PR Friday, 14 DEC

PR Friday: Post your training updates and PR’s to the comments.

Weekly Recap: Addressing Spinal Hyper Mobility, Quality > Quantity, Just Because You Can,  and Jacob’s Chili.

I’ve been debating doing Q&As on Fridays — thoughts? They don’t seem to get much of a response. That being said, go ahead and post questions to comments.

I made a video to piggy back off of the post on Monday about spinal hyper mobility. The post was about a Mobility WOD video that stresses the importance of external hip rotation when pulling to engage musculature around the hips. The video I made explains how stance width will effect the ability to externally rotate along with some other tidbits.

And to give you some other stuff to chew on over the weekend, here’s an awesome video with Swedish strongman Magnus Samuelsson. It starts with an emphasis on his arm training, but gets into some other stuff. I thought it was interesting because of how the ‘online training community’ shuns arm training with cited reasons of “vanity” or “functionality”. Well, strong arms serve a practical purpose instead of just looking massive, and strengthening them is vital in strongman. It’s a good lesson to take from strongman training: train your entire body and do not neglect certain body parts.

138 thoughts on “PR Friday, 14 DEC

  1. I have a question about pursuing education in the field of strength training/coaching.

    I’ve done the ACE certification (which amounts to nothing, basically do you know how to not kill someone) and I wanted to continue with a better degree/certification to coach at higher levels. I have looked at the Poliquin Ceritification, which seems a lot more robust, and going back to college (for the third time) and getting a Masters in Exercise Science.

    I was wondering if coaches/trainers out there had advice regarding this topic. Does anyone out there coach athletes in college sports or anything related and have some input they could give?

    Lifts-
    Bench – 215×5
    Push Press – 155x4x2
    Squat – 235×5
    Speed DL – 185x2x8 on the minute

    • I started a series on this (will need to add to it), but unfortunately all of that teaching doesn’t result in being able to coach. The background knowledge, like the Master’s, is useful, but it doesn’t result in coaching or even programming ability.

      Your numbers indicate that you need to spend time in strength training to fully grasp it (I assume you are a male). I think a coach should be experienced in the training modality in order to provide information on it, though being an awesome performer isn’t a requisite.

      Coaching is an experiential thing, so you need to do it. Communicate well by being concise and effective. Good luck.

      P.S. Your strength numbers don’t indicate a level of advancement that warrant speed deadlifting.

      • Should the speed deadlifting just be replaced with deadlifting or should I scrap the whole thing and just go for alternating deadlifting and squating? I do the split between upper body and lower body movements, should I go back to the traditional TM?

  2. Justin:

    I have a question that I was hoping you could answer for me. My best friend has spent the last year battling leukemia, and is finishing up his physical therapy before starting back to school in the spring. He is interesting in me teaching him the basics of proper barbell strength training, because he really wants to gain back the muscle mass and weight he lost. The problem is they recently discovered that he has three herniated discs from a golfing injury – how do these impact his ability to do squats and deadlifts? I am just generally interesting in hearing how you think it would be best to train safely with such an injury, and what kind of training routine it would be best for him to follow – he is still on oral chemo, so I’m not sure his body can muster the recovery to do an LP.

    Also, DLs 420 x 5.

  3. I had a search and couldn’t find a post that wrapped it all up in one go, please could you do a back-to-basics squat post for the low-intermediate trainee?

    I’m a reasonably tall guy, 6’3″ 220lbs, and currently squatting 120 for 5×5 but I don’t feel confident claiming that as my form was starting to get shitty. I tried a little overhaul myself but I’m having trouble keeping the knees-out hip torque AND keeping my hips far enough back to keep the hams in the game.

    Never RDL’d before, and never realised the extent of the necessary knee shove.

  4. Justin, have you ever done a post on chiropractors? I believe I have a lingering injury from a lower back pop while doing warm up sets on deadlift. After, I noticed my walking stride has changed and it looks like my one of my feet is short than the other (I know…WTF). The injury was months ago (like 3?). This has mainly impacted my squat (why? don’t know), but my deadlift appears ok.

    Any help?

  5. Hey Justin,

    I just wanted to let you know that I like Q&A Fridays…its always interesting to see what other people are thinking about and how it relates to my training/recovery/life/etc.

    Anyways, if you want some more questions, here are some…I imagine they’re pretty basic and you’ve already covered them a good amount in previous posts, but this is whats going on with me:

    1. Recovering from knee problems. Went to a PT for a while, finished there, working on single leg stuff. Basically, my IT Band was super tight and pulled my knee cap, causing clicking and pain. I’ve been working it out and its slow, but what can ya do. So, back in the gym now, I’m doing Bulgarian Split Squats as single leg work. How should I program it? I’m doing 3×5 per leg, increasing the weight by between 5-20 pounds per workout (just started doing this, so not sure how I’m going to progress it yet).

    2. I’m also on a cut, so I imagine the actual muscle building part above will be going slowly. But I have about another 30 pounds to go before I’m happy with my weight (want to get down to 200) so I was wondering what your thoughts are on training during a cut. This is one of those questions which I’m sure you’ve answered a bunch of times, so I don’t expect a response to this.

    3. How do people lift, condition, and look awesome while working a desk job and having a life? Starting my first job soon and I know that I won’t be able to keep up my 2 hour training sessions, where one hour is just foam rolling.

    4. What do you listen to while you workout? Favorite band/music/genre otherwise?

  6. The PR that I’m most excited about this week was benching 107.5 kg for 5 reps. That was my 1 RM a year and a half ago. I missed a year of training, then started back up in August, and now am repping my previous 1 RM. Pretty cool stuff.

    Unfortunately, I only made the 5 reps on my first set, and the other two sets were triples, so I reset the weight and got a rep PR on 95 kg (12 reps).

  7. I’ve coached athletes to place their legs under their hips like the video. the tip i give them is “place your feet as if you were going to jump in the air as high as possible.” what i mean by that is if you place your feet out at shoulder width, you won’t feel like its a natural jumping position. same if your feet are too close. thoughts?

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