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Thread: Stuffed Superdud: Bumpy road to respectable lifting

  1. #511
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    Quote Originally Posted by stuffedsuperdud View Post
    Just quit.

    You guys ready for this bullshit? So after the relatively good day on Friday, my knee went to shit and took my right hip, right elbow, and right ankle with it. I knew I was going to be in a bit of hurt, but warmed up anyway. I ended up doing:

    Snatch:
    40kgx3x2 (all felt clumsy and I missed one!)
    50x3x2
    55x3
    62x3
    70x3x2 (Missed most of them)

    Welp at least my shoulder doesn't hurt anymore......

    Coach yelled at me a little and had me switch to:

    Muscle snatch + OHS 2+2
    45kgx1x2
    55x1x2
    Here my knee really didn't like the eccentric loading and I had to switch to:

    Muscle snatch:
    55kgx4x2
    60x4
    65x4 This might be a 4RM PR? Might also be a 1RM PR.
    70x0x3 too heavy

    Press:
    135lbsx4x2
    145x4
    155x4x2
    165x4
    Still got it, thankfully, and with an improved lockout, too.

    Abs crap.

    I realized after this was over that my knee actually felt better without the Rehband on. Weird. The thing is, we still have no idea what the cause of the pain is except that it might just be some weird combo of tendonitis and patella tracking? All I know is that some days, that damn middle 1/4 of the ROM is really unhappy. Coach never liked the Rehbands and prefers either the Eleiko wraps or the Russian ones seen in their training vids. Guess I'm going to have to get both and try.

    Blergh.
    Tendonosis, Tendonitus? Try this: http://www.amazon.com/AccuRelief-Cha...ords=accu+tens
    It helps a lot.

    I hear you on the rehbands. I go back and forth with them on the bench. You may also look up
    http://www.amazon.com/Nicoflex-Ointm...words=nicoflex

    When I don't want the sleeves but want some extra heat, this helps a lot. It's brutal hot under sleeves. If that's too pricey, check out capcacin hp, usually at the drug store. It's not quite the same but it's also hot.

    Wolf has some stuff in his log too about addressing a knee injury. When my knee hurt for like a year, I realized it was bad arches on me, (nike romaleos helped there) and just not getting my knees out enough. I had to really go that extra mile. Then it cleared up. Knock on wood.

    Good luck!

  2. #512
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    Quote Originally Posted by idlehands View Post
    Tendonosis, Tendonitus? Try this: http://www.amazon.com/AccuRelief-Cha...ords=accu+tens
    It helps a lot.

    ...

    I realized it was bad arches on me, (nike romaleos helped there)

    Interesting about the Electrotherapy thing. When do you normally use it?

    Did you do anything else for your arches or just the Romaleos?


    SSD - here are the Russian ones: http://store.hookgrip.com/shop/russian-knee-wraps/

    You may also be interested in these: http://kilosnotpounds.com/collection...ifornia-roll-1http://kilosnotpounds.com/collection...ifornia-roll-1

    I have a pair of both. Very compariable, but I think the KG > LB ones are a little more durable. They're also slightly shorter.


    I'm all too familiar with knee issues. What's interesting about the Rehbands is Klokov doesn't like them unless they stay on your shins hahaha Did your coach mention why he doesn't like them?

  3. #513
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mr_Rogers View Post
    Interesting about the Electrotherapy thing. When do you normally use it?

    Did you do anything else for your arches or just the Romaleos?


    SSD - here are the Russian ones: http://store.hookgrip.com/shop/russian-knee-wraps/

    You may also be interested in these: http://kilosnotpounds.com/collection...ifornia-roll-1http://kilosnotpounds.com/collection...ifornia-roll-1

    I have a pair of both. Very compariable, but I think the KG > LB ones are a little more durable. They're also slightly shorter.


    I'm all too familiar with knee issues. What's interesting about the Rehbands is Klokov doesn't like them unless they stay on your shins hahaha Did your coach mention why he doesn't like them?
    The TENs unit? I use it whenever I'm feeling like I want to. It says only twice a day but it's not the boss of me. My back and my wife's back has been screwed up recently. that makes a WORLD of difference. Whenever I have 30 minutes of down time, it's nice to lay on the floor with the unit on the lower back.

    I use it when I don't have to type on my elbow/forearm. That seems to help a lot with tendonitis there. It's good pre and post workout. Though with the elbow, if you crank it too much I've noticed my forearm getting way fatigued. If you need your grip and are looking at that for elbow tendonitis just bear that in mind.

    The pads last quite awhile and replacement pads are inexpensive. I got this when a friend mentioned it helped his elbow tendonitis a ton. My logic runs like this: Chins get blood to the area but hurt also, and you can only over do chins so much. This thing is more directed and controlled and you can do it 30 minutes at time whenever. Seems similar to warm the muscle up and get blood flow there to help with the tendon.

  4. #514
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    When it rains it pours. I had to miss training on Tuesday to attend an academic symposium, i.e. a giant waste of time. For those of you not in the knows, in our capitalist world, academia is the ideal place for fields of research that don’t directly yield tangible products that someone would want to buy, which includes most areas of human knowledge. That’s great for basic research but in engineering though, which is by definition applied, it gets a bit absurd, as professors struggle to find applications for some useless technology that they’d figure was a low-hanging fruit for obtaining more funding. And of course, naturally, when you cram a bunch of people together, all of whom are doing roughly the same pointless thing, you start seeing the narcissism of small differences, and the whole thing breaks down into an exercise in petty academic bickering and ego masturbation. Kind of like high-bar vs. low-bar ZOMG! Or actually, I guess a better comparison would be triple extension vs. catapult vs. Superman into archangel, in that they’re all high-strung weirdos and none of them are correct.

    Then I missed today because I blew out the power supply in my computer yesterday and couldn’t in good nerd-conscience leave the system sitting there disabled. Managed to pick up a few sweet upgrades for cheap while I was at MicroCenter (and cleaned out about 5kg of dust bunnies from the poor, neglected insides heh…) so I guess I came out ahead on that one? I wasted several hours but I think the damn thing is finally up and running.

    Quote Originally Posted by DV View Post
    FWIW every single WL'er I've ever lifted with had some sort of knee pain almost constantly. How is it at your gym?
    It’s pretty good, actually. In case you couldn’t tell, the coach really knows his stuff, and a big part of his job is to keep us from doing anything stupid to ourselves. For example, on Monday, left to my own devices, I would have said, “Ehh I’ll squat up to ‘only’ 140kg x5x3.” Instead, I didn’t do anything, which was probably for the best.
    Now that you mention it though, everyone IS walking around with dings and dents anyway. The two guys most similar to me are both nursing knee discomfort, but they both played NCAA football for all four years of eligibility and have a history of surgeries; the -94kg guy did the torn ACL/MCL/meniscus thing twice in the same knee during his career, and then tore the meniscus a third time later while squatting for good measure. So it’s entirely probable that the lifting is actually making them better than they would be otherwise? Iono. Even The Girl isn’t safe, hard as nails though she may be: her knees are fine, but she’s sporting a hilarious amount of KT tape on her groin, erectors, hip flexors, etc. these days. I would too if I were on her program… Guess it’s just a rough hobby. Fuck, I should have stuck to triathlons like a normal person…

    Quote Originally Posted by DV View Post
    Your perseverance with WL is nothing short of inspiring to me.
    I don’t recommend this at all, because
    1. I am not particularly strong in the squat/bench/press/DL and variants, and am entirely pathetic in Sn/CJ.
    2. I am a gigantic asshole.
    3. Really all this means is that I have about 10 hours to waste every week in a room full of equally awkward goobers.
    4. I spend most of the training time resting between lifts and creeping on yogapants girls who are just trying to do their kettlebell circuits.

    Actually if anyone’s inspiring, it’s the new person lifting with us. I’ll call her Girl 2 since I don’t know her name or anything about her except that she showed up with a gaggle of sorority chicks to do some sort of bootcampy thing but coach noticed her flexibility and limb ratios and saw from her shirt that she was a softball player (“so many strong girls in this ‘softball!’ hehe should call it ‘hardball!’”) and smooth-talked her into coming over to the dark side of the gym. She was able to hit a perfect snatch with a PVC pipe immediately, albeit very slowly, and the other day, was PRing in snatch after snatch all the way up to about 30kgs, at around 55kg bodyweight. She’s done over 100 reps now and has missed, as far as I can tell, exactly two, and they were both PR attempts, both of which she got on the second try. She also front-squatted for the first time and managed something like 50kgx3, turning bright red on the last rep but refusing to let it go. The best part is, she currently knows almost nothing about training, programming, sets/reps, etc. and has no idea what’s heavy or not. Back when I was at that stage, it was a giant mental block for me, as even 225lbs for a squat sounded terrifying, but for her it’s the exact opposite: nothing is scary and everything is possible. I wish she knew more of the jargon though, because I would say things like, “Is this a PR attempt?” and she’d just look at me blankly and then reply, “Huh? What do you mean PR? And how much is this in pounds?” And then she’d go and lift the unknown weight, no problem, for a 2kg PR. Biggest balls in the room , guys.

    When we were getting ready to leave, she noticed a couple of nicks on her collarbones and shoulders where the bar went, and saw that her thumbs and palms were all jacked up from snatching so many reps. Her friends got squeamish and made ewww noises and for a second I stupidly was afraid they’d get into her head (see all previous posts re: Cancergirl’s starts and stops and shaky sense of femininity in the face of annoying social pressures) but she got really psyched up looking at her hands and said, “Whoa…this is awesome! Like climbing the jungle gym in kindergarten! But…what’s going to happen to the rest of me?” Coach gets super excited whenever we do, and started yelling, “You’re going to get lean and STRONG! And all the bruises and bumps you see? Those bones and muscles and tendons will get hard!” [possible bro-science here…but hey he’s the one with a certification from the USSR and I’m just a piece of shit who can barely CJ his best snatch, so what do I know…]

    She got even more excited at that and went, “Sweeeeeet. I’m going to get…uh…hard?! Like a, a, A TRAIN! Okay bye guys!” and then made some choochoo noise and charged out the door. I’m going to do my best to keep her from hearing words like “jacked” or “brah” or “swole” and wait for her to re-write the bro dictionary.

    Quote Originally Posted by idlehands View Post
    Tendonosis, Tendonitus? Try this:

    It helps a lot.

    I hear you on the rehbands. I go back and forth with them on the bench.
    When I don't want the sleeves but want some extra heat, this helps a lot. It's brutal hot under sleeves. If that's too pricey, check out capcacin hp, usually at the drug store. It's not quite the same but it's also hot.

    Wolf has some stuff in his log too about addressing a knee injury. When my knee hurt for like a year, I realized it was bad arches on me, (nike romaleos helped there) and just not getting my knees out enough. I had to really go that extra mile. Then it cleared up. Knock on wood.

    Good luck!
    Thanks for the heads up, sir. I’ve got the ointment in the mail. Ugh you sound like an expert on dealing with this shit. Man, you’re a lot tougher than me. How’s the back feeling these days?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mr_Rogers View Post
    SSD - here are the Russian ones: http://store.hookgrip.com/shop/russian-knee-wraps/

    I'm all too familiar with knee issues. What's interesting about the Rehbands is Klokov doesn't like them unless they stay on your shins hahaha Did your coach mention why he doesn't like them?
    Thanks man! As far as the Rehbands, the coach doesn’t distinguish between wraps vs. sleeves vs. tape etc. He calls it all “protection” just thinks the Rehbands don’t provide much in the way of anything, and snug wrappy things are better than two stinky neoprene tubes.

    I don’t like the full wraps in that I can’t seem to get into a proper squat with them on though, so I got the Russian ones in the mail. In the meantime, I’ve found than a pair of Ace bandages, carefully wrapped, helps. I try to nudge the patella closer to the centerline first, and then I wrap gently on top of it. I also got my hands on some KT tape. It’s mostly CF marketing bullshit I’m searching for a cheap generic at the moment, but it’s helpful for tugging the kneecap into position.

    Fun story. Here’s one more thing I tried that didn’t help: DV, remember how I was megadosing the fish oil? Let’s just say I’ve hit my limit at 30/day. Don’t ask me how I found out. Suffice it to say, it was one of the more unpleasant experiences of my life…

    Quote Originally Posted by idlehands View Post
    The TENs unit? I use it whenever I'm feeling like I want to. It says only twice a day but it's not the boss of me.
    Looks like we got a badass in here.

  5. #515
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    So it turns out all it took to relieve 90% of the knee pain was a bit of KT tape to pull the patella back into alignment. Heh. Pretty stupid I didn't try this last time or two years ago, right? I also found that for squats, the Rehbands are actually more trouble than they're worth as they can misalign the unstable patella. For the quick lifts though, I do need some support. I bet when the Russian wraps come, I can find some way to tape the patella while wrapping around it, for the best of both worlds? Rare display of optimism from me, gang.

    Rack jerks
    20kg x billions
    40x3x2
    60x3x2
    70x3
    80x3x3

    Cut it off here. Positions are improving and without patella pain I can sit back on the rear foot better, but coach wanted to leave some reps in the tank.

    Hang snatch
    40kgx3x2
    50x3x2
    60x3x2
    70x1,0,0
    MIRACLE
    70x3
    75x1,0 tired

    The miracle:
    Coach had been complaining all day today, and really the past few weeks, about my not finishing my pull. I have a bad habit where I start trying to drop under a split second early and the bar isn't as high as it could be.

    Coach: "You can high pull so high! Is only 70 kilo! Strong enough! But when I tell you to snatch, it's all sheeet! Why? WHY WHY WHY?! TELL ME WHY!"
    Failure: "..........."
    Coach: "Just high pull! And drop!"
    Confused failure: "Wait, you're telling me that high pulls and snatches are the same, just minus the drop-under........."
    Coach: *stupefied* "..............ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME??! YES!!! BEEEEEG PULLL and then you just drop under and it works! When you do it right, beautiful straight line! When you do it wrong you bang the hips and the bar is everywhere and it's all sheeet!"
    YouTube-quoting Failure: "but but but catapult triple extension jump and shrug Superman archangel-"
    Coach: "Oh. My. GOD! This fucking internet! Stop watching YouTube! Those idiots! This is what happens when everyone is a "coach" and there's no seeeeeeestem! Okay give me three!"
    Lesser failure: "So... the trick is 1. snatch high pull, 2. drop under, 3. lock shoulders..."
    Coach: "Yes you fucking idiot!"
    Lesser failure: "I am an engineer. You need to write these things down for me."
    Coach: "Stop thinking so much! Three! Go! Now!"

    There you have it boys and girls. Get the fudge off the Interblag and just pull those weights. It's not that fucking complicated. Tomorrow I am going to start an argument with him over whether or not the mythical "3rd pull" exists. 10 points if I give him that stroke he's been joking about.

    Here he mostly left me alone to go yell at two high school football players doing shitty power cleans.

    Squat, left knee only with that magical piece of tape:
    70kgx5
    110x5
    140x3
    150x3
    160x1
    170x1 Bleeeeh
    150x3x2

    That confirms it. The strength is dowwwwwwn. 170x1 felt much harder than it deserved to be. Looking forward to starting a strength block around next month.

    Snatch press:
    20kgx10
    50x5
    60x5x2
    65x2 + 2 push
    65x3 all pushed

    Coach had a dirty old man moment during snatch press where he said of Girl 2, "Hey over there. Did you notice she has the perfect body?"

    I aimlessly agreed, "Yea, nice limb ratios. Pretty cool that she can hit all her snatch positions right away."

    He looked at me with a stupid grin and said, "No, not just perfect for lifting. Perfect for being a woman. Ahuehuehue... Oy the things I would have done to her twenty years ago."

    I told him I'll pretend I didn't hear that, and he went, "What? I'm keeping it professional! Besides, I'm 60! What, you think I'm going to actually try anything? All I have left are my eyes! But don't tell my wife I'm even using my eyes!"

    "Oh hey yea! Isn't your wife already a hot chick? She's what, 35?"

    "Something like that, but when we met she was younger than you are now!"

    "Oh man, how'd you swing that?"

    "I'm too beautiful! Okay just train! I'm going home to hang out with her!"

    I told him he should write a book like Strong Enough?, where he talks training and life; he said he'd think about it. Here's hoping.

    Speaking of which, I have my copy right next to me. Time for me to go re-read that from beginning to end.
    Last edited by stuffedsuperdud; 03-06-2015 at 01:37 AM.

  6. #516
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    LOl. Your coach is great. Sounds a lot like what Jim has told me. Stuff such as:

    You don't need a bunch of precise technique cues and analysis. Just grab it and go.
    He doesn't even watch or coach guys on the squat. Just...squat.
    Only thing to think about is the catch.
    Once you are on the platform you have 5 seconds to start the lift. Don't spend time praying about it or hanging over the bar.
    Rest times are short unless you're lifting damn near 200 kilos.

    Pretty cool too that he's saying pull it high and in a straight line lol.

  7. #517
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    Hahaha! You gotta stay off the webz, dude. Your coach is a scream. Tell us when his book is out.

  8. #518
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    To be clear: Your perseverance is inspiring. However, I'd never follow your example. Still, it's fun to follow along. Sorry to be right about the fish oil, but glad to hear you've maybe found a trick to help your knee. Having had most overuse injuries my experience is that it's really individual trial and error to get things straightened out. The blue Rehbands have been great for my (admittedly minor) knee issues.

  9. #519
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    Quote Originally Posted by Josiah Moye View Post
    LOl. Your coach is great.
    Oh he's a pretty cool dude. But don't tell him that or it'll go to his head and he'll start strutting around the gym going, "Hey! Some guys on some website think I'm cool!" and make people read our posts on his phone.


    Quote Originally Posted by Josiah Moye View Post
    You don't need a bunch of precise technique cues and analysis. Just grab it and go.
    He doesn't even watch or coach guys on the squat. Just...squat.
    Only thing to think about is the catch.
    Once you are on the platform you have 5 seconds to start the lift. Don't spend time praying about it or hanging over the bar.
    Rest times are short unless you're lifting damn near 200 kilos.

    Pretty cool too that he's saying pull it high and in a straight line lol.
    Yep. I asked him about some of the cues you see bouncing around YouTube, pendlayforum, the catalyst site, attitude nation, etc. etc. and he has no idea what they're talking about. It always boils down to, "What is all that shit? Just do a big pull and lock those elbows and you're done..." And regarding cues for 3rd pulls / dropping under / hit-and-catch / etc. he just goes, "It's just a strong pull and then you catch it! 'Drop under?' It's called Olympic weightlifting! Not Olympic diving! Stop thinking so much and just lift!"

    The short rest times were the only thing that wasn't intuitive to me, but his explanation is that weightlifters should be reasonably conditioned, both for practical reasons: "What if you have to follow yourself twice at a meet, immediately after many warmup repetitions?" and more romantic ones: "You should be an athlete first, and weightlifter second! Athletes are in shape!" He also once said, "Weightlifting is not just snatch, clean, jerk. It's everything! We must be strong! Be lean! [gestures at the MMA / conditioning side of the gym] Can run, jump, climb, roll, push some sleds, weightlifters should be able to do everything!"

    For those of you living in caves and not aware of this documentary, here's a long documentary of how the Polish team trained when he was on it. I recommend watching all 100 minutes if you have time, to truly appreciate how weak and out of shape we all are. Hint: All of us would be sucking wind after just the warmup.


  10. #520
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    starting strength coach development program
    This is Space Hulk:


    It's basically a puzzle game on steroids: one side marches their human (sort of) dudes through narrow corridors while the other overwhelms the dudes with the monsters. Complicating matters is that most corridors are wide enough for one person/monster, and both players are limited by how much they can move/attack per turn, so for the humans, it's an exercise in maximizing overlapping fields of fire, while for the monsters, it's all about flanking and avoiding being enfiladed.

    The game first showed up in the 80s and I played it for the 1st time about 10 years ago when someone brought his set to the game day at the local store. It was long out of print and the cost was insane though, so I had to scratch the itch by playing crappy home-brewed freeware versions of the game on my computer. There was briefly a 3rd edition a few years ago but the manufacturer/publisher, Games Workshop*, only produced about three copies total and they sold out instantly. I was resigned to failure once again and forgot about the whole thing.

    Well, the other day I found out that, despite declaring that the 3rd edition was to be the last, Games Workshop had released a 4th edition of Space Hulk a few months ago so of course I was at the local game store half an hour later getting my hands on it. There went the weekend. Everything was as glorious as I had hoped; we were too excited to stop and take any in-game pics but maybe next time there will be some. Will keep you guys posted.

    I finally had to take a break though. The gym was closed, so I went to the globo to mess around, and by mess around, I mean that instead of picking a exercise, increasing the weight with each set, and then stripping the back back down for the next exercise, I just kept on adding weight to the bar and doing whatever I could do with it.

    20kg:
    Muscle snatch x5 + OHS x3 + snatch Sotts press x4 + snatch press x 5

    40kg:
    Muscle snatch x2 + OHS x2 + snatch Sotts press x4 + snatch press x 5

    50kg:
    Muscle snatch x2 + OHS x2 + snatch Sotts press x1
    Muscle snatch x2 + OHS x2 + snatch push press x5

    60kg:
    Muscle snatch x2 + OHS x2 + snatch push press x5
    Muscle snatch x2 + OHS x2 + snatch push press x5

    70kg:
    Power clean to BTN position + snatch push press x4

    80kg:
    Power clean to BTN position + snatch push press x4
    Snatch high pull x3

    Then someone wanted to play Space Hulk again so off I went. Wheeeeeee.


    *For those of you who are somehow unfamiliar, Games Workshop is the miniature soldiers company behind the rather spectacular Warhammer 40K science-fantasy universe. The licensed video games (with THQ) and related tabletop games (With FFG) are awesome, and the books from their in-house fiction dept (The Black Library) are solid, but the minis game itself, their flagship product, is definitely troubled these days due to their astronomical pricing scheme, the shaky rulebook, and a surge in competing products. It's still a lot of fun to play and the community is a bunch of very passionate nerds (albeit ones who should probably swap a few hours of gaming every week for barbell time), but the games are so long and the rest of the hobby, e.g. buying and painting the minis, reading the rules, etc., is also such a jealous mistress that it's really the sort of thing that one does between a first paycheck and a first serious relationship with another human being....and then perhaps picking it up again after retirement. I myself moved away from it mostly because it was so much easier to get my fix with the video game 30 minutes at a time. I've thought about getting back into it many times, but they keep on changing the rules for the armies, rendering mine obsolete, and I keep on putting off the updating. Oh well.

    All that said though, the minis game is still quite a fantastic experience despite the obstacles, so definitely check it out if you have a bunch of time to kill or if you want a fun way to keep your nerdy kid occupied in the garage and hopped up on paint fumes for days at a time (my mom called it free babysitting).
    Last edited by stuffedsuperdud; 03-08-2015 at 11:56 PM.

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