What are your personal records?:Weight lifting

[Riley Crosby]

220

that is exactly why i have to retake an algebra class 101 haha!

[Lax PV]

Wow, Thanks Kyle.
Yes, you can see just about every bone in me. im pretty wirey .
I would only do a squatting exercise twice per school week but the squatting motion is part of the power cleans technique which is one of the more important lifts for a pole vaulter, or so says my coach. the amounts im power cleaning isnt really enough to kill my legs anyway since I am also jerking it. and i suck at jerking....

So the 220 calories and the 4 grams of fat in the protein shake is pointless?? i should just eat a few pb&j sandwiches and an apple after work out?
-Riley

If it has 52 grams of protien (4x52=104 calories) 4 grams of fat (9x4=36 calories) so 80 calories left/4= 20 grams of carbs.

So your breakdown is 47% protien, 16% fat, and 37% carbs.... so not pointless just really high in protien.

Not that I know anything about nutrition (as anyone who knows me knows I eat like Usain Bolt...) but 4x52 is 208...not 104.

This 208 protein, 36 of fat...which leaves one with no extras...

[KYLE ELLIS]

Thats embarassing

[Riley Crosby]

im glad im not the only one who needs to retake topics of algebra

[EIUvltr]

It's interesting that your PRs are within 10, except for bench press and full squat. I wonder if you're comparing apples to apples ... as there's more than one way to press or squat?

I don't know what you 2 mean by "full squat", but I caution you to not go too deep down on the squat ... it can tear your knees ... and it doesn't really give you any additional strength where you need it. A half-squat (thighs parallel to the ground) is all that's necessary ... IMHO.

Kirk

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. This is a very old view on the squat perpetrated by evil people like Kenneth Cooper back in the 60s. I'm going to dispell 2 myths here today.

1. Squats are bad for your knees/lower back
2. Full squats are not "sport specific"

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1) This should be rephrased "Squatting incorrectly is bad for your knees/lower back."

Someone who squats with a very upright torso will force their body to shift the knees forward in an effort to keep the bar over the middle of the feet. This is one potential cause for knee problems since the stress around the knee increases exponentially as they shift forward.
Someone who seemingly squats correctly but whose knees shift forward anyway is probably using too much quad and not enough hamstrings/gluts. Most athletes, especially high school age, are terrible at activating their hamstrings and quads during hip extension. You could call it Quad dominance. When contracted at the bottom of the squat, the hamstrings hold the butt back and therefore the knees as well. This is why people should think about keeping their hamstrings and gluts contracted at the bottom of the squat.
Someone who lets their knees move medially at the bottom part of the ROM is putting stress on the knees AND hurting themselves by not using the vastus medialis muscle which functions to adduct the hips as well as extend them.
Someone who DOESN'T perform the valsalva maneuver can cause lower back injuries. Yes that's right. Decades ago someone measured thier blood pressure while they were lifting and noticed how much it increased when they held their breath. Immediately they concluded that holding your breath when you lift could cause a stroke. However what they neglected to measure was the pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid which ALSO increases during the valsalva maneuver. The two pressures cancel each other out. When you inhale and contract your abs, you increase intra-thoracic pressure. This pressure is applied to the anterior side of your spine. This reinforces the correct spinal alignment and greatly decreases the chance of an orthopedic injury (which are relatively common). The rate of cerebrovascular injuries in weight rooms across the U.S. is hard to find since it happens so rarely. I once heard that more people drown in 5 gallon buckets every year than people die of strokes in a weight room every decade.
Unfortunately hardly anyone performs lifts correctly in the U.S. so a lot of injuries do result from the squat since no one does it right.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0lF4lm3efA

I used to lift with Kirk. He is arguably the greatest squatter of all time. Notice how he leans over at the waist to keep his center of gravity over the feet during the descent. This allows the knees and hips to stay back. He also keeps his knees out over the feet instead of moving them medially (towards each other). Oh, and he is holding his breath...


2. People look at running and say "The foot doesn't apply force until the hip is almost fully extended. So why do we do full squats? We should do half, or quarter squats since that would be more specific to the range of motion of the squat."

Wrongggggggggg

What people forget is that when we run, we bring our knees almost all the way to parallel then extend the hip back towards the ground. The reason we do this is because it stretches the hamstrings and gluts allowing them to contract harder (via the myotatic stretch reflex) and apply more force to the ground which makes us go faster. The squat works the same way. The hamstrings cannot contract that strongly unless they are stretched first. This can only be acheived by performing a deep squat. Yes, a quarter squat may be more specific to the range of motion of force application during running, BUT you are using almost all quads, neglecting the hamstrings which are the most important muscle in running. PLUS, since your hamstrings are already contracted in the top part of the squat, they can't really help you to change directions in an abbreviated squat, so the stress falls on, you guessed it, the knees. So not only are half and quarter squats LESS sport specific than a full squat, but they are another common cause of knee problems.

[vault3rb0y]

I think the majority of injuries lie within athletes starting full squats and within a week bumping their weights WAY above 5% recommended increase per week. Your muscles may be able to handle that increase, but your tendons and ligaments might not. If you start with NO WEIGHT (first day preseason) and work up gradually to full squats (for people that have no experience squatting) with good technique, there should be no common injuries to joints, etc (hypothetically).

This is good base training, and most programs periodize in a way that works from full range of motion/low weight and high reps to shorter ROM/high weight and then into explosive phases as the season begins. Both serve a purpose and are technically sport specific, but if you think about a range of sport specific actions from actual pole vaulting on one end, and watching TV on the other end, being explosive and quick is certainly more specific than touching your butt to the ground during a squat. Again though, both serve a purpose at different times in a season.

I would rephrase your argument as "progressing too quickly in squats can be harmful to your knees/lower back". Your body will let you do a lot of weight in a squat, but you need to be smart about it and progress slowly, especially for beginners.

[jcoover]

I agree with EIUvltr.

In fact, doing "half squats" can be way worse for your knees than full squats. The act of switching directions at (or above) parallel with a lot of weight on your back puts a lot of stress on some tendons that are not meant to be stressed in that position. A lot of knee problems related to squatting are from changing directions at or above parallel. People think that full squats are bad for your knees just because it seems like they should be. In truth, with proper form (controlled descent, tight posture through the direction switch, knees and hips move in unison), full squats really are the way to go. I have always trained squatting butt to ankles, and it hasn't ever failed me.

[jcoover]

by the way here is an example of what i would consider very good squat technique for a track athlete. obviously these guys are olympic lifters and are ridiculously strong, so don't worry about the fact that they make 200kg and 220kg look like a joke at like 150lb bodyweight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_jxTc2ITA8

[EIUvltr]

They do have great form, but they shouldn't lift their heads up like that. Its advisable to stare at a spot on the floor about 6 feet in front of you for the entirety of the lift, and do not squat in front of a mirror if you can avoid it.

[KYLE ELLIS]

They do have great form, but they shouldn't lift their heads up like that. Its advisable to stare at a spot on the floor about 6 feet in front of you for the entirety of the lift, and do not squat in front of a mirror if you can avoid it.

I disagree with this, lifting the chin up slightly allows the person to get into a more open position (chest out, shoulders pulled back). Looking down is going to cause the athlete to rotate forward, putting them on their toes. Same concept as in long jump, looking down will cause an early body roatation towrds the pit.
How many olympic lifters do you see looking down when the do a clean and jerk or snatch?

[EIUvltr]

They do have great form, but they shouldn't lift their heads up like that. Its advisable to stare at a spot on the floor about 6 feet in front of you for the entirety of the lift, and do not squat in front of a mirror if you can avoid it.

I disagree with this, lifting the chin up slightly allows the person to get into a more open position (chest out, shoulders pulled back). Looking down is going to cause the athlete to rotate forward, putting them on their toes. Same concept as in long jump, looking down will cause an early body roatation towrds the pit.
How many olympic lifters do you see looking down when the do a clean and jerk or snatch?

"Looking at the floor provides the eye with a fixed position reference. Any deviation from the correct movement pattern can be identified easily against this reference and can be adjusted as it happens. The ceiling also provides a reference, but at the expense of an unsafe neck position. And, generally speaking, the floor is closer to the eyes than the ceiling, and is therefore more useful as a reference - smaller movements can be detected against a closer point. To correct looking up, fix the eyes on a position on the floor five to six feet in front of you, or if training close to a wall, on a place low on the wall that results in the same neck position. Stare at this pont, and get used to looking at it so that it requires no conscious effort. Most people will not raise their heads to the point where neck position is affected if they are looking down."

"Squatting in front of a mirror is a really bad idea. Many weight rooms have mirrors on all the walls, making it impossible to squat without a mirror there, within eyesight, giving you its bad feedback. A mirror is a bad tool because it provides information about only one plane, the frontal, and depth cannot be judged by looking in the mirror from the front. Some obliqueness of angle is required to see the relationship between patella and hip crease, but a mirror set at an oblique angle would produce a twisting of the neck. Cervical rotation under a heavy bar is just as bad an idea as cervical hyperextension under a heavy bar. But the best reason not to use a mirror in front of any multijoint exercise is that you should be developing kinesthetic sense of movement by paying attention to all the sensory input provided by proprioception, rather than focusing merely on visual input from a mirror. 'Learn to feel it, not just see it' is excellent advice."

-Mark Rippetoe (arguably one of the top lifting coaches in the world, especially when it comes to the squat, bench and deadlift.)

And the clean and jerk/snatch is a different lift because the torso is much more upright at the bottom range of motion than it is at the bottom of the squat (torso is at around a 45 degree angle). In a clean and jerk/snatch/deadlift your eyes should be looking more up than in the squat. Different people get "set" differently in the deadlift due to body type so the point you focus on will vary a bit, but ideally it will always keep you in a neutral neck position.

[twistpv]

age 18
height 5'10
weight 170

power clean 300
clean & jerk 300
snatch 200
bench 275
squat 405