't go completely flat and my wrists can't really bend back to a 90* angle

gotcha. In that case I don't see any reason to feel hard-pressed to squat, it's really nbd.

ya i mean it was discouraging at first but i am a p resilient dude and have no prob just finding other things that work w/ what I can and cannot do. I know machines are supposed to be less-than-ideal but I've made some decent progress w/ them and dumbbells alone

that's awesome. i think machines get a bad rep because of bs masculinity optics.

Machines and freeweights sound ideal in that situation.

Also, unless you're actually doing something like competitive lifting, working out is not a competition and to the extent it's a struggle it's only a struggle with yourself. I remind myself this every time I think something like "I wanna get my numbers up but I don't feel confident getting the bar up with this much weight" or "I think I could deadlift a little more on the next set but my form is starting to go." I'd rather err on the side of slow progress and not injuring myself, because I'm not entering any competitions and no one but me cares whether my deadlift gets above 300, but an injury would actually affect my ability to do basic stuff like take care of my kids. The more I learn about lifting the more I realize that competitive lifters' approach is necessarily different -- riskier and more injury prone for the sake of max gains and max numbers at competitions. Recreational lifters don't need to do what they do, and by extension, recreational workouts don't have to involve barbell lifts at all, many other ways of getting benefits.

goblet squats and/or split squats will get you most of the benefit of barbell squats.

Stevie, have you looked into deadlifts? Flexibility is much, much less of a limiting factor vs squats, and lankier dudes can absolutely <i>destroy</i> deadlifts after a while

I have not, no!

that's awesome. i think machines get a bad rep because of bs masculinity optics.

― The times they are a changing, perhaps (map), Thursday, October 20, 2016

nah it's bc in general they are less effective and less efficient

and they do not activate as many tiny "stabilizer" muscles that help u keep a free weight up and balanced and on the right path, so make you less strong and even promote injury as you have giant main muscles but nothing to stabilize them with. that's what st. rippetoe said and thus it shall be

Squat form continues to be the bane of my existence. Been doing long warmup with roller and mobility work, assisted squats and very light overhead squats. Today I felt like in my back squat I engaged my glutes and hamstrings better in a way that helped stabilize me, it was like a part of my leg/posterior woke up all of the sudden at the bottom of a squat.

thread of getting w0ke

Man alive: thanks for the tips — punter kicks sounds like it might be a good idea. My legs are generally very flexible though — e.g. I can sit in full lotus + do a fair amount of crazy yoga stretches — but who knows, there just might be some particular thing that's too tight (IT band does seem to be a common problem with squats)
Your point about longer warmups is probably key here — my warmups are rarely more than a treadmill run + one or two easy sets of whatever lift I'm doing, starting with just the bar. Fsr I've never actually considered doing more.

I spoke with an olympic weightlifter at my gym, who had me do a few squats to check out my mobility. He gave me a whole array of arm and shoulder stretches and said something about how it's common for people who do bench to get shittier upper body mobility. Have seen some improvement, I'm happy to say, but I've only tried the overhead squat a couple of times since I last posted.

nah it's bc in general they are less effective and less efficient

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Friday, October 28, 2016 7:55 PM (six days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"in general"

i went on vacation for a week and now this week i'm form checking with much less weight and dialing back my split to the basics. also doing yoga bits, planks and such afterwards. feels good!

my gym's "core" mat is so much stickier than my yoga mat so i can do full backbends without slipping, they're awesome.

why are yoga mats generally not made of the least slippery material available idgi

The thing that seems to help most on my squats is to remember to "push up" while pushing down through my heels.

I got my bench up to 195 yesterday and feel like I can probably try 200 next week, which is sort of a cool psychological milestone

I guess when I think about it, as much as I feel like my squat progress isn't great, months ago my knees were caving inward and I was having trouble hitting depth. Now I've fixed that and I just fall a little too far forward and my lower back curves slightly at the bottom of the squat. It still just doesn't quite feel like a natural movement though, the way my bench, overhead press and to an extent my deadlift do.