A girl at work has been sharing my dance video with people who haven’t met me, it’s fine.

I snatched 215lbs off of blocks below the knee on Wednesday, cleaned 265lbs and missed the jerk. This happened in less than 30mins.

On Thursday (today) I snatched 230lbs and c+jed 265lbs, successfully this time. This happened in about 30mins as well. I hit 245lbs, 335lbs, 385lbs, and 415lbs x 2 high-bar in under 10 minutes. I could have gotten to the gym earlier. I could have squat more reps. I could have eaten more solid food post-workout (how much solid food did you eat post-workout, Brent? NO SOLID FOOD POST-WORKOUT. 50G PROTEIN SHAKE WITH 50G MALTODEXTRIN, DIDN’T EAT UNTIL 8 HOURS LATER. IT’S FINE.).

Saul, hours next week will be mostly regular, they will be closed Thanksgiving Day and the day after but otherwise mostly regular hours of operation. Honestly though, I wish I could get a pump in Thanksgiving Day before eating. I suppose I could bang out some weighted chins or pull ups in my room. Josh, could I come over for a workout?

gumbo asks:

Brent – where do you lift? Do they have a drop-in fee?
I’ll be in Dallas for Festivus and will need a location for furtive, sloppy power cleans.

Isystems Gym in Carrollton. Should be able to google it. It’s pretty cool. Let’s hang out man. Dallas is kind of a drive though, do you know where in Dallas you’ll be quartered?

Oldman writes:

I’m currently in South Korea so I’ll have to take a rain check on the boba tea. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll be back. I’ll train with you when I get back into town, but it has been a long lay off.

Bro, seriously? – if you just don’t want to hang out with me that’s fine, but don’t make up these fucking outlandish excuses for why you can’t and expect me to believe them. I’m a grown fucking man dude, I’ll be OK if you tell me you don’t want to hang. What, you don’t think I’ve been rejected before? You don’t think I can take brutal honesty? Nigga pls I was born rejected. Don’t fucking flatter yourself, you’re not giving me anything new.

Djay writes:

Hey brent, I actually have a legit question for you.
why’d you start squatting high bar instead of low bar? Because it’s more specific to olympic weightlifting or what?
That may seem like a stupid question but I just recall Rippetoe remarking that he thought olympic weightlifters could benefit from low bar as much as anyone else, and wondered what your experience has been.

lol lol lol

The OL community definitely gives a shit about where Rip thinks the bar should be positioned in a back squat. Go ahead. Why don’t you ask them. Go to the Arnold next year, walk up to someone like Glenn Pendlay and say, “Hey Glenn, don’t you think Jon North would total more if he moved the bar down his back two inches when he squats?” Seriously. Just ask him. Or you can talk to Kyle Pierce at LSUS Shreveport. You can say, “Hey Kyle Pierce, Rip says your athletes don’t deadlift enough. He says your athletes are in the business of lifting jelly-dick weight with aesthetically-pleasing grace and not in the business of just getting stronger.” Legit. Say it to him. Say it with a straight face. It’ll be worth it.

And honestly? Honestly? HONESTLY? – my personal experience has been that I haven’t low-bar back squat in a few months and I hit life-time PRs in the snatch and c+j after having not PRed in a pretty long time. BRB my posterior chain is wasting away because my hamstrings aren’t contracting isometrically to maintain my back angle. BRB if I press more my jerk will go up. BRB if I miss too many times squat snatching I should just split snatch (nevermind addressing gleno-humeral internal rotation deficit, that wouldn’t improve bar path or anything, nah you look great shuffling your feet snatching 30% less than your best 1rm).

I’m over it, man. The only people who care about this argument are on the SS boards and it’s a shrinking universe over there.

Leave a comment ?

32 Comments.

  1. There’s one particular line in my post from Wednesday I think you’ll really like.

  2. Brent, i’m having trouble understanding your recent posts. What dos BRB mean?

  3. Thanks for the invite. I’ll be way down south in Ducanville, so I/systems is a drive, but I’m still keen. Might get my brother to come along too, he’s interested in the o-lifts but doesn’t have regular access to a platform.

    Also – check out Radiohead’s Airbag/How am I driving? EP. Holds up well.

  4. You also hit the lifetime prs after switching to gf beef or joining I\systems gym.

    Appeals to authority are a fallacy.

    LBBS and Deadlifts do improve my snatch and clean respectively. Front squats on the other hand are almost a waste of my time (they fix something in my CJ that is never a problem for ME if I’m LBBSing more than once a week), so by extension HBBS would also be a waste of my time.

    Your lower back wont be as strong or jacked as it can be without Deadlifts, fact. I don’t know why you use Kyle Pierce as an example as Kendrick does them heavy.

    Raising the press increases the jerk an equal amount everything else staying the same. You can think of it this way:
    Overhead Press + (Push Press – Overhead Press) + (Jerk – Push Press) = Jerk

    The parts in parenthesis don’t just mean your current PRs the first suggests what leg drive is getting you the second set is showing what splitting gives you on top of that.
    Raising the press 10lbs can give the jerk 10lbs if these other elements stay the same.

    A stronger press will improve the speed at which a lifter can push himself into the split under the bar. A lifter accelerating downwards actually lifts the the barbell as an opposite reaction and the faster he pushes the more the bar is lifted.

    I don’t read the SS boards.

  5. For me I get 45lbs from adding leg drive and 45lbs from rebending.

  6. “Overhead Press + (Push Press – Overhead Press) + (Jerk – Push Press) = Jerk”

    This is just saying Jerk = Jerk

  7. Brent, I am formally inviting you to my family’s Thanksgiving. We can eat a disgusting amount of food then throw our placement matches and troll bronze league as a 2v2 team all night. All you have to do is drive to California.

  8. Gonna go paleo Thanksgiving bro?

  9. hey brent how much do u weigh? i recall somewhere in the ranger of 77kg… interesting thought, wut would happen if lu xiaojun or sa jae hyouk read ur profile? im sure those guys would get a good laugh out of it.

  10. Yo Gym brent, let’s rock Gym Chasse before I go eat with “family”.

  11. If they’ve seen you dancing video then they probably all read your blog too. But that’s OK, I hear self-pity is really attractive to girls.

  12. I danced at a party. I ended up flossing with my shirt and now it’s on my Facebook.

    Damn, I can’t control my natural sexiness.

    • Awesome explanation. Great response. Paragraphs were thick. Solid. Tight. Keep us all posted on your continued progress with any new progress pics or vid clips. Show us what you got man. Wanna see how freakin’ huge, solid, thick and tight you can get. Thanks for the motivation.

  13. edit: god damn it

    did not mean to reply to freak.

  14. damnit i had something clever and i forgot it.

  15. Sounds like u mad at Rip, Brent. Is that so?

  16. Hey, bro.
    Totally agree about the whole LB squat thing… (Who, outside of diehard SS fans squats like that? No one.)
    But, I must ask, why do you still do your Olympic lifts with that goofy horizontal back?
    No offense, but nobody cleans or snatches with almost straight legs.

  17. WEll… it was a really good dance video. If I saw that without reading this blog I would prob assume the guy in the video is a happy-go-lucky extroverted dude who is pleased with his life. But alas…

  18. Oh yeah and lowbar squats will turn you gay and make your balls fall off.
    Also I know you were just trying to illustrate a point, but the lifters at LSU deadlift A LOT, they do both snatch dl and clean dls 1x/week. There’s a video out there of Kenny Ferris deficit snatch deadlifting some sickening amount of weight and still keeping his hips from rising too fast or losing his back extension.

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