New lifter trying to heal an old old back injury

[Jacobnorton]

Hey everybody. I'm 22 years old, from cleveland, ohio and started lifting maybe a month ago. I injured a muscle in my lower back when I was 16 or 17 and it has never quite felt the same. Got into a bunch of postural awareness type work, alexander technique, rolfing, feldenkrais, etc...also liked trail running a whole lot. Still do, but for now I'm concentrated on getting really strong and finally getting rid of this stupid achy back. I'm really really enjoying moving around big heavy things. It feels so good and I'm not even pushing much weight yet.

I started off a month or two ago on one of those really skinny junior bars with the plastic plates. It only went up to 110lbs so on black friday I bought an olympic set with 300lbs. My lifts are still going up every day with relative ease. I'm following the starting strength program. Eating a shitload of calories with anywhere between a half gallon and a gallon of milk a day. I am 6'1 and I have gone from 168ish to 185 and feel I have plenty of space left. Still weak, with a long way to go, but here is where I am.

Squat: 145lbs
Deadlift: 195lbs
Bench: 140lbs
Overhead Press: 85lbs (failed my last rep trying 95lbs today)
Power Clean: 115lbs

Took some videos for form checks today. Would like feedback if possible.

Thanks everybody,
Jacob.

Squat


Power Clean


Overhead Press


Forgot to mute my breathing out, My bad... hahaha

[Jacobnorton]

I forgot to mention in my last post I do pullups too. No rhyme or reason to those, just sporadically. I can do 2 sets of 10 right now from a full dead hang to chest on the bar. Once I get to 3 sets of 15 and can hit that consistently, I am going to add weight and try to a linear progression with that as well.

[Karl Schudt]

Post your deadlifts.

[Jacobnorton]

I don't deadlift again until monday. I'll take a video then and post it.

[carson]

Forms look pretty good. Your surroundings look a little dangerous. Imagine falling into the cabinets. At some point I imagine that you will be getting proper shoes and socks and perhaps a belt as well. Welcome to the adventure.

[Jacobnorton]

Barefoot for me, I like the proprioceptive feedback. I'll definitely be looking into a belt though. I also just built a power rack in my garage (less than an hour ago) so my workouts will be there from now on.

[Jacobnorton]

I took a video of my deadlifts during todays workout. Heres the numbers.

Squat - 155
Bench - 150
Deadlift - 215

[Karl Schudt]

Ok. I want you to look at the book and do the 5 step deadlift setup. Your hips are generally too low, and are moving at the start of the deadlift. The bar is also going in a curved path around your knees. Look at the deadlift chapter and follow the setup exactly.

[Jacobnorton]

12/11/13

Squats - 170 3x5
OHP - 85 3x5
Clean - 120 3x5

Read the deadlift chapter again, as well as watched a couple of videos of rip teaching the move. I see what I did wrong. I'll take another video on friday for a form check.

[Jacobnorton]

12/13/13

Squats - 180 3x5
Bench Press 155 x 5,4,3
Deadlift - 185 5,3

I did the deadlift EXACTLY how I read about in the books and saw in rips videos. It was much harder. I could only get 185 off the floor (did a second set of 3 so I could feel out this 'new to me' form). It felt really, really hard to keep the bar close to my shins. The bar kept wanting to travel forward. It felt like i needed to use my traps HARD to keep the bar against my legs, is this right? Almost like I was pushing the bar in towards my body and pulling it up at the same time. Why was the way I was deadlifting before so easy? Doing it that other way I could have pulled 225 this week. Was that going to lead to me being injured? I ask because it felt better the other way I was pulling, but I recognize its just because that was a habit of mine (same way interlacing your fingers with the other thumb on top feels "wrong").

Today was my first stall on any exercise, and 155 seems awfully low for a bench press for a guy my size. I figured I'd get up to bodyweight before I stalled, but I guess not. My camera was dead and I wasn't going to wait for it to charge to workout so I'll get a video of those deads next week.