but I thought for a romanian deadlift, you do’nt go all the way down, NO?
when you say hips lower and arch more, is that at the beginning/low position right? I did try the goblet on weights and that helps a lot and I will work on my behind, back . But rather I count calories or not, you’re saying do keep carbs low and maintenance, just try to maintain weight,/recomp right? 100 grams of carbs is considered low.
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I dont think strong lifts is a good starting point for upper body, mostly because it has a different weekly organization than upper/lower and does more whole body work.
what did you think of my “made up” plan??? I loved but loved your horizontal lifts, I really felt different this morning. Check out what I did last night. It’s a few posts back.
The upper body hypertrophy day looks much better than the upper power day. I would not do the upper power day.
I would change barbell bench exercises to dumbbell hammer grip (neutral grip) versions, and I would pair bench/back exercises in superset form. Do back exercises first.
Diet for now probably be 1600, if you are maintaining 118 at that weight, or only +1 lb, then it is abput good maintenence. I realize the goal is to drop fat but starting from maintenance gives you more room to cut calories down the road.
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Do you mean the area right below the knee cap above the shin? Or do you mean the tear drop muscle area? Or do you mean the area on the top of your knee cap?
Sore patellar tendon indicates a huge problem with form. Because unless you have the knees of an 80 year old goblet squats and step ups should not bother your tendons. I don’t think you have degeneration or old surgery pain, so it is almost surely a form problem.
Romanian deadlift is very very good. Dont change anything form wise. Neutral spine is just fine. As far as range of motion it is something you can play with–there is no rule that you HAVE to stop right below the knees. That is convention.
The primary difference from romanians to regular deadlifts is the amount of knee bend you have. Romanain deads are straighter knees and shins just like in your video and the regular deadlift has more knee bend.
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your made up plan was good for your first attempt! Thats why we try things.
Im on my phone and can only go so fast here. I spent the last 46 hours n the lab without sleep so I have been away from this thread
no, tracking calories is good habit. Mindless eating is verrry bad for fat loss. keep up with it. ill get to the rest in a few on my computer.
I cant thumb type well or quickly
did you look at my “plan” I added later down?? It has your supersets with bench and back, yay I’m proud of myself. Take a look and critique that one please and if you like that one, should I do it twice a week or do it and then one do the hypertrophy day??
Here goes my latest videos with trying to improve by all the critiques received. I will work up to 1600 and check in later.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4k1iok
poor you. get some sleep!! thanks for all your help. glad you liked my plan. I will do that and the hypertrophy plan each week. You really helped out there. My shoulder loves you!
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Sorry, I didn’t realise you were doing RDLs. It’s quite often the case that people new to lifting weights either don’t go all the way back down or bounce the bar off the floor when DLing, so my apologies.
My diet suggestion was really just an initial template. You would adjust things like carbs up/down depending on results. I just really don’t like to count calories but if you do then that’s all that matters.
it is the area right below the knee cap avove the shin. and on top. I know it’s form and doing goblets on top of weight plates really helped. for now I’ll do it that way. You know me, I have tracking problems and lots of mobility issues. . . which is why I’m afraid to bulk because i can’t lift heavy yet as form is not well. I will try a lower box for step ups and keep weights the same.
Your step ups are fine. I don’t know who told you they were bad, they’re not. Your knee does just fine at that height. Don’t let the knee cave inwards–you don’t, so no problem here.
Reverse lunges are pretty good. You carry too much weight on your back leg–the front leg is the one supposed to be doing all the work and bearing all the weight. The angle the front leg’s shins make when you are at the bottom (they are basically 90 degrees in the video) is good. So don’t change that a bunch. It can change a wee bit if you want to narrow the stance length or something, so it’s not like a hard rule, but keep it in that ballpark because it’s good there. You want to keep the front shin close to vertical at the top of the motion (look in the video it is leaning backwards at the top of your lunge).
This means when you lunge, every rep needs to come back to the beginning stance: stand feet parallel, step back, lunge down and up and pull yourself back to feet parallel with the front weight bearing foot. You can do it the way in the video too (and some bodybuilder do) but I think for your needs at this moment doing 1 complete step every time is better at the moment.
Outside of the mat slipping the hip thrusts are pretty good. A few minor tweaks I would change but that’s not really significant to your goals and main issues at the moment so no real need.
I personally liked your first deadlift better on form. It’s not bad, your first video was just better–the main difference is in the 1st video your shins are staying vertical throughout and in this 2nd video of deadlifts your shins are actually leaning backwards. Remember there are two areas: 1) form and 2) range of motion that you are going down. 2 is just basically personal choice and such–you can go down as far or little as you like if form is good. Form is good from an injury safety standpoint on both deadlift videos but better in the first from a strength and efficiency standpoint.
Your knee travel on goblet squats is fine, it’s everything else that is the problem. Squats by nature involve some knee travel forwards (it should be under control though). Your issues are:
- stance width (too wide)
- toe position (way too much pointed out at first, some is fine and natural–you don’t need to be 100% parallel feet–but you want to keep it less)
- mobility.
You lean forwards because of all three. This is easy to confirm: powerlifters that squat wide stance do exactly the same thing you did–their torso is leaned forward more than powerlifters who squat narrower. In their case it is a deliberate choice based on comfort and how they feel strongest for competition of course. A healthy person should have the ability to squat properly both narrow and wider regardless what what they choose to do in practice or the gym. Squatting is a spectrum–the wider your stance the more leaned over the torso is and the less the knees travel forwards in a good squat, and the narrower your stance the less leaned your torso and the MORE your knees travel forwards in a good squat. It happens because of the way the human body is built to move.
Mobility: not ankles, it’s likely your hips and you are too scared to allow the knees to travel forward and/or squat below 90 degrees. Your stance tells me you probably have tight hip external rotators, which are stiff and relatively inflexible compared to what they need to be. In addition may have some adductor tightness and some other things. You’re also not used to the motion which of course is a major factor 
. Did you watch the Dan John video or the Kelly Starrett videos? Did you see how deep they go? I’ll wager 90% of your problems are hip external rotation, high hamstring stiffness (should be able to stretch the hamstring right under where the glute starts) and fear.
Try this the next time you’re at the gym–Go to a squat rack and stand in front of one of the support uprights with your feet in a medium/narrow squat stance. Then grab the upright with both hands to balance yourself and squat down all the way, making sure to keep your back straight and the outside of your hips “turned on” to keep your knees from caving inwards toward your groin. Try to make it like the picture below.
Look at the article here on T-Nation called “Squat right for your type” by Todd Bumgardner. Came out sometime in 2014. It gives a “big picture” view of styles of squatting. point 2 in that article will not apply to you because you are not lifting heavy enough to challenge your recovery ability, but the rest is pretty good. Here is a picture from that article that shows the goblet squat done properly:
Look at how the knees and hips and torso relate. The big problem with knees in the squat isn’t them going FORWARD…it’s them caving INWARDS toward the groin. They should be inline with your last 3 toes on each foot, not sagging inwards. Knees going forward to some degree in someone healthy is fine and natural. Knees caving inwards is not, especially for women based on how their hips are built compared to men’s hips.
The sliding scale—Knee travel: less knee travel forward = more hamstring and glute activation and more torso lean. More knee travel = less torso lean.
You don’t have any more than a normal new person, and less than a lot of people I’ve coached. Most of your problem is fear and unfamiliarity, with some actual mobility shortcomings thrown in.
Stretch your calves and adductors (inner thigh/groin muscles). Also stretch your hip external rotators (I’ll refer you to Kelly starrett here because that would be a long post) but make the majority of your stretching calves and adductors and the majority of your “working knots out of muscles” the outside of the hips and glutes.
As a primary thing, someone else told you not to think about bulking/cutting. I agree with this. It gets you pre-occupied on the scale weight, and not how you look. Question: if you weighed 110 lbs but with a waist the size it is now, or if you weighed 120 but your waist was 1.5 inches smaller than it is now, which would make you happier? I hope the answer is 120 lbs, because that indicates more muscle and less fat. You are not really training that hard, and once you do get used to pushing the envelope further (safely, without form breakdown), you will understand why I say that.
Again, that is not a criticism. Just a statement of fact–most beginners think they are training extremely hard because they don’t have the experience to know what that looks like. It takes time to develop that, it’s natural.
Lastly, your form is not really that bad. At all. The squat is the one with the worst form, and that’s all fixable. Besides which there is no rule that says you HAVE to squat if you are a newbie and the goal is fat loss–you can very easily squat lighter until you’re happy with form but push things with your other lifts where you feel better about form.
And to reaffirm–yes, this is a good day. Very good job with your first attempt at making up a day. Use this on one upper body day and the PHUL hypertrophy day on the other upper body day for now. Remember dumbbell and neutral grip benches instead of barbell versions.
This is a very minor nit pick, but I would raise the reps on your bent over db rows from 3-5 to 6-8. Back muscles usually do slightly better with slightly more time spent under tension. Emphasis on slightly…so for a bench exercise of 3-5 reps, the equivalent in the back would be 5-8 reps. Doesn’t mean “lighter”, it just means “spend more time under tension”.
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Everyone who gave their opinion was CORRECT…
Everything works to a degree and when utilized properly. At the end of the day, if your not losing weight calories need to be lowered… So a set number or ratio can be used at first but after that you add or subtract foods/calories for desired effect while the mirror and scale are your measuring tools…
Now,“3 pounds of lovehandles to lose” is unfortunately not the way it works… We can not target fat loss to 1 given area… As a whole you need to gain muscle and lose body fat (everywhere)…
The reason We bodybuilders eat a great deal of protein is for building and repairing muscle tissue… BUT one major thing many over look is that if we didnt eat protein in the bulk of our meals we would be eating fat or carbs (2 energy sources) … Higher protein allows us to eat and be flll (hopefully) with a lean food less likely to put on fat…
Ok so HIIT burns a HELL of a lot more fat than steady state. It also burns a hell of a lot more glycogen (carbs in muscle).
And its not the easiest form of cardio to be done daily (for most people).
The issue with steady state is that 1-It doesn’t burn an insane amount of fat and 2- you become efficient at iyt, thus making it less effective (this is why most competitors are doing 1.5-2 hours a day).
So, mix it up. Never do the same type of cardio every day for weeks. change the machine, duration, intensity constantly. Do hard intervals and hiit when possible.
The people who said dont do HIIT fasted is because Glycogen is needed but your fasted so your more likely to burn muscle… Dont know how important that is to you. I do hard am cardio fasted myself (but i can afford to lose some muscle bc of my weight requirement)
As long as your heart rate goes up and down and you are unable to read a book or text its working
Hope this helped
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I’m way behind but you certainly don’t need to worry about cutting or bulking or such useless (in my opinion) stats like BF %, which is almost always measured with a decent degree of error.
Just work hard and eat well. Good luck to you.
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I’m not going to get into diet or anything else because Aragorn has you covered, but I will say that zombie front squats (front squats with no arms, arms out in front of you) are incredible for teaching / learning a proper squatting pattern. I’ve used them with a couple of beginners with “flimsy”-kneed squats and had them squatting properly after 20 mins of zombies.
The only guidelines necessary are:
1.) Tense your core, glutes, upper back, etc., push your abs out, and hold your breath as you squat (as with any squat)
2.) Go below parallel
The rest should take care of itself.
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if my plan came out well, I had an AWesome helper. Thanks for all your time. And yeS I prefer to be 120 and a smaller waist, for sure. I will maintain now and try and work on form and getting heavier. You’ve put a lot more confidence in me and I will work on those things for sure. You’re very keen on things, I appreciate that. I will keep posting videos as I increase weight, so I hope you will continue to give feedback, and I hope I get what you are saying about “shins” with the deadlifts. I will try. How will I know if I’m doing any better at maintenance, but lifting heavier?? do you think I will see any changes at all, if I keep eating the same but keep progressing in weight??
thanks to everyone for suggestions. i had a much better day at the gym cuz of you all. i could feel my behind today for sure!!
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