mastering the force

[skipbeat]

Thanks Oldster. It's impossible to keep my feet on the floor unless I get one of my buddies to kneel on my shins, but that shit hurts. I think I'll definitely switch over to a rep PR from the knees, as well as attempting negatives. I did notice that when I let my arms get ahead of me, it was impossible (while standing). The wall thing is kind of lame since I get to bounce off it and cheat, but I did get a little farther down than my first attempt. Ideally I'd want to build a ramp and do this progression: Ross on standing ab wheel

[Oldster]

Thanks Oldster. It's impossible to keep my feet on the floor unless I get one of my buddies to kneel on my shins, but that shit hurts. I think I'll definitely switch over to a rep PR from the knees, as well as attempting negatives. I did notice that when I let my arms get ahead of me, it was impossible (while standing). The wall thing is kind of lame since I get to bounce off it and cheat, but I did get a little farther down than my first attempt. Ideally I'd want to build a ramp and do this progression: Ross on standing ab wheel

What a GREAT idea, skipbeat! I love that board idea. From both the standpoint of working toward doing them standing to making it more difficult once you progress to the point where I am now. I'm buying me a board tomorrow!

I must not have explained myself when I was talking about keeping your feet down. When you are doing them from the kneeling position, starting the rep your feet are on the floor. But as you go through the rep your feet come up and your toes off the ground. Just keep your toes on the ground.

[skipbeat]

I got what you meant Oldster, it's just I think keeping my toes down hurts my knees.. but I will try it next time I bust out the wheel!
So, I post too much, I bet I'm always bumping my craptastic log to the front for no reason, but I've never been this excited about where my lifts/relative strength is going. I haven't even been counting calories for a week and I've dropped 3lbs (to be fair, I had diahrea for 2-3 days after I introduced fiber into my diet) and my waist (is that what you call around the belly button?) has gone down an inch to an all-time low of 32 inches. I'm kind of glad I held off on the belt thus far if this keeps up! Today is Vol Upper.

[skipbeat]

Vol Upper

Bench 185x5x5 - pretty easy actually, set 4 was harder than 5
Press 115x8,8,8,7,6 - trying for 5x8
Chins WG 50 reps /10sets - 8,8,7,7,7,4,4,3,2 - trying to get 50 reps as few sets as possible. ran out of patience waiting between sets after the 5th set

Going to try for bench 205x5+ monday. Should be cake hopefully. Might still do curls and DB stuff later, probably just do it tomorrow though.

Edit: Fuck that, arms are fried. Got an iphone, and that scanner thing is amazing. Going to scan my vodka lol.

[skipbeat]

Fuck man, I'm unbelievable frustrated right now. Heavy deadlifts really, really hurt my lower back, and I have no idea how to fix the problem or what to do. I couldn't even do a single at 295 because it felt like my spine was going to launch out of my back. I have no idea what to do. It doesn't hurt to do anything except deadlift, with any weight. Even 135 hurts. I'm not sure if I should do a LP for my deadlifts starting off light, get medical attention/ do something not lifting related, or just strap a belt over it and deadlift with big leather bandaid. Really disappointed and frustrated with today, just not going to lift at all. I hope Monday turns out better lol.

At 295 I felt my back round as soon as I started the pull. Maybe this is a result of dropping my hips to start the deadlift instead of Rip's way of deadlifting with hips as high as possible. I don't know, but goodbye 1-3 months of progress for my deadlift I guess.

Edit: Going to make a new account where I post a lot less and spend less time on this site, especially in E&P. I'm going to go back to SS while counting calories and see if I can take my bench/press/squat up while my deadlift recovers. I'll post here so you guys can follow that log, if you'd like. I do plan on getting strong eventually, lol, I just seem to have an extraordinary amount of setbacks.

[Calvo]

Shit, man, I'm sorry to hear that. Dunno if this is any help, but have you tried frog kicks hanging from a bar? When I get a little sloppy on a heavy pull and tweak something, I usually throw in a set of those after everything, and it seems to really help stretch out my lower back and decompress my spine. Just a thought.

[Oldster]

Ice ice ice. Keep on and around the injury. 20 on 20 off and so on. This is something I've battled for 40 years now.

Then on Monday see a Chiropractor.

[DJC416]

Update: Too lazy to keep a log at the moment (I log in the fitocracy app for iphone because my friends have it, and I copy/paste my workout into a log there if you're that interested). This is obviously my new forum handle. Still lifting, set a bench PR yesterday. Back is recovering slowly.. i'm going extremely slow with deadlifts, but I can squat as much as I want apparently. The texas method is great, it's way better than grabbing a straw and trying to suck the last bit of piss out of SS. In fact, pretty much fuck SS as it's written for the regular guy, squatting 3x a week is nonsense (maybe for females, since they require better legs and ass than I). It's unnecessary. Also after counting my calories for the past 5-6 weeks I've come to the conclusion that people on this site think they need way more calories than they actually do. It's probably intertwined with the squatting 3x a week thing.

TL;DR - SS is touted as optimal but you will only get optimal results if you're genetically gifted or naturally low BF% (with the prescribed diet and program). Stop squatting and eating so much. (this is an opinion, IDC what you think)

Oh, Oldster.. I managed to work up to 1x50 reps of the ab wheel (with my feet on the floor), and I did 1x55 last monday with a few reps in the tank. Going to get 1x60 this monday. Still can't do a standing negative (although I'm much closer). I reckon I'd have to get like 100 reps in a set to get even a negative...

[Oldster]

Still lifting, set a bench PR yesterday. Back is recovering slowly.. i'm going extremely slow with deadlifts, but I can squat as much as I want apparently.

Congradulations on the bench PR! As to the back, I'm not surprised. My own back would allow me for years to squat brutally heavy but yet even 1/2 the weight of my squat on the DL bar and I was writhing in agony for weeks. It wasn't until I found my new Chiro a couple years ago that my low back has allowed me to DL for the first time in 15 years.

Oh, Oldster.. I managed to work up to 1x50 reps of the ab wheel (with my feet on the floor), and I did 1x55 last monday with a few reps in the tank. Going to get 1x60 this monday. Still can't do a standing negative (although I'm much closer). I reckon I'd have to get like 100 reps in a set to get even a negative...

First, I am impressed by 55 reps! But I am more than a bit surprised you can't do a negative yet. 100 reps would be sooooo cool....

Try something for me. Once per week after your kneeling work, do two standing negatives. Doesn't really matter how tired you are, just rest a few minutes and do a couple negative. See how far you are able to go down before you collapse to the floor. Keep doing them like that for a few weeks or a month or so and see if you get to where you can control yourself all the way to the floor. You may be surprised. Be forewarned however, even two standing negatives are going to make a big impact on your ab recovery.

[DJC416]

Almost ready to post a log here again. I've been doing IF for the past 2-3 weeks, eating 2400 cals on lift days (pretty much all of it post workout) and 1500 on my off days. It's going great so far, I'm at 175lbs and leaner than I've ever been, while my maximal and relative strength continues to go up. (got 220x4 on bench at 177lbs- shit, I know, but still progress).

I made a foam roller out of pvc pipe, rags, and some tape, and rolled around on it. Turns out my back pain was from an extremely, extremely tight upper ass / lower back / hamstrings, lol. So tight that it was causing spinal compression and I kind of felt like a banana. So now I'm back to deadlifting and squatting again, which is great. I feel like I've learned a LOT about proper nutrition and I'm gonna put that knowledge + the proper program progression (from PP, not SS) into an LP program. I'm expecting to shit all over my old PRs while being leaner and lighter, and generally feeling a ton better. Carbs > Fats IMO, and eating a gigantic bowl of cereal before i go to bed is THE shit

PS Oldster I can do negatives now, but the descent is not as controlled as it should be... also it feels like I'm being ripped apart, heh