Wolf's Log: From Cub to Direwolf

[Michael Wolf]

Yes, Wolf's disease is an enigma. When I hear of situations like yours, (not as severe typically) I usually speculate it is tied to one of three things:

1. A sleep disorder or lack of sufficient quality and quantity of sleep, which in the presence of high physical or mental stress exacerbates an otherwise benign stress hormone/inflammatory/recovery response, resulting in myriad seemingly unrelated conditions.
2. An undiagnosed and potentially undiagnosable genetic variation that causes mild metabolic mishandling of one or more of the amino acids or other nutrients needed for recovery.
3. An mild genetic connective tissue disorder that may only manifest itself under conditions of rapid growth or stress adaptation.

It is interesting that your injuries seem to occur during warm up sets or in relatively low impact situations. That leads me to further speculate that 90% of the injury damage is present before the acute event that actually causes a noticable injury.

You have probably heard all of this before. Just ignore my speculation and keep up the training. As long as you can keep progressing during your injury-free intervals, you should make some good gains.

Certainly interesting guesses, not unreasonable. I should say, though, that although many of them occur during warm-ups or other non physically stressful events, many have also occurred during heavier lifts. The tweak from which I never fully recovered, now 2.5 years ago, was in a 515 squat. The most recent "root tweak" - late March, this year - from which the other recent ones seemed to stem, was in a 650 pull. I also tweaked in on a 610x2 set in July 2015, a 625 single attempt that I had to give up because of it a few months earlier in March 2015, and an attempted 627x2 wherein I only got the first rep and had to stop the second because of the tweak, in June 2014. Those are just a few I remember off the top of my head.

So it seems to occur both on easy, light warm-up sets and on heavier sets. Weird.

[Michael Wolf]

Forgot to log Thursday's super quickie.

Press: Belt + wraps
235x3x3, then 185x10 (belt only)

Cable Row
1x10 warmup, 4x8 work sets

And that was all she wrote. Just before the workout I had carried in, unboxed, and set up a big set of new plates for the gym (twelve 45s and a pair of 25s) from the parking lot, and was drenched in sweat and ready to just go home.

[Michael Wolf]

Planned to kickstart the week on Sunday, but stepped on a piece of glass and (separately, 6 hours later) sliced my thumb so the universe was telling me not to train. They were still open Monday, but closed enough Tuesday to do a quick "get back into it" workout with my thumb taped up.

Bench
315x5, 345x2, 365x1, 315x5

Press
185x5, 205x2, 225x1, 185x5

Lat Pulldown
4x8, 1 warmup and 3 light work sets

Back still hurts pretty bad much of the time, but shows some glimpses here and there of being better. Hard to say, and quite frustrating.

[Yngvi]

Planned to kickstart the week on Sunday, but stepped on a piece of glass and (separately, 6 hours later) sliced my thumb so the universe was telling me not to train.

Yep, definitely a connective tissue disorder. Lol.

[DaveJF]

As crazy as it sounds, I had to throw this out there because there is hardly any cost or risk other than maybe one night of lousy sleep.. Who knows, may help you to eventually recover from this tweak, and it's easy to try.

A week ago I raised the head of my bed 3 inches, so the whole bed is inclined -- not just the top half like an adjustable. So far I am waking up feeling a lot better -- joints and back not stiff and sore when I first get out of bed like they typically would be, and it seems I'm sleeping better overall. The benefits are supposed to be mostly centered around circulation and the PSNS, I believe, but aside from that not having to interrupt sleep to urinate has probably been the biggest benefit for my sleep so far. A lot of people evidently have good luck relieving chronic back pain over time with this as well.

All it takes a couple of bricks, wooden blocks, whatever to set the footings on. Sleep or even nodding off the first night at the 3 degree incline (~3") was not a problem for me, but some people don't tolerate the incline at all. Proponents of this suggest gradually raising the incline to around 5 degrees (~6"). Google "Inclined Bed Therapy".

Here's to hoping this tweak (finally) heals for you.

[Michael Wolf]

Coaching is a funny thing. Today watched an extremely nice, and fairly accomplished powerlifter/coach work with a client on his deadlift. He was doing everything right except not setting his back in extension before pulling. She didn't address that at all, but did tell him to sit back more, and get his shoulders behind the bar. Which he didn't do at all. His next couple reps looked nearly identical to the previous few: standard pulling position with a moderately rounded back. Her reply was "yes, good!" and "great!" as if he had in fact responded to the (incorrect) cue and adjusted his technique, when in fact he hadn't.

There's a few layers to peel back here but SS often gets accused of being insular. Sure, we'd be arrogant to think we have zero to learn from anything outside our own organization. But I've lost track of the number of encounters I've had with PL and OL coaches and lifters - some of whom have solid to impressive accomplishments, like this one - that leave me shaking my head wondering. Completely nice person, and strong lifter. But the combination of not seeing/addressing the obvious issue, giving a (to me) obviously incorrect cue to address a non-issue, and then thinking the cue was successful in addressing the non-issue, when it didn't do anything at all. Any credential, no matter how good - from MD to JD to PhD to SSC - provides a floor, not a ceiling. There are more and less experienced, better and worse, in every profession and holding every credential. I'd like to think I'm one of the better SSCs. But I can't imagine any, even the newest, freshly minted and least experienced, not being able to immediately see and relatively quickly correct this lifter's issue, and not try to "get his shoulders behind the bar." Even though very few SSCs would place nearly as well in PL meets as this woman. I don't really know what else to say.

ANYWAY.

Now let's talk about me. After re-tweaking my back two weeks ago and then stepping on glass and slicing my thumb in the same day a week later, I did the one session last Tuesday and decided to just take the rest of the week off and do a total re-set. My back doesn't feel any better (nor worse) but I'm slightly mentally refreshed and a little more ready to go again. I'm starting light, planning to keep my sessions shorter (for me, that's 60-90 mins instead of 2-2.5 hours) for a while, and just keep things fun for a bit instead of maximizing work and weight. I need to enjoy training again, and right now, that means shorter sessions and less focus on ramping back up and hitting new PRs as quickly as possible.

Bench
275x5, 295x5, 315x5
BW Squat
BWx6x5

Cocaine Deadlifts: from 3" blocks
135x2x5
DB Press
45x6, 55x6, 60x6x2
Notes: Will informed me I did these slightly wrong and am not supposed to rest the bar at all during the set. Not 100% sure why, but I'll do that next time.

Vid of cocaine DL

Lat Pulldown
4x8: 1 warmup, 3 easy work sets

DB Curls
35x8, 40x8
Plank - "hollow body" focus (posterior tilt)
2x20s

Assault Bike
20/45 x7, just easing into it

[Fulcrum]

Coaching is a funny thing. Today watched an extremely nice, and fairly accomplished powerlifter/coach work with a client on his deadlift. He was doing everything right except not setting his back in extension before pulling. She didn't address that at all, but did tell him to sit back more, and get his shoulders behind the bar. Which he didn't do at all. His next couple reps looked nearly identical to the previous few: standard pulling position with a moderately rounded back. Her reply was "yes, good!" and "great!" as if he had in fact responded to the (incorrect) cue and adjusted his technique, when in fact he hadn't.

There's a few layers to peel back here but SS often gets accused of being insular. Sure, we'd be arrogant to think we have zero to learn from anything outside our own organization. But I've lost track of the number of encounters I've had with PL and OL coaches and lifters - some of whom have solid to impressive accomplishments, like this one - that leave me shaking my head wondering. Completely nice person, and strong lifter. But the combination of not seeing/addressing the obvious issue, giving a (to me) obviously incorrect cue to address a non-issue, and then thinking the cue was successful in addressing the non-issue, when it didn't do anything at all. Any credential, no matter how good - from MD to JD to PhD to SSC - provides a floor, not a ceiling. There are more and less experienced, better and worse, in every profession and holding every credential. I'd like to think I'm one of the better SSCs. But I can't imagine any, even the newest, freshly minted and least experienced, not being able to immediately see and relatively quickly correct this lifter's issue, and not try to "get his shoulders behind the bar." Even though very few SSCs would place nearly as well in PL meets as this woman. I don't really know what else to say.

I'm surprised you're surprised there's still plenty of people out there still who don't know how to deadlift....
...er umm uhhh... deadlift according to the SS model.

If it were a PL context, I'm not surprised about the rounded back thing.
If seems fashionable these days to just let that aspect of the DL go now (set up and maintain a flatback).
ya know the "There's is no credible data that lifting with a flexed spine leads to more or less incidence of injury" thing.

Dave Tate likes shoulders behind the bar

YouTube

[Michael Wolf]

I'm surprised you're surprised there's still plenty of people out there still who don't know how to deadlift....
...er umm uhhh... deadlift according to the SS model.

If it were a PL context, I'm not surprised about the rounded back thing.
If seems fashionable these days to just let that aspect of the DL go now (set up and maintain a flatback).
ya know the "There's is no credible data that lifting with a flexed spine leads to more or less incidence of injury" thing.

Dave Tate likes shoulders behind the bar

YouTube

I'm familiar with the famous Tate DL video from ~10 years ago where he talks about getting shoulders behind the bar, are you familiar with this one, where he either backtracks from that or says it's more of a cue than literal "model" instruction?



Anyway, and regardless, I think you missed my main point, maybe because I didn't emphasize or clarify it enough. The main point wasn't a different way of teaching the DL. The main point was the clear and obvious inability to see whether the lifter in fact adjusted his movement and comported with the correction, which also calls into question the veracity of the initial coach's observation upon which the corrective cue was based.

Now, as to the whole flexed spine thing - injury aside, rigid segments transmit force more efficiently. Are people arguing that now? I hope not. Forget injury for the moment; we're not talking about 900 lb deadlifters having a thoracic spine in flexion but set hard and rigidly there, like Konstantinovs (RIP). We're talking about people learning the lifts properly, likely still what we'd call Novices, and in this case lifting something like 250-300 lbs while his back started off rounded and rounded more as the thing left the ground and came up. Unnoticed. Not commented on.

[Michael Wolf]

Press: 4"belt
175x5, 185x5, 195x5
Cocaine Deadlift
145x2x7 from 1.5"
Notes: Press was easy and straightforward. Now here's a good mental game. For the cocaine DLs, I:
A) Cut the height of the blocks by 50%
B) Added about 8% load.
C) Added 40% more volume.

That sounds like a significant increase in difficulty and stress from one session to the next! Or you could look at it this way. I:
A) Dropped the starting height from 3 to 1.5 inches.
B) Increased load from 135 to 145.
C) Went from 5 sets of 2 to 7 sets of 2.

Is that a very big increase in stress? An increase, sure, but a significant one? What about the context that I am a recent 700 deadlifter? Moral of the story: absolute numbers matter, a lot. % changes are not meaningful without the context of absolute numbers, and 4x7 @70% is not the same stress for a 300 lb squatter using 210 as it is for a 700 lb squatter using 500.

OK, onward.

CGBP
225x7x2 - just getting back in the swing here.
Cable Row
5x8: 1 easy warmup, 2 easy work sets, 2 hard work sets

Tricep Rope
3x10

Assault Bike
20/50 x8, increase difficulty compared to Mon by adding speed, and added 5s rest. Still on the easy side but moving up.

Total workout time: ~70 min.

[Fulcrum]

I'm familiar with the famous Tate DL video from ~10 years ago where he talks about getting shoulders behind the bar, are you familiar with this one, where he either backtracks from that or says it's more of a cue than literal "model" instruction?

yeah, seen it. I vote B for Backtrack.
Maybe your nice lifter-coach-lady is working off of the old pre-back-tracked Dave Tate model. /s
The video I linked had a publish date 2017 on the EilteFTS channel.
I've seen that shoulders behind the bar thing come from a few other well known lifters.

Anyway, and regardless, I think you missed my main point, maybe because I didn't emphasize or clarify it enough. The main point wasn't a different way of teaching the DL. The main point was the clear and obvious inability to see whether the lifter in fact adjusted his movement and comported with the correction, which also calls into question the veracity of the initial coach's observation upon which the corrective cue was based.

Now, as to the whole flexed spine thing - injury aside, rigid segments transmit force more efficiently. Are people arguing that now? I hope not. Forget injury for the moment; we're not talking about 900 lb deadlifters having a thoracic spine in flexion but set hard and rigidly there, like Konstantinovs (RIP). We're talking about people learning the lifts properly, likely still what we'd call Novices, and in this case lifting something like 250-300 lbs while his back started off rounded and rounded more as the thing left the ground and came up. Unnoticed. Not commented on.

yeah, I did say "if this was in a PL context".
I noticed you lift in what looks to be quite a serious gym where PowerLifters would seem to reside.
Its definitely not a globo gym club thing.

900 DLs are fairly unicorn level stuff.
But it seems NOW some people will consider even starting around 400 or 500 pounds on the deadlift is getting 'heavy'...
So a lot people (PL context) seem to get lax on the back rounding thing: "its just gonna happen anyway, at these weights".
'People' meaning lifters and coaches.

But yes, now that you mention the 250-300 figure? and from starting bent going to even more bent? That is pretty bad.

You know she probably could tell the difference between A and B, or should I say A and A.
But just said f*ck it in her mind; and probably doesn't know how to fix it; tried many times to fix it previously; and just let it go (again).

I hope it's like you say, and she actually couldn't tell, because of legit incompetence...."unnoticed".
That seems better is some way.

But then again if you intervene, being a big ol' man lifter guy, its mansplaining.
Or your SS affiliation is working against you because ...tribalism?
Yep, I feel ya. Its a loose-loose.

Anyways, enough about that. Good lifting and I hope back comes around.