Am I nearing the end?

[timelinex]

I saw Robert this last weekend. He helped my wife and I through a ton. I will be making an effort to see him more often.

He agreed that I am probably nearing the end of the official novice stage. I am resetting my benching to work on form issues (not stabilizing my core enough). I will continue doing HBBS while I can still progress for 3x5. After that I will probably switch to 1 top set with 2 back off sets. Then I will stop trying to beat a dead horse and switch over to intermediate programming.

We also spent a good amount of time working on my LBBS. I will be adding back a 3rd light squat day in the middle of the week and this is where I will work on a box LBBS.

I got the knee wraps today, so I am excited to try them out on tomorrows squat day. As a side note, I also bought SBD's wrist wraps to see what all the raving is about. I currently have Inzers, and in general I rarely use them because I don't yet have a need. These SBD's feel A TON better. It's hard to explain why, but they just feel alot more solid and comfortable. I guess there was something to the raving.

[MarkMarkMark]

Was your coach able to provide a solution to your shoulder pain? I am experiencing similar issues of late. Has anyone had any luck using a Duffalo bar or similar to mitigate shoulder and/or elbow problems? I've never used one and don't even know if it's a worthwhile piece of equipment.

[timelinex]

Was your coach able to provide a solution to your shoulder pain? I am experiencing similar issues of late. Has anyone had any luck using a Duffalo bar or similar to mitigate shoulder and/or elbow problems? I've never used one and don't even know if it's a worthwhile piece of equipment.

I updated my thread that is about my shoulder pain here:

https://startingstrength.com/resourc...ml#post1617508

I am hesitant to say my shoulder issue is fixed, as I am still letting it rest (My shoulder/arm still hurt after wakeboarding yesterday... So it's definitely still not "healed"). But I am optimistic that my coach's adjustments will at the very least make it better. I will update my other thread when I have more experience with the adjustments.

[timelinex]

I'm definitely nearing the end. Yesterday was 270lb day for squats.



I incorporated backoff sets for the first time and thank god I did. I barely finished the remaining 2 sets at 250LB

It's disappointing how low my squats #'s are compared to everything else as I'm nearing the end. But what can you do. I guess it's a little better considering this is HBBS and not LBBS though.

[Royce Nichols]

These looked easy.

[Tom Narvaez]

These looked easy.

Looked @9.5-10 to me.

[MBasic]

These looked easy.

yeah, right up until the 5th rep

[timelinex]

First 3 were legitimately "easy" then the last 2 reps got exponentially harder out of nowhere. Literally the same thing happened with 265LB on the last squat day. That time, I did the other 2 sets at full weight and completed all 5 reps. The issue is that the last 2-3 reps on both of those last sets were terrible form. I cheated them 100%. I still went to depth, but what I mean by cheated is I could no longer go down in a controlled manner and I started to drop fast, lose tightness at the bottom, buck forward and bounce out of the hole. Worked to get me up but am I doing myself any good?

I'm a big pusher. So I've always pushed hard and even went to complete failure in the past just to try and get all my reps in. But last week I saw my SSC and he really drilled in to me how important it is to keep form and not get sloppy just to add weight. (we were discussing benching though and not squatting) So I thought I'm finally doing the "right thing". I barely completed the last rep of the backoff set in "good form".

The only thing this time is I wakeboarded on Sunday and my back and abs were still really sore on Tuesday. So maybe that took some strength off me, but thats life? If on my next workout the last rep doesn't turn into a grinder, should I try to go back to 3 full weight sets? Or am I just circling the drain by doing that

[MBasic]

IMO you did a good job not letting your hips take over, from what I usually see with them.
That's a hard thing to do for high bar, the way you are doing them.

I see high bar begin sorta like what CGBP is to reg. bench press.

It would seem, if your form is true, the "wall" comes all at once.
Probably some thing to do with less muscle mass used.

LBBS and deadlifts, it seems like you can grind out more reps, or at least the decay in bar speed from rep#1 to rep#5 seems more predictable and gradual.

Whereas things like CGBP, strict HBBS, or Front squats, or OHP
. . . . you'll be banging out reps real good, and then all of the sudden the "wall" comes outta nowhere, and bar speed goes into the toilet.

[Royce Nichols]

It’s good that you’re a tough critic on yourself but don’t get caught in a paralysis by analysis rut. Not every rep is going to be perfect. And to be honest your interpretation of what is shit isn’t super accurate. We’ve always got stuff to work on you know? Trust me, I made a post a couple months ago and thought I was at the end...I ended up adding about 40 more lbs to my squat.

But I will say it does sound like you have some external things that are affecting your recovery