Recently in lifting Category

in addition to all these monkey farming snakes on this mother loving plane, i'm sick and tired of fitness testimonials that go on and on about how sore the trainee became the day after their workout, or, worse, on their way home.

look, jagovs, welcome to saint toad's personal training center. you come over to my place and i will hit you repeatedly in the face with a bottle of fortified wine. just to show that i'm an attentive trainer, i will tailor the workout specifically to you: if i like you, you'll get the niepoort, and if i don't like you, you get the taylor fladgate. if you're really lucky, you'll get the don fino, which is empty.

i guarantee that you will be very, very sore the next day.

only $500/hr, sign up now, space is limited.

i've discovered a new kind of pain. actually, strike that, i've just come up with a silly name for an old, familiar pain.

you know the old saying, "it hurts so much it's not even funny", don't you? well, my legs hurt so much it is funny. i am laughing at myself and the comically over-the-top pain in my legs. it's funny for two reasons: because it's incredibly painful, impedes my walking, sitting, and standing, and yet it's totally harmless. it was also entirely expected.

i deadlifted on friday, and just because i also squatted. when i get back into a squat/dead routine, there is no amount of warmup/cooldown exercises that will forestall the inevitable painful-to-the-point-of-hilarity DOMS that i can look forward to enjoying for the following week.

i expect to stop laughing at this walk-inhibiting pain sometime around friday.

haw haw haw!

starting tuesday this week i began suffering from horrible ass pain.

i couldn't sit comfortably. sneezing, laughing, coughing -- all caused big pain spasms in the arse area. i thought maybe i had a bruised tailbone or a hemorrhoid that escaped and migrated north. i didn't even realize how much i walked around with a clenched buttocks until i tried to relax them to take a pee -- ow!

well, you can all breathe easy now, and so can i. it was just a big, bad-ass case of DOMS -- delayed onset muscle soreness -- resulting from last week's return to deadlifting after a many-months departure from my favorite lift.

i'd cut out the weight lifting to allow me more slack to grow into cycling. much as i love the deadlifting, i think (for now, at least) i'm a cyclist, not a weightlifter. but as i sit on the couch playing video games all day, i can't help but notice my dusty, rusty (really, it's rusted. argh!) weightroom over there, beckoning and whining like a lonely puppy.

so i'm back on the iron, two days a week, and speaking of weak: man, am i. that's fine, it'll all come back.

and speaking of coming back, the DOMS in my arse faded away yesterday, just in time for today's deadlifting session! I look forward to the next ass-crippling attack of soreness. it's what i live for.

some folks came over and saw my leftover benchpress 2nd-set weight left set on the booth.

"that's some serious weight," they said.

no, man, what's hanging over my belt is serious weight. my bench press is light.

sore legs today.

is it from my 50 mile ride on sunday? nope.

my 12 mile ride today? nope.

the 75 KB swings I did with a light weight yesterday morning? bingo.

sigh.

i had a small deadlifting epiphany yesterday, and a bigger one today as i tested and confirmed yesterday's.

i wasn't pushing my behind far enough out behind me. so today i got into deadlifting position and pushed it out. farther. more. a little more. a little more... a lot more. further. farther. come on, now, your arse is still in the same area code, that's not far enough out... there!

my older DL posture protected the back well enough, i think, but with the new posture, my shins are more upright throughout the movement, i'm balanced better on my heels (instead of my toes), and the lift has a lot more leg emphasis at the beginning, rather than back emphasis. this, sadly, may hold me back a little -- my last big deadlift push (that is to say, my last big pull push, har har har) was sumo style, which, even when you do it right, involves a lot of back and not much legs. in other words, my legs, though massive and strong looking, may prove to be the weak link in my deadlift.

i suppose that does not matter. lifting is a long-term endeavour and in the long term, better form means longer-term.

interestingly, my form revelations came from the kettlebell world, specifically, the book and exercise info i got at the RKC event a couple weeks ago. two drills in particular: the wall squat (face a wall, toes really close to it, squat to touch your kettlebell or the ground, don't fall over) and the box squat (put a box/bench behind you, squat *back* to sit on it, stand). both help to exaggerate the lower back arch and the arse-out posture.

anyways, i'll see how the new posture goes. i felt much tighter, albeit not much stronger, when lifting today.

i've never had formal coaching in the deadlift. the only real feedback i've had is via observers whom i've asked to look for specific things, and via videos i've taken of myself lifting (which i haven't done for a while now). when i ask whether my back is rounding or my shins are straight, it always seems like i'm doing things right. i'm lifting more than my bodyweight with no big injuries, and i make progress when i get enough sleep.

i feel like i'm doing something right.

and it's no accident that i'm doing something right: i've taken the time to find out what a proper deadlift looks like. i know things.

so it is occasionally entertaining when i happen to see people deadlifting in a gym. it doesn't happen often because i'm not often in a gym, and when i am, i'm not often near the weights. but this weekend i was at sunnyvale PG and saw a pair of skinny dudes deadlifting what appeared to be at least 135.

i personally constantly worry about the details, starting with the big ones and working my way down to the little ones: is my back flat? are my arms loose? am i pushing into the floor with my legs? am i looking up? am i starting in just the right position? am i pulling my shoulder blades back? am i supporting my spine by tightening my abs? is my bunghole clenched? and so on. i worry that sometimes i don't get the details just right.

whelp, these two guys at the gym weren't getting the details right. in fact, never mind the details, what they were doing weren't even deadlifts, though i could tell they thought they were. their form was so unbelievably bad, it was as if they'd taken a textbook list of things to do while deadlifting, and opposed every single one of them. an inverted deadlift checklist. from memory, they:

- rounded their backs. bigtime.
- lifted their hips before they lifted the bar
- bent their elbows
- jerked the bar off the floor
- didn't lock out
- did i mention rounded their backs?
- had their knees way in front of the bar when starting
- had their heels off the floor when starting, and throughout the lift
- wore squishy shoes
- had too wide a grip

i'm sure there were other defects, but those are the ones i remember. what was most amazing was how they rounded their backs -- perhaps the other details are fine points that only advanced people worry about (shouldn't be that way, but let's assume it is). the first rule of deadlifting is not to round your back. i thought everyone knew that?!

i struggled with the idea of going over and offering advice. i'm not good at that because i am not confident that i'm doing it right myself, and i'm not confident that i could present my help in a way that would be accepted well. so i passed.

later, when contemplating this lame posting, i regretted my decision and resolved not to repeat it. it doesn't matter if they discard my advice because ego gets in the way, or because i'm too funny looking to deliver advice. i could at least try, and hopefully they'll listen, and perhaps, maybe, if they don't catch on right away, they'll hear me now and believe me later.

otherwise, they'll hurt themselves, and tell their chiropractor that they did it deadlifting, and the quack will right an article, and next thing you know, my beloved deadlift will have been besmirched in the press, like maybe an expose on 60 minutes "DO YOU KNOW WHAT DANGEROUS LIFTS YOUR KIDS ARE ATTEMPTING AT THE GYM?" or "THE DEADLIEST LIFT: DEADLIFTS" or something like that.

anyhow, enough of this. i'm off to clench my bunghole for some deadlifts.

i did a squat pyramid last night, i dont think i've done that since i was training with sheiko (heh), and then, it was not small-set pyramids, that hoser makes you do big long sets.

i did 1x5x205,225,275,295,275 and then, when i got to my set of 5x225, i was amazed by how light it felt. it did not feel light the first time i did it. i checked the weights after i was done to make sure they were all there, and by gum, they were.

i've done that sort of thing with the bench press and it never feels light after i drop it down. but with the squat, i feared i'd toss the weight off.

just more evidence that i'm a cyclist, eh?

after a week and a half exile from my beloved weight room, an exile imposed, oddly enough, by my prescription steroids, i'm back in (hopefully) good form. light deads (i boast!), dips instead of bench press (too lazy to put the bar up), push press instead of military (still too lazy to put the bar up). a wimpy workout by july standards, but good enough for today.

after all the excitement, i can't seem to recall whether i took my daily antihistamine. i guess i'll find out later on, something to really look forward to!

now i get to deadlift multiple times per week!