Uh so I’m sub 160lbs bw lol
– snatched up to 230lbs
– pressed out a 290lbs c+j
– benched 280lbs x 2 <– haven't benched 280lbs before
– back squat 405lbs x 5, 3, 3 <– high-bar squat 5rm PR
– weighted ring dips at +90lbs x 3 <– PR
Mechanically I've never felt this good. I've never felt more fluid and controlled in my jerks, especially now with better hip extension and internal rotation. I still pull to my left on heavier attempts, but it's a lot more manageable now and it's more an issue of me splitting, then slowly twisting to the left as I recover, as opposed to me splitting and everything on my left side immediately collapsing. I pressed out 290lbs probably because of being sick earlier this week and having lost some weight so this was the first heavy session of the week and I was a little dizzy on the clean.
Benching and ring-dips both felt really good after I did scap mobilization with an internal rotation bias. It felt like my bench stroke was shortened because it was easier to keep my shoulders pinched back while my shoulders were in extension at the bottom of the bench, and it felt a lot easier to keep my shoulders squeezed back at the bottom of the ring dip. I’ve done this same mob when I was attacking my gleno-humeral internal rotation deficit with my shoulders but haven’t done it very much since then, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the benefits I can still get from doing it.
Picture this for a moment:
I am sleeping in the same room as four dudes. It fucking blows. The beds are twins and Chris and Mike are 300lbs+ and 270lbs at this meet, good fucking luck sharing a bed with either of them. My sleep could be better, I’m losing mobility from sleeping on an unforgiving surface (the floor), and paying too much money for low-quality food (we ate at the same bar next to the hotel multiple times a day, every day we were there). I couldn’t be grumpier. One morning Justin goes down for breakfast and I join him when I’m finished lying on the carpet weighing the benefits of just fucking ending it or somehow finding the will to continue living.
I want waffles. There is a substantial line for the waffle iron so I give up. I sit down with an omelet and some bacon and Justin immediately starts talking to me about shit that I don’t give a FUCK about. I chew listlessly. I can pick out the people who are competing fairly easily in the breakfast hall.
Then I see her leaving the breakfast hall. Cue this song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgFCTy5_Zig
In the brief moment I see her face, I see dark mahogany hair and soft brown eyes behind her glasses. My heart catches and I stop chewing my omelet. As she turns to leave, I say completely monotone,
“Who’s that?”
Justin turns to see her leaving. He turns back to me, perplexed. “I don’t know?”
After all of us have had breakfast, we stand in line at the Starbucks in the hotel. Justin and I will be training at a local gym and we need the caffeine for the copious amounts of curls we will be doing later. Someone steps into line behind me and I turn and it’s her, looking real cute in training pants and her team t-shirt and with excellent thoracic extension. Her eyes are dark and captivating and I am lost in them and don’t realize I am staring until it’s been about three painfully awkward seconds.
I say, “Hi.”
“Hi,” she responds.
I spend the next three minutes trying to make conversation with her. I’m Brent, what’s your name, did you compete?, how’d you do?, oh that’s great, way to go. I find myself intrigued with her speech. She is intelligent, unimpressed with herself, and probably not impressed with me when I asked her “did you lift” and she points to her team t-shirt wordlessly as a response as if to say, “What are you, new?” I think to myself, this is a girl I want to hang out with. I wonder what her sign is. What she wants to be when she grows up. If she could be any animal, which animal would it be (currently existing species only).
She won’t remember any of it.
You can stop the song now.
matt_15 writes:
What’s the weirdest thing you have ever found when performing an xray on someone?
Nothing like light bulbs in someone’s rectum, coins, sewing needles, etc. I’ve seen surgical staples, wire mesh (for some not uncommon surgical procedure), joint replacement hardware, a long nail in some dude’s hand from a work accident, pretty routine stuff. That’s about all I got. I don’t work in an ER so I don’t get too much crazy stuff or stat chest x-rays on someone who isn’t breathing.
Mark writes:
Just tried bubble tea, it’s good but you oversell it.
See a psych or a therapist and tell them you suffer from anhedonia. I have this problem too. It doesn’t really get better but sometimes it helps to talk with someone.
squattingIsbetter writes:
And what was your pre-workout meal?
Typically 1lbs ground beef or roast, a few small red potatoes and carrots with the roast or a half cup of white rice with the ground beef, followed shortly by a 50g whey and 70g waxy maize and some coffee (by that I mean Starbucks, go fuck yourself thanks). This has been a pretty solid pre-workout template for me and I attribute my generally positive and productive training the past few months to having learned what I need to eat pre-workout and how much time I need before inserting (and mobbing).
Broseph writes:
Also,
How many days a week do you squat?
It seems like you do the lift (somewhat) frequently.
I BS 6-7 times a week and FS twice a week. It’s worked out well for the last year. Just wondering what you think of ultra high frequency.
I squat like 2x a week, one BS and one FS so uh nah I don’t squat very frequently. I want to add another day for squatting. I seem to be progressing fairly consistently though so I won’t do that until I stall out.
High-frequency seems pretty necessary for advanced athletes. I’m not there yet but at some point it’s something I’m gonna have to do.
WTF
Brent, can you tell me why I suck at olympic weightlifting so much? I switched over to it from strongman/powerlifting 3 months ago, I’m 5’9 208, 610DL/490squat/360bench, and I can clean and jerk 145 kg and snatch 100 kg, WTF?
Be a better athlete? Get a coach?
coach. they’ll be able to pick out why and tell you how to improve. post the area you live in and i’m sure someone can make a recommendation.
San Jose, CA
I’ve heard of this place a few times:
http://www.californiastrength.com/olympic-weightlifting
http://californiastrength.com/contact
It may not be close but they have some of the strongest guys in the country there. you know, no big deal or anything.
Yeah I obviously know about CalStrength, but I work at a startup, about 60+ hours a week and don’t have time to commute there and back and not want to fucking kill myself. I pretty much have to find a way around that, cause Pendlay has told me straight up that I can come train there during their sessions for free.
Bro, maybe you just need a coach for a short time period and can go to whatever is closer to you once you feel more confident in the lifts? Return on the weekends or something so you can periodically get a form check. Bro.
Yeah you’re definitely right, bro. Gotta make that sacrifice for a few sessions, cause the offer is just too good.
Duder, if you dont take advantage of this opportunity, you can go fuck yourself right in the face 😉
Honestly, so jelly right now… get it done son!
uh, california strength, bro
If you don’t want to go to California Strength go to Catalyst Athletics. Also a weightlifting gym but it’s based in Sunnyvale. Good people to learn from. http://www.cathletics.com
Brent you should reconsider your stance on Alcohol, it obviously works for Frank Yang.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAl95iEcJl4
i had speakers off but as soon as i saw his haircut and wifebeater i closed the window so it didn’t infect my computer with retard.
everything on the internet is real
Seems legit. I enjoyed over-extension at the top for mad pumps
Brent when you did that mob did you hold weight against your chest or was bodyweight enough to make a difference?
bodyweight was sufficient enough to make a difference for me though i imagine loading it with weight or a super friend lying on me would only make it better
I just did my right side with bodyweight and after 35 seconds on the ball there was already a noticeable difference. Going to have to hit this one more often.
I did both sides for one minute each, hurt like a bitch on a zit back there. Went in the next day (yesterday) and benched, the zit popped open on the bench and left a two inch blood stain on my shirt. I didn’t realize it and proceeded to walk around finishing up the rest of my training, until an employee asked me if I’m alright. “What?” “Oh, you got blood on your back” And that’s the story of how I walked around in front of tons of people for 30+ minutes with a huge red/yellow blood and pus stain on my back it’s fine
do you live with animals? I’m guessing you have a few cats. You could collectively get them to lay on your chest as you try it.
I have two dogs, neither of which cares to help with mobbing.
HOLY SHIT THIS HURTS, YOU GUYS.
The added weight made a difference for me. I don’t have any cats, and the only object in my apartment suitable for this mob — as well as the best shoulder mob ever — is a handle of Tanqueray. Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy? NB: it’s unopened.
My left shoulder made my eyes water, but the difference it made was significant.
Srsly. Tears. If it hurts that much, it has to help! Right????
You’re benching what I squat at almost 70 lbs body weight less than me. Guess I’ll go fucking kill myself. It’s fine.
we could play this game all day
there are a lot of guys at 148lbs (and 132lbs and probably 123lbs) who total a lot more than me in PL
my lifts in OL are not terribly competitive at any bw
Frank Yang has deadlifted 500lbs, granted it was with more lumbar flexion than a normal person typically achieves in a crunch or a sit up and it wasn’t locked out, but the fact still stands that i’m not able to break 500lbs from the floor even though i smoke him in just about everything else
the point is – don’t kill yourself. eat a lbs of ground beef and a sweet potato and mob.
Brent,
What if you purposefully mobbed yourself into having scoliosis?
Could you possibly be the next Lamar Gant?
Granted, he was fucking black and you’re… not… but hey, we can work with it.
(If you don’t know who Gant was here’s a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_Gant )
What that Wikipedia article egregiously omits is the fact that the man’s back looked like an ‘S’ thanks to the powers of scoliosis. In videos of him pulling, you actually see his spine compress and his torso get shorter. Shit is unreal.
i supposedly have a mild scoliosis beginning at about T6 or so, incidental finding on a chest x-ray about a year ago
So… we just need to make you black.
You’re in the medical field; can we do this?
Do we have the technology?
To be fair, I’m still on my LP. TM to start in one to two months I think.
best insight and advice ever (seriously)
I like the last line of Brent’s comment.
This is a real sweet song man, Nightvision is beautiful.
I want to make love to a beautiful woman who I love, then we would go and shower together as the soft, gentle light of dawn filters in through the frosted glass. The shower would be warm, but not hot. We would touch, our touches turning from erotic in to intimate and gentle. She cradles her head on my chest, I lean in to kiss her neck.
We towel off and fall asleep in a pitch black room, holding hands.
Oh, we would be listening to nightvision while we showered. That was an integral part of the story.
I hope you’ve cleaned all the hair out of the plug hole beforehand. That would ruin the image.
How do you not get tired from eating a lb of ground beef everyday? I can barely stand eating oats now that I’ve been consistently eating for years.
grass-fed ground beef tastes pretty good
and i vary it enough with different seasoning, pot roasts, oxtail soup, etc.
I eat at least 1 lb. ground beef per day, I switch it up with different things –
One day with mustard, then just salt/pepper, then bbq sauce, then ketchup, etc.
I know some of these may not be strict paleo but seriously a little bit won’t kill you and makes it quite palatable.
Nothing will make me happier than when the fitness blogs out there will stop commenting on whether food is paleo or not. Like what prompted you to make that remark?
who gives a fuck if it’s strict paleo? Nobody that matters, that’s who. Besides, there’s no such thing.
And brent, why no chicken ever? Chicken is good.
In my opinion, a Paleo diet (or, less fashionably put, a diet to which humans are well adapted) is the ideal, and obviously ketchup would therefore be a less than ideal addition. I eat pretty close to Paleo, but if I want something else, I eat it. This methodology works quite well for me.
As you are opinionated on the internet, I’m sure you are the most bad ass dude imaginable, and basically any diet will work for you. For me, though, a close to Paleo diet has done wonders, and not just in appearance.
Also, chicken is terrible. Eating a pound of chicken is a time consuming and unsatisfying experience.
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/348/8/6/i_ain__t_even_mad_by_terribleprincess-d34w0sy.jpg
i like that this is high bar safe space. i feel unwelcome to discuss squatting on that other board because I don’t LB so it’s like I’m a fucking sex offender or something. thanks brent, you’re our hero.
If you don’t rotate your pinky while curling you might as well stop posting here as well.
^ Holy cow! I’ve officially been trolled. Me and spar. And the realspar. And the realrealspar. Who dis??
Hi Brent,
I have started trying to learn cleans. I am working on them at a normal rec center (not a weightlifting gym). They have these short olympic bars that I like to use because there is limited floor space. The bars are prob. 5 feet long total, and are marked 30 lbs. Presumably a short bar is more rigid than a long bar. At what weight range will the lack of whip become a factor? I’m only doing about 140 lbs right now.
Thanks
I’d be more worried about the sleeve rotation than whip
aSFJNASUFNVNJFVNRJ306TU38RN is this who I think it is?
I can guarantee you that I am not who you think I am
Brent, I saw TGISOTBEOF today, we walked by each other in the stairwell and it conjured up feelings I know you can relate to. The joy of seeing such beauty, followed almost immediately by the sadness that as far as I can tell she couldn’t give a fuck about my existence, then the depression, the loneliness, the desperation as it sinks in that she probably never will. Finally the anger at myself for not being enough of a man to do something about it.
Basically what I’m getting to, is how do YOU deal with this?
Pretty sure he doesnt go on the internet and ask people about it.
He does write it in his blog though.
foreveralong 👿
foreveratypo 😈
Yeah, I’m pretty sure we all deal with this by lifting weights, eating, and mobbing until we cry.
You do mobs quite a bit hm? What would you say are your top 5-7 mobs you do most frequently? How often do you use bands? I am thinking about getting some to focus more on mobility.
brent! i hit a couple PRs today! i can’t wait to show you what i can do now!
Often times, like right now, I imagine us sleeping together on some lazy day. Snuggled up so I can run my hands over you and kiss the back of your ears while you pretend to sleep.
In my imagination I never let you go. We might go out to eat or go to the supermarket or watch a movie but there’s always a touch or a hand to hold. Anything for you.