thread of getting sw0le

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.

Broke through 300 on the deadlift, woot!

The magic ingredient is sleep.

miscalculated my plate mathematics and ended up with a PR for my squat today, so that was nice

Finally realized my right knee shouldn't be falling inwards on the squat and my knees should't hurt all the time and my *right hip shouldn't pop like a rubber band what the actual fuck*

So instead of ignoring those for years and accepting I'm never going to break 185 on the squat, went to the damn doctor like an adult and got a referral for a physical therapist. Going to see how this shakes out; Actual Doctor says I have abnormally tight hamstrings, and Dr. Google says it might be IT band problems.

good move

years ago, a few weeks of PT taught me how to manage knee/hip problems that I'd thought might require surgery ... that experience really changed the way I think about training

Apparently I just have super, super, SUPER tight and locked-up hamstrings and calves and hips. I went home with a couple of sheets of stretches (one sheet for the legbones and all that is attached to them, one for my shoulders, neck & back) and a few more appointments to keep tabs. I'm kind of excited! There's apparently no sign of injury or anything that could prevent full recovery so long as I'm conscientious about doing this every day and not slouching like a hunchback all the goddamn time; I regret not doing this forever ago but it's always nice to un-fuck something up.

don't forget to strengthen your butt too. that helped me with the hip turning in. i have been to the gym 10 times since thanksgiving. i really did do a great job since june-ish 2016. i wouldn't say my bench press is anywhere near impressive but it's been exploding lately & i love to bench press. i don't even feel compelled to play the biggest loser at work this year. i never lose anything anyway. i'll just eat and get sw0le instead.

bench is totally my bête noire. i wish i knew a way to "explode" my bench or get into it and succeed the way i have w the squat. i'm unfeasibly strong in my legs and core but still such a twerp up top.

Less weight more reps for a little while. Maybe mix it up -- no flat bench for a bit, but inclined bench + a good pecs machine.

Yeah try variations in lift speed, isolate specific parts of the lift, pauses, push ups, etc. Also bench is one exercise where it really benefits to have a spotter. I'm sure there were a lot of reps I quit on because I was afraid of leaving bar on my chest where if I had someone there I probably could have finished with minimal assistance.

harbl, anything you'd recommend for The Butt? I'm still doing more or less Starting Strength (which is heavy on squats and DLs); I was hoping that an intensive recuperation/stretching program would help me progress on the squats again after stalling out at around 185 at 198 lbs body weight. Right now I'm at about 165 lb work sets at 180 lb body weight, which isn't a *terrible* decline, but I'd really like to keep that number from slipping any further.

I did get the go-ahead from my physiotherapist to keep up the hip abduction machine and Roman chair back extensions I added in the last couple of sessions, since those are supposed to be good for the gluteus medius, which is a major factor in knee tracking and hip strength, so I'm going to keep doing those every session and trying to progress on them.

anything you'd recommend for The Butt?

dumbbell lunges are good for this

i do side-lying clams in my warm up w/ squeezed butt, 20 reps per side, glute bridges, one leg glute bridges, 45 deg hyperextensions (NOT arching my back at the top, i try to keep the low back out of it) for 3 sets of 20 or less reps w/ a 25 or 30 lb dumbbell

also lunges and bulgarian split squats (ow)

re: bench pressing, higher reps dumbbell bench presses all summer are def what helped

like i work up to 3 sets of 10 w/ the weight i'm on because it's slow to progress 5 lbs per arm, then step down and do another set of 10 or so

i do side-lying clams in my warm up w/ squeezed butt

the cadence of this is almost joycean

haha

just realized this is unclear, as if it matters: "3 sets of 20 or less reps w/ a 25 or 30 lb dumbbell" that was meant to be 3 sets of 20, unweighted, or fewer reps with a dumbbell

i was at the gym on sat at like 5 and barely anyone was there and the security guard came and was like "you're the lucky best exerciser of the day!" and gave me a free tiny ymca towel

except for the guy with the fanny pack that i am trying to plot how to ban from the gym

the guy AND the fanny pack are banned