No shit. You did three days of training in one hit.
4 Likes
I have to wear long pants to work but as soon as I get home I whip em off and get my shorts on. Winters down here aren’t really cold so I wear shorts all year round come rain or shine 
2 Likes
Wanted to spice it up a bit. Perhaps too much though. Lol
2 Likes
Hooray for full body!
I’ve been enjoying my full body sessions but you have to dial back the volume for regular sessions. I think beating yourself into the ground from time to time can be a good thing. I’m planning to do 10 days of full body training in a row leading up to my hip surgery. It’ll be my own trial and error approach to over-reaching.
On a different note, I recently began experiencing symptoms from my bulged disc. My problem is at L3/L4 and it radiates to the right and wraps around my right hip along my waistline. After that it wraps around and goes down my medial quad (I think it follows the femoral nerve).
I tweaked something on Sept 28th and it’s taken awhile for the nerve pain to show up. It’s very similar to when I first injured myself in 2014. During that experience it took about six weeks before I had any symptoms but then it progressed until I lost the function of my medial quad. Nothing I did really fixed it but it finally healed up once the disc swelling went away. I’m hoping it doesn’t get that bad this time.
Do you think deadlifts are worth the risk? I’m thoroughly enjoying them but I don’t compete so I don’t have to do them.
Any words of wisdom from your docs? It seems that the internet answer is to avoid deads and squats but I wondered if any doctors actually took a different approach. It seems like it’s an all or nothing kind of thing but I’m hoping there’s some middle ground.
1 Like
Yeah this was mostly me just trying to spice things up, and occasional doing some extra work.
My injury spans between the L4-L5 and also aggravates the sacrum area and left sciatic nerve, all into my hips. It’s mostly been sucked back into where it came from, but i also tweaked a large chunk of that fascia tissue back there, and it usually follows some sort of pattern. Ergo, me doing something I shouldn’t be doing yields pain, me going about it in a timely and prepared manner equals no pain, or little discomfort.
And this last training session, I was also thinking about the risk to reward factor, I think for deadlifts, it’s going to be something I have to either maintain or go down in weight on eventually. And I feel I might see the likes of 400 or in that area, and after that it’ll probably be something I only reminisce on once I’ve hit said PR. Maybe. If I don’t hit that number, I’m still fine with having a decent 330-350 deadlift. Compared to benching and squatting, deadlifts probably leans more toward negative impact than it is rewarding, but I say that with a very loose maybe, because while it does cause some discomfort, it also clearly strengthens the majority of my posterior chain. I’ll just be a bit more specific and say heavy deadlifts probably won’t yield much benefit, but moderate to low weight and higher volume definitely allows me to reap some benefits. To add, at first I didn’t really care about things concerning weight loss, at least not at the moment, but now that I’m leaning out it does contribute a lot to my overall well being and how I feel. I’ve noticed heavier chicks who powerlift typically have some sort of lower body injury that gets exacerbated up until they lose a good 20-30lbs. A few ladies I’ve talked to at the gym also had a similar situation, much like myself. I think it’s a good combo of things that need to be taken into account concerning powerlifting, if you have an injury I think a lot of repeating things also fall into some sort of order, one way or another. That being injury, weight, age, training style, etc. But I don’t think deadlifting heavy is worth much of any risk. I do think deadlifts for sake of preservation is worth the risk though. Whether injured or not.
As far as my doctor, he has called me one other time, although it wasn’t a long conversation, more of a check up. I’m glad he’s at least understanding in realizing this is something I like to do, and it’s something he’s probably not extremely well versed in regardless of him being a doctor, and that I’ll probably do it anyways. He was semi vague in his opinion but he mostly just told me to monitor how I’m feeling and adjust accordingly. He runs quite frequently so it’s pretty obvious he too has experienced complications with running as does every else who runs rather regularly, he still clearly does it, so I think he could agree that he weighs risk to reward factors as well.
My whole take on this is that I wasn’t out of shape or experiencing weaknesses, before I hurt myself, so now that I have injured myself I don’t think it is anywhere near as debilitating as it could have been. I also chuck in age as an important factor. And most days the only real pain I ever feel is a few radiating sensations and general stiffness. And that’s on days where I’m being down right lazy and not doing anything. On active recovery days and even days after training I feel very good. I think maybe another 10 years down the line, and I will definitely have to prioritize things. I see no problem with dialing down as I get older, in fact it’s probably something I, as well as the majority of people should probably do. I also think lifting kind of creates a bit of a counter balance. In that you kind of find some sort of middle ground between recovering more, and not further breaking down. I think lifting provides that for a good chunk of people. And with age you probably lean more towards recovering more. This is just some speculating I’ve been doing, feel free to challenge that, but that’s my whole take on this.
1 Like
I’m a big fan of Lee Boyce’s stuff and he’s frequently talks about needing to do certain things such as deadlifting heavy weights.
I know I don’t need to but I want to. I even know it’s not necessary for overall strength and development because I built my back without it. I only started deadlifting last year. Until then I did lots of romanian deadlifts and power cleans. I rarely approach 300 lbs with those and even when I’m really pushing it the limiting factor is never my lower back. On the flip side, I feel my lower back losing its neutral position on heavy deads.
I think the smart play is to start focusing on moderate weights with moderate to high reps compared to my current approach of working up to a heavy single.
That’s a sad realization and it will be difficult to follow my own advice but I really don’t need to have any more surgeries…after my next one.
1 Like
@Frank_C
I’m hoping to not need any surgeries upon my next doctors visit.
and I agree on the moderate weights with moderate to high reps. I also think it goes hand in hand for powerlifters concerning their strength. Botslayer mentioned this too, concerning getting stronger in that its wise to use heavy singles sparingly the more experienced you are. I think if you can progress in strength while having an injury, the strength, to a certain extent can shadow the injury if you’ve been being diligent with mobility stuff and active recovery and all that.
I’ll use myself as an analogy, upon hurting myself I had just attained a 275 deadlift, and that’s when it was hurting the most, fast forward to now and I have a roughly 340 deadlift, while pain has been mitigated 7fold. I guess you can compare it to a having a cut, and a scar has now formed. That area can still function as skin, but it’s slightly different after healing. I think piling up strength could be the metaphorical “scar”, that forms when you attain an injury. I don’t know if that makes any sense though. Lol. I mainly come to that conclusion because I see older people who have been in the iron game for decades, and they just seem a lot more mobile and preserved than their counterparts who rarely, if ever, spent enough time in the gym.
That is absolutely no joke right there.
6 Likes
That was partly the reason I was so lethargic when I got done. I’ll probably stick with widow makers using 185 at max. Trying to have something presentable for the 2018 challenge lol.
Also wish there was a triple like button for that meme. Love it 
2 Likes
Until this little hiccup I’ve experienced the same thing. Pre-injury I had discomfort doing 225 on RDLs (all low back stress and no hamstring work). I also hurt myself rushing through a warm-up for a max Deadlift attempt. My goal for the max was 405.
Post-injury I’ve used 275 on RDLs without any problems and hit a Deadlift PR of 495.
And that 225 x 20 for TWO sets made me feel a bit weak! Nice work 
1 Like
Your DL can go up without actually pulling off the floor. Just putting that out there…
1 Like
Do you mean like other movements in general besides the deadlift?. Because I agree. But I’m also kind of confused lol
1 Like
Thank youuuuuu. Although you probably won’t see me logging one of those again for a bit. Like months. Lol
I too hurt myself doing exactly that.
Very, very basically (and bear in mind this is my interpretation and is probably wrong in places):
- For some individuals the deadlift is just a means of displaying strength and favourable leverages. For those people, frequent pulling is fine but is likely not to improve their DL that much and almost certainly won’t induce much muscle gain (because it is an ‘easy’ lift for their body, so there is less stress on the muscles);
- For those individuals whose leverages and body aren’t suited to pulling, frequent pulling will probably drive their DL and induce decent muscle gain, but with a relatively high risk of some kind of injury - because their muscles and joints will be under a fair amount of stress (this is you I think @planetcybertron);
- In both cases, frequent DL training isn’t necessarily going to yield particularly good results, but for different reasons. So, what is likely to work better than frequent pulling? Training the muscles used while pulling just enough to keep technique crisp.
So, for a naturally good deadlifter with helpful leverages, deficit pulls and snatch grip pulls and paused DLs might very well work excellently, because they turn that person into a disadvantaged DLer. Those variations increase the stress on the muscles enough to force them to grow and stresses the body enough to force it to adapt to the imposed disadvantages. Remove those disadvantages and suddenly the individual is an even stronger puller.
However, for someone not built to deadlift a different route is needed. We look at what lets their pull down: is it weak off the floor, at the knees or at lockout (all of these apply to naturally gifted DLers too, of course)? Why? When we know the answer, we attack the weakness with exercises specifically targeted to make it stronger. For instance, my sumo DL is weak off the floor in the first few inches: I get pulled forward and lose position. After doing low box squats for a few weeks, I suddenly found I was much better able to stay in position off the floor because my hips were stronger. Other people have had problems losing the bar forward around knee height, and have found this eliminated by doing heavy DB rows to strengthen their lats. I myself have found heavy paused front squats to help my conventional DL off the floor in the past because my quads were weak. Now if I fail off the floor it tends to be my midsection not being tight or strong enough to hold position.
Make sense? You and I aren’t built to pull. I’m better off than you are, but still need to keep a close eye on how often I pull off the floor with anything over 80 per cent or so. My mate Justin is the opposite. He can pull heavy and often, except his DL hasn’t gone up much if at all in over a year - because almost all he does is pull, squat in wraps and bench. I’m convinced if he started making his DL harder, he’d see a fairly rapid improvement.
7 Likes
No no, i too was just speculating in my analogy, but I def. agree.
Yeah I’m following you all the way. And I would definitely say I’m not fashioned to pull. Mainly just squat and a decent bench press. Which is fine by me, keeps me humble most times. Lol But I would say that fits me, plus or minus some details that probably wouldn’t effect much if at all anything. I think JMaier was spot on with the moderate volume/moderate to high reps.
So @Frank_C
I think Marks point is a good factor to consider too.
1 Like
LOG # 217
7 mile walk
Morning weight is 195ish.
Calories have been at 2,000-2,100. Seem to be okay at that number.
3 Likes
LOG # 218
Pretty much did all the movements with some changes as needed.
except for the hex bar considering I don’t own one, just replaced the deadlift with dumbells and used the tire (edit).
For the sled pull I just fastened one of my tires to waist and pulled it along my backyard.
Box jumps I only did a few because my hip was getting irritated
Sand bags were replaced with my tire.
DB burpees I did with 20s
Hack bar deads with sleds were replaced with another tire round with me carrying my tire overhead instead of near chest level
Tire flips and sled, used second tire as sled.
I made it an extreme point to not bring myself to the point of vomiting, and I knew good and well I’m no where near as speacialized as these guys, or the guy who even prescribed these movements. I actually want to get good at a medley of some sort like this. So I’ll probably do this for conditioning days for the remainder of this week. Maybe next week too. I’ll refer to it as tactical conditioning.
3 Likes
Didnt want to clusterfuck the flame three confession thread lol. You damn cripple.
Anyways, i was thinking since you’re not built for conventional deadlift and want to build up your total, have you tried sumo?
I’ve been pulling sumo ever since I hurt myself. Lol
1 Like