TheChubbyViking

To consider oneself part of the 200/300/400/500 club, how many reps and sets should you be hitting for each lift?

Press/Bench/Squat for 5x3 and Deadlift for 5x1?

Or does intermediate programming change the reps/sets requirement?

Mark Rippetoe

The numbers are for 1RM.

Hugo

What is your opinion as an SSC about foam rollers, massage guns and other gadgets to affect fascial lines with the aim of improving flexibility and joint mobility? Are they really effective or are they just another commercial fashion in the world of fitness?

My question comes from the fact that I am considering the possibility of buying a massage gun to apply to the calves and plantar fascia. It has never crossed my mind to buy this type of instrument because I have been improving my joint mobility a lot thanks to the training with the Olympic bar. However, ankle dorsiflexion is what is most resisted and although improvement occurs, it occurs more slowly. My soleus muscles are too short and in my personal case this is the factor that is limiting me from being able to descend correctly in the squat with the bar below parallel. Above all, in the sense of allowing my knees to be in front of my toes. My adductors already have enough flexibility to allow me to descend deep, so my limited mobility in my ankles is the weak link that I need to correct to allow me to execute the technique correctly. I am also interested in improving my ankle dorsiflexion to improve my vertical jump and sprint technique, and other martial arts skills.

Mark Rippetoe

“What is your opinion as an SSC”

I am not actually an SSC.

“about foam rollers, massage guns and other gadgets to affect fascial lines with the aim of improving flexibility and joint mobility? Are they really effective or are they just another commercial fashion in the world of fitness?”

People like them because they hurt pretty bad, and that has to be helpful, right? Some people swear they help. The problem is that when you roll on a 6-inch diameter cylinder of any composition or surface configuration, the force you are applying to the soft tissue is only compression -- pushing straight down -- without a component of shear, which is necessary to stretch fascias. When a therapist performs a IT band release, for example, he starts at the knee and shoves down at a 45-degree angle while sliding up the lateral thigh, stretching the tendon and the underlying fascias, causing them to release if there are adhesions. Simply smashing straight down is a different mechanical stress -- hurts like hell, but doesn't stretch.

“My question comes from the fact that I am considering the possibility of buying a massage gun to apply to the calves and plantar fascia.”

You cannot apply the same shearing stress to your own legs because of your limited ability to duplicate the angle against the leg that a therapist can apply. Especially your plantar fascia.

“However, ankle dorsiflexion is what is most resisted and although improvement occurs, it occurs more slowly. My soleus muscles are too short and in my personal case this is the factor that is limiting me from being able to descend correctly in the squat with the bar below parallel. Above all, in the sense of allowing my knees to be in front of my toes.”

Unless you have a bony injury to an ankle that has essentially fused it, you have sufficient ankle mobility to display a 10-15 degree dorsiflexion, which is all that is necessary for a deep squat. Squat depth is not dependent on ankle mobility.

“I am also interested in improving my ankle dorsiflexion to improve my vertical jump and sprint technique, and other martial arts skills.”

SVJ is absolutely unrelated to mobility of any kind, for several reasons. You seem to have absorbed a bunch of mythology and incorporated it into your worldview. Like a Muslim.