200, 300, 400, 500 - A quest for greatness

Day 1 of my own 40 day program...

Symmetry Squats - oly shoes

Bar x warmup
135 x warmup
155 x warmup
185 x 5 (band)
185 x 5 (no band)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnUOPuFmAj0

Here's a video I took.

As far as I can tell, these are pretty damn symmetric, except for two "artifacts" which still appear even during my light warmups.

1) What still looks like a slight tendency to shift to my right on the way up.  After years of uneven squatting, I guess this is really, really ingrained.

2) The bar itself now looks slightly crooked on my back, versus straight.

What I'm thinking/hoping is that these two will both resolve over time by actually correcting for the leg length difference.  I.e. the path of least resistance should be more of a vertical line straight up and down for #1, and the slight scoliotic curve I probably have in my spine might also correct itself by frequent, symmetric loading.

I'll keep an eye on these, though, as I'm not entire sure how to fix them.  I don't know how to fix #1 at all (i.e. it happens even with an empty bar, it's not a strength issue) if not this, and for #2, the only present "fix" is to not elevate my leg, which means I have to choose either my hips or the bar being slightly crooked.

Bench (all reps paused)

I have a tendency for my left shoulder to occasionally bother me, as it wants to "hike up" slightly during pushes.  It's never been much of an issue, but since I'm going OCD on enforcing squat symmetry, I thought I'd focus on really keeping my left scapula retracted/depressed throughout my pushes.  No shoulder discomfort whatsoever like this.

Bar x warmup
135 x warmup
185 x 5
195 x 5

Scap Chinups

I don't know what else to call these, but imagine chinups in which the primary focus is on depressing and retracting the scapulae while you bring the bar to your chest.  These are considerably harder than standard chinups, but I figured extra work focusing on depression/retraction would be a good idea to frequently practice.

Me x warmup
Me + 45 x 5 (a little too heavy)
Me + 25 x 5 (probably a little better)

edit:

I thought this out, and decided that I wanted a lift here for pure fun, instead of such an intense focus on technique.

As such, I think I'm just going to do one arm chin practice using a one arm chin progression.

For example, I did a single set of 5 on each arm with the 3 fingers of the opposite hand adjacent to the working arm, which approximates the form of a real one arm chin much better than spacing it further out. The emphasis is on helping as little on the way/up down as possible, but still keeping things smooth.

"Core" Stuff

I don't normally do core stuff, so I played around with a couple of things.

The first exercise was a form of crunch/situp in which the weight is held over the head and remains there as one goes all the way to the top of the situp.  I saw an oly lifter doing it on youtube, feels quite good.

The other exercise was just sidebends, a 65 lb dumbbell for a set of 10 on each side.   Doing sidebends reinforces the idea that my right QL is overly tight, whenever I first bring a dumbbell down to my left side (i.e. stretch the right QL), I get a strong chiropractic adjustment.  Feels good.

Calves

A couple of sets of me x 10 with just bodyweight on both sides.  Need to bring my calves up, too.
 
Looking more closely at the vids I recorded today, the shifting towards my right still seems pretty pronounced on a lot of the reps, even though my bottom position is now a lot more strict. There is some interaction with load happening as it's more pronounced at 185 than at 135 or the empty bar (other vids I have but didn't post).

The particularly annoying thing about this is that this level of shifting is beyond my conscious awareness, i.e. I have to watch slow motion video afterward to really see it happen.

I'm not entirely sure what to do, other than be careful about incrementing the load and see whether my hypothesis of increasing the symmetry at the hips starts translating to increased symmetry of movement over time.
 
Symmetry Squats

bar x warmup
135 x warmup
155 x warmup
185 x 5 (band, left foot NOT elevated)
185 x 5 (no band, left foot elevated)

1-arm chin practice

Me x 5 (3 finger assist)
Me x 5 (3 finger assist)

Bench (all reps paused)

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5

Core

Weighted overhead situps - me + 30 x 10

Calves

Me x 10 on each side

Notes:

I squatted in flat shoes today, felt slightly stronger. I'm not sure I will ever fix this asymmetry, it's basically apparent at all weights, even if slightly heavier is slightly worse.

That said, correcting for my leg length difference does help. So far I've got the bar and my bottom position basically symmetrical, but I seem to shift to the right on the way up even when it doesn't feel like I am. Hmm.

Bench took a weird spike up in strength on my second day. I had a couple of reps to spare on both sets, and EVERY rep was paused. The bar just felt bizarrely light - weird.
 
Workout

Squats - flat shoes

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5 (band)
205 x 5 (no band)
205 x 5 (without worrying about shoving my left knee weirdly out, left foot NOT raised)

Video of my last set, i.e. an asymmetric squat.

Bench (all reps paused)

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5

1-Arm Chin Practice

Me x 5 (3 finger assist)
Me x 5 (3 finger assist)

Roman Chair Situps

Me + 25 x 5

1-Leg Calf Raises

Me x 10/side

Commentary

Weird workout today, felt a little tired.  Probably to be expected lifting 5 days per week...

Anyways, squats just did not feel awesome.  I tried something new today by PNF stretching the hammies on my left side before my sets, which might have been relevant to an observation I'll make in a minute.  I was feeling very unstable pushing my left knee out, and probably shouldn't have pushed the work set up to 205.

That said, I tried a few reps of not pushing my left knee weirdly out, just trying to feel balanced/even at the bottom, and lo and behold, my bottom position now looks symmetric without thinking about it, with the bonus of feeling considerably more stable/stronger?  What the ****...

Anyways, my last (third, unplanned) set of 5 actually felt the best simply concentrating on leaning forward enough and balancing properly.  I am wondering if the PNF stretches on my hamstrings, since they tend to be tighter on the left side, is most of all I need to simply be "even" at the bottom.  Or whether, in all of two days, I'm somehow automatically going to a more balanced bottom position.

What I'm not fixing is the hip shifting - it's as strong as ever.  So, bottom position is already getting better without thinking about it, but the hip shifting hasn't changed at all...hopefully it will lessen over time by compensating for the short leg?  Unknown.
 
Wow...major form breakthrough today with squats.

Squats - neutral neck, hip drive

Bar x warmup
135 x warmup
155 x 5
185 x 5
185 x 5

Bench

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
195 x 5
195 x 5

1-Arm Chin Practice

Me x 5 (3 finger assist)
Me x 5 (3 finger assist)

Bulgarian Split Squat

Me + 40 x 10/leg

Discussion

So, the major form breakthrough I had was after watching a stupid amount of vids I've filmed the past week.  In EVERY squat, I crane my neck back and look slightly off center.  Not sure the off center matters so much, but the craning my neck back is the opposite of what Rip describes in Starting Strength.  Even looking down, I crane my neck back.

So, I got control of my neck position.  Which made the squat feel really, really, different.  Harder.  And I can actually feel my glutes.  What the ****?

I videoed several sets, and I am now NOT drifting appreciably to the right...at all.  And my knees are now even at the bottom height wise, instead of uneven.  In fact, I noticed in the vids filmed today that my left knee was now significantly higher than the right with the heel lift under the left.  Seriously, what the ****?

Weirdest damn thing I've ever seen, by actually forcing my neck into a neutral position, my squat just got dramatically better. My pelvis is still a bit crooked and I still squat down slightly to the left and back up to the right, but the hips shifting artifact is basically gone completely, which was my major concern.
 
Bearing in mind the left is without a heel lift, hence it looking less symmetric than the right at the bottom, look at the difference in lateral displacement at identical loading:

symmetrycheck1.jpg
 
<div>
(mikeynov @ Aug. 13 2009,1:42)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Weirdest damn thing I've ever seen, by actually forcing my neck into a neutral position, my squat just got dramatically better.  My pelvis is still a bit crooked and I still squat down slightly to the left and back up to the right, but the hips shifting artifact is basically gone completely, which was my major concern.</div>
Try something for me, Mike - Force your neck into a very slight nod downward, such that your eye line (if you didn't move your eyeballs) is at a 30 degree-ish downgrade - NOT completely neutral. See what that does.

Making that slight adjustment to what Rip suggests in Starting Strength made a HUGE difference in my squat form.

Good luck, man - it's stupid hard to change lifting behaviors after years of training.
 
<div>
(_tim @ Aug. 13 2009,1:36)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE"><div>
(mikeynov @ Aug. 13 2009,1:42)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Weirdest damn thing I've ever seen, by actually forcing my neck into a neutral position, my squat just got dramatically better.  My pelvis is still a bit crooked and I still squat down slightly to the left and back up to the right, but the hips shifting artifact is basically gone completely, which was my major concern.</div>
Try something for me, Mike - Force your neck into a very slight nod downward, such that your eye line (if you didn't move your eyeballs) is at a 30 degree-ish downgrade - NOT completely neutral.  See what that does.

Making that slight adjustment to what Rip suggests in Starting Strength made a HUGE difference in my squat form.

Good luck, man - it's stupid hard to change lifting behaviors after years of training.</div>
This is actually already what I was doing. In order to truly have your neck in a neutral position in a squat, you would have to look slightly down.

But yah, I've &quot;looked&quot; down before, but I had never independently separated that from my head position. Even when looking down in the past, I hyperextended my neck into the bar reflexively. Hard habit to break.
 
Squats

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5

Bench (all reps paused)

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5

Deadlifts

135 x warmup
225 x warmup
275 x warmup
315 x 5

1-Arm Chin Practice

Me x 5 (3 finger assist)
Me x 1 + 1 + 3 (1 finger, 2 finger, and 3 finger assist, respectively)

Notes:

Another good session. In all of a single day of practice with a neutral neck position, things are feeling stronger in the squat. I snagged more video, and the difference in hip shifting is pretty profound (at least to my eye). From the back, I'm basically not drifting at all.

Bench went fine...

Deadlifts I played with, using the same logic as squats, i.e. getting control of my neck position. My natural inclination was to look at the ground a few feet in front of me, and I snagged some video of this, too. While I'm not maintaining anything close to a super arch, it's pretty clear that I have motor control over the erectors, imho, and things felt very natural like this. It's amazing how much was being made unnecessarily awkward by my reflexive tendency to hyperextend my cervical spine in lower body lifts.
 
Very interesting about the whole neck craning thing Mike. I don't yet understand how hyperextending your neck can be the main cause of the hip shifting, but if keeping a more neutral cervical spine helps reduce the problem then I will be looking for this in the folks that I help with their squatting and deadlifting. Thanks for the 'heads up' (ha!) and for deconstructing this.

I love that you are doing 1-arm chin practice. The day you enter in your log that you got one, you'll get a big cheer from me.
 
<div>
(Lol @ Aug. 14 2009,5:16)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Very interesting about the whole neck craning thing Mike. I don't yet understand how hyperextending your neck can be the main cause of the hip shifting, but if keeping a more neutral cervical spine helps reduce the problem then I will be looking for this in the folks that I help with their squatting and deadlifting. Thanks for the 'heads up' (ha!) and for deconstructing this.

I love that you are doing 1-arm chin practice. The day you enter in your log that you got one, you'll get a big cheer from me.</div>
Here's my hypothesis for what's happening with the hip shifting...

Weak right hip, QL on the right compensates by trying to elevate the hip, COG shifts right in order to improve the leverage for right hip.

Cervical hyperextension = allegedly inhibited glutes, hence their &quot;hip drive&quot; suggestion of looking slightly down.  It isn't the looking down that's important per se, it's the neutral cervical spine that somehow allows you to better drive the hips.  Both Rippetoe and Mike Robertson claim this, not sure how true it is for everybody, but I've had trouble recruiting my glutes in general in the past in, well, everything.

So, if I was hyperextending my cervical spine, I was doing so at the cost of glute function, making my hip extension more hamstring dominant (which is totally true, I mostly feel hammies in anything hip extension related).  If the right side is already weak, inhibiting their function via hyperextending my cervical spine on squats/deads was exacerbating the issue, hell, may have even been a root cause in conjunction with a possibly ferrealz short left leg.

When I put my cervical spine back to neutral, and &quot;disconnect&quot; my hip function from my spinal extension, I feel noticeably weaker.  Why would I feel weaker having a &quot;normal&quot; neck position?  Possibly because I'm now properly engaging my hips for the first time, and the glutes are now the weak link.  So it's an interesting combination of being more symmetrical but weaker.

Assuming this all pans out, the solution then is to simply re-progress my strength back up in the context of form that Rippetoe actually prescribes, i.e. keep control of my neck position and progress in poundage to let my hips/glutes catch up in strength relative to the other prime movers (hammies/quads).  And do this as symmetrically as possible, which for the time being appears to include just slightly elevating my left foot due to a possible leg length difference.

What's cool is that I've actually disconnected hip drive from spinal extension in my head now.  I was able to do this in the past, but figured it didn't matter since a lot of squatters sort of crane their heads back into the bar, and avoided it simply because I noticed I was obviously weaker doing so.  Now, I don't care, I will take the big hit in squat poundage and keep a close eye on my symmetry as I re-progress my strength back upwards.  I can check this both in terms of video showing my neck position, as well as video showing my hip drift, so I'll keep an eye on both over the coming months.
 
On a slightly different tangent I recently came across your variation of Doug Hepburn's progression theories using 5's @ 75% (on Lyle's board), and was wondering if you had ever had a chance to try that out or use it with one of your trainees? I've been incorporating his 4-10x1 @ 90% and have really been enjoying it .
smile.gif
 
<div>
(RUSS @ Aug. 14 2009,4:42)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">On a slightly different tangent I recently came across your variation of Doug Hepburn's progression theories using 5's @ 75% (on Lyle's board), and was wondering if you had ever had a chance to try that out or use it with one of your trainees? I've been incorporating his 4-10x1 @ 90% and have really been enjoying it .
smile.gif
</div>
Never actually used it, no, but I think the plan which was something like 3-5 x 5 @ 75% or something along those lines was actually a very good one. It'd be more appropriate for intermediate/advanced trainees, though, probably.
 
Decent day...varied the volume from last week, a logic I'll explain below.

Squats

Bar x warmup
135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5 (didn't really get the left knee out, and feet weren't even)
205 x 5
205 x 5
205 x 5

I consider the last 3 sets &quot;real&quot; sets.  This is light enough that I can get away with it, given my attempts at symmetry.

Bench - all reps paused

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5
205 x 5

1-Arm Chin Practice

Me x 5/side (2 finger assist)
Me x 5/side (2 finger assist)
Me x 5/side (2 finger assist)

Weighted Overhead Situps

Me + 40 x 10

Calf Raises

Me x 12/leg

Bulgarian Split Squats

Me + 50 x 10/side. I'm thinking maybe I'll just do these as part of the squat warmup on the right side to get my abductors firing? Might be overkill to do this daily, though once in the week certainly won't hurt.

Discussion

So, you might be wondering why I am suddenly doing 3 work sets of 5 instead of 2.  Particularly 5 days per week...

Why?  Well, it occurred to me that I could probably better-fy the original &quot;40 Day Plan&quot; by keeping the average volume constant, but varying the weekly volume.

E.g.

Week 1 = 2 sets of 5 @ ~8 RPE
Week 2 = 3 sets of 5 @ ~8-9 RPE
Week 3 = 1 set of 5 @ ~8-9 RPE
Week 4 = Deload, test conservative singles

Across the 3 weeks, the average is still 2 sets of 5, but I have a sneaking suspicion that natural variation in volume will help.

Squats went reasonably well today, my only problem initially was that I felt tight on my left side again, and was having issues getting the left knee out.  Other than constantly cuing it, not sure what else I can do.

Bench also went fine.  I experimented a bit with Rip's pick a spot on the ceiling and hold it logic.  Worked alright.

For 1-Arm Chins, I decided it's too hard to try to manually adjust how much the helping hand is helping every second of every rep, which I was doing with 3 fingers.  As such, I will accept whatever reflexive help the other hand provides, limited by the number of fingers.
 
<div>
(Aaron_F @ Aug. 17 2009,5:03)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">your butt is hungry</div>
It must feed
sad.gif
 
Weird day. I once again did waaaay too much volume on squats due to being unhappy with my form.

Squats

Bar x warmup
135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5 x 6 (6 sets of 5 reps, or thereabouts)

Bench

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5
205 x 5

1-Arm Chin Practice (2 finger assist)

Me x 5
Me x 5
Me x 5

Discussion

So, I started off the first few sets of squats concentrating on my balance mostly on the right leg. The net result was that I actually OVERcompensated and kept going the opposite direction. Oops.

I did a few more sets practicing just being evenly balanced up and down without a heel lift. Because I took a break between squats and other stuff, I was initially having to fight my head craning back into the bar - it's amazing how fast that comes back without practice.

I captured the last video of this, which at the time did not feel awesome, but actually appears the most symmetric to date, I think:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSLyR9NqIJE

Everything else went fine.
 
Okay, so I felt the effects from yesterday's workout on today's...heh.

Squats

Bar x warmup (band)
135 x warmup (band)
135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5
205 x 5

Bench (all reps paused)

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5
205 x 5

1-Arm Chin Practice (2 finger assist)

Me x 5/side
Me x 5/side
Me x 5/side

Discussion

Based on video, I might have been doing a slightly less good job avoiding hip hiking today versus yesterday, and my bottom position wasn't quite as good on some of the reps. Is this a product of the cumulative fatigue? Unknown. Given that my asymmetry at this point is looking pretty minor, I'm not even sure how much I care.

Bench was a bit slow, as were the 1-arm chins. My arms/forearms are feeling the strain right now, getting a little sore near the muscle insertions.
 
Squats (I should probably start noting that these are all paused)

Bar x warmup
135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5
205 x 5

Bench (paused)

135 x warmup
185 x warmup
205 x 5
205 x 5
205 x 5

OAC Practice (2 finger assist)

Me x 5/side
Me x 5/side
Me x 5/side

Discussion

Decent day, squats felt stronger than yesterday. Not looking quite as down seems to help. The biggest factor that seems to affect my hip hike on camera is simply &quot;thinking&quot; about my balance all the way up and down, particularly on the way up.
 
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