I'm not a freak of nature

[Chad Mynhier]

I've been doing SS since early December of last year. I've made
progress, with a few setbacks. I seem to have fallen apart a bit
recently, so I figured I'd make my shame public.

(But I won't claim to be a freak of nature, even though I've done
315 for a single. ;-)

Stats:

46 year-old male (up from 45 pre-SS)
195 pounds (up from 145 pre-SS)
5'8" (up from 5'8" pre-SS)

I managed a good run without training interruptions through June
of this year. My best for sets of 5 are:

Squat: 310 (started at 65, but jumped quickly to 135 before going to 5-lb jumps)
Deadlift: 325 (started at 135)
Bench Press: 185 (started at 65)
Press: 110 (started at 65, but I've had a lot of problems)
Power Cleans: 110 (started at 64 in April)

(I started power cleans late, as I thought my anthropometry precluded
them. Adam Skillin convinced me I could do them, so I started doing
them.)

I was gone for a couple of (non-consecutive) weeks in June, and my
squat seems to have suffered for it. The best I've done for 3x5
in the last couple of weeks is 275. I'm trying to LP back up to
where I was.

There's also a possibility that I've suffered some form creep in
my squats, specifically WRT depth. I hadn't been videoing myself
until a week or so ago, and when I did it looked like I wasn't
hitting depth. (So my 310 squat should probably be asterisked, as
I have no video.)

I'm still mostly doing LP, although things have been shaky the last
couple of weeks. I'd like to get back up to at least 315 on squats
before I move on from LP (but I won't move on if I can keeping
making gains.)

[Chad Mynhier]

2015/07/02

Squats: 275x5x3
Press: 105x5x3
Deadlift: 315x5, 295x5

My last set of squats:

IMG 1691 - YouTube

I feel like I'm not quite getting deep enough. (I'll work on getting a better angle on videos.)

The 295x5 deadlift set was probably a mistake. This was my first deadlift workout in two weeks, so it killed me. I probably don't need to be doing backoff sets yet, anyway.

[Chad Mynhier]

2015/07/05

Squat: 280x5,2,0
Bench: 175x5x3
Weighted chins: 25x4x3 (meant to be 25x5x3)

I don't know what happened on squats. I was trying to go for depth, so that may have thrown off my concentration otherwise. Here's the video of my second set:

https://youtu.be/Sa_4Te4rXJ4?t=35s

I go deeper than I have been on my first rep, not quite as deep on my second rep, then drop too low on the third rep and can't recover.

[MarineTom]

Motivating numbers man! I really want to hit 315 for a set of 5 before moving on. I started at 105, currently at 190. Did you make 5 lbs jumps from 135 every workout to get there? Or did you incorporate a light squat day, back off sets, or other advanced novice stuff?

[Chad Mynhier]

2015/07/07

Squat: 275x5x3
Press: 108x5x3
Deadlift: 225x8

Went back a little on squat to try to work on depth. Another video with a non-optimal angle:

IMG 1701 - YouTube

WRT deadlifts, I did warm-up sets of 135x5, 185x4, 225x3, and then tried 275x2. For some reason, I couldn't break 275 off the floor, so I went back and did 225x8 just to do something. I'm not sure what the problem was. It may have had something to so with my "backoff" set from two workouts back.

[Chad Mynhier]

Motivating numbers man! I really want to hit 315 for a set of 5 before moving on. I started at 105, currently at 190. Did you make 5 lbs jumps from 135 every workout to get there? Or did you incorporate a light squat day, back off sets, or other advanced novice stuff?

I was doing a straight LP, although I had some setbacks (a funny sensation at the bottom of a squat that I thought was the beginning of a hernia, some bar stability issues that Adam Skillin fixed for me). I had a straight run from 250 up to 300. I flirted briefly with a light squat Wednesday (80%) from 300 to 310, but then I missed a couple of weeks of training and fell apart. I may try the advanced novice stuff again once I get back to 300, but I'll see how I'm doing at that point.

[carson]

Chad,

I like your determination. As you know most of your squats are not to depth. Your toes my be a few degrees too wide and your feet may not be quite wide enough. You seem to be at your max on weight. Maybe cut it back a little and then build back up.

I'm wondering about your DL. I can't find a video of them. Have you thought of posting one?

[Chad Mynhier]

Chad,

I like your determination. As you know most of your squats are not to depth. Your toes my be a few degrees too wide and your feet may not be quite wide enough. You seem to be at your max on weight. Maybe cut it back a little and then build back up.

I'm wondering about your DL. I can't find a video of them. Have you thought of posting one?

I have one DL video:

IMG 1693 - YouTube

I made this before looking at the suggestions for deadlift videos, so it's not suitable for a form check, but if you're really curious, you can look at it. Some notes:

- I'm using straps. I broke my pinky last October, and my grip strength is lagging a bit. I only use straps on work sets, though. (Or at least work sets above 300.)
- The weird spacing on the plates is because I have crappy plates. I'm locking the innermost plate to keep things relatively stable.
- I'm using a 35 and a 10 as my third plate. (Yes, I know that using 35's makes me less of a man.)

I'll get better deadlift videos up once my GorillaPod thingy gets here.

[Nbk41hm]

We now have three GorillaPods in our house, two for baby monitoring and one for the gym.

Similar to yourself, albeit at a lighter weight, I have had to back track weight on my squat as I had no video of my depth until recently. Not counting an injury I am sorting through now, I have had to de-load more than 15% to train myself to do the full ROM. The good news is that parts of my posterior chain now ache (in the positive way) post workout, indicating that I clearly wasn't recruiting properly at the higher weight with the incomplete ROM.

I've now taken to video on everything including the warmups and just delete them after a quick review after the set to make sure everything was ok. One minor tip that helped me was to put the camera at such an angle that the safety bars (running horizontal in your rack) would provide a reference to parallel for my legs. Once the angle of inclination of my upper legs passes parallel in reference to the safety bars, I know I have enough depth.... Of course, getting out of that depth seems trickier!

[Chad Mynhier]

Yeah, I haven't been videoing my warmup sets, either. I probably should, at least so I can figure out where things start to go wrong. Who knows, I may not be hitting depth there, either.

Thanks for the tip on the angle. I'll have to play around with it to get it right.