Sunday, June 7, 2020

Training Log: Entry 2689

PM WORKOUT 

Safety Squat Bar Squats

10xBar
10x98
10x115
10x135
10x148
10x155
10x168
10x183
10x205
10x213
10x205
10x183
10x168
10x155
10x148
10x135
10x115
10x98
20xBar

Notes: 60 seconds between sets.  Trying to make the cure worse than the disease in an attempt to heal my connective tissue.  Took these squats VERY slow and under control.  Figured out how I hurt myself the first time: on lighter/high rep squats, I have a tendency to free fall out of the top of the concentric into the start of the eccentric as a means of bypassing lockout.  This was originally something I did to keep tension on the muscles to AVOID stressing my connective tissue, but when the reps get lighter I have the ability to actually bounce the weight off my connective tissue at the top, which most likely made it snap.  It explains why it happened on a rep where I WASN'T struggling.  I got to discover this because I caught myself doing it during parts of the workout today.  The time I blew out my hamstring 7ish years ago it was the same story: squatting too fast.  I have to embrace the fact I'm a slow squatter.

The weights breakdown weird on this one because I'm using a 65lb bar and only used bumpers, since bumpers don't tend to bounce around on the bar.  Along with that, the bumpers I have are a pair of 45s, 2 pairs of 35s, one pair of 25s and one pair of 7.5KG plates. I tried making the smallest jumps I could and went until my body started giving me signals to stop. An interesting data point is that, at the very top set, I decided to put on the belt since my body was feeling a little achy by then, and it changed my technique and put a LOT of stress on my groin.  I may have to go beltless for a bit.

There is a gigantic puddle of sweat in my garage from this effort.  The heat is getting ridiculous.

5 comments:

  1. "Trying to make the cure worse than the disease" love the flip-around on this one: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/CarelessObeseDogwoodtwigborer-size_restricted.gif

    Hey one thing I did a lot of during my back rehab, in which I was banned from using the bar on my back at all for 6 weeks, was Myo-Reps. Just cluster sets really, don't know why it needs another name. And with the low load work I took half the reps instead of what the Myo-Reps guy says. So if I hit 20 on my activation set, all of my subsequent sets were sets of 10 with 5 deep breaths of rest. That had a good way of making light weight feel heavy real quick and kept me plenty challenged during the recovery time. I had forgotten about these for years but they sure came in handy.

    WR

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    Replies
    1. Always gotta be flipping paradigms, haha. Not a bad idea at all on the myo reps: thanks for the reminder on them. There's so many ways to make light weight heavy, and yet the world lost it's collective minds when gyms shut down and people could no longer do 1500lb rack pulls. It's like living in the dark ages and crapping in an outhouse while the Romans had plumbing.

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    2. Oh man. I just wrote a list of exercises and potential set/rep combos for a friend who "only" has a 50lb kettlebell and access to a park with chinup bar. I had two pages of bullet points written up for everything he could do with that, and this dummy was going back to the gym even though it's a mismanaged COVID den because he thought he couldn't do without his squat rack. Like, I get it--you and I have better stocked home gyms than many commercial gyms, so maybe people don't want to hear "make do with less" from me while I have specialty bars collecting dust. And yet, we both openly acknowledge that we forget about more than we can actually use (eg. myo-reps) and literally can't make room in our programs to use all the variety we have available. I offered another friend who lives a couple hours away a spare barbell and plates to get him to ~225, and he said that he didn't know how much he could do with it due to living on a 3rd story apartment. Let's see....literally everything except heavy deadlifts from the floor?!?!?

      FFS

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    3. Oh that second story is especially horrifying. Pretty sure dudes are getting shot over 225lbs of weight right about now: to just turn it down like that is definitely being a choosey begger. Whenever we move, I always offer to downsize the home gym if needed, because, in truth, I like the idea of being more limited and having to work harder to find solutions. It's one of the sick joys I get out of injuries: it's nice having stuff taken OFF the table and having to figure out what I CAN do instead. I plan to write a post about it, even though it's a subject I've touched on before, because it's become so apparent. People don't appreciate the blessing of limitation.

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    4. Hahaha. Absolutely. And you are such an undercover fan of the constraints-led approach!

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