It’s low-ish bar but my cues and styles lend themselves to a relatively upright squat like “upright” is literally my cue
Gotcha. For what its worth, my high bar squat is much better technically, and a much prettier squat (than my low bar). I also like doing it a lot more. However I still have to switch to low bar for 1-2 training cycles before a comp because its worth at least 20-30kg in top set performance.
How long until your gym nemesis head to head? The question I actually came to ask before I got sucked into watching your videos. Damn clickbait tights.
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Also known as Jap grip by some, if that helps
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That’s a big difference. Did you actually max out your high bar?
At least June. Probs July because we are procrastinators
Here i was thinking it was imminent? Was it supposed to be sooner at some point? I feel like a while ago we were counting down to a comp.
Yea tested both properly, actually had been training high bar more. Ultimately, though its less comfortable and I wouldn’t want to train it year round, mechanically I’m just much, much stronger 1RM with low bar, though weirdly better for reps sub 75% with high bar, I guess efficiency.
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U weird bro
I didn’t think it was that unusual for low bar to be the stronger lift? Other than Oly lifters who spend all year doing their cleans and snatches training their T extension I thought it was pretty unanimous.
Nah dis
oh gtocha. I think i fatigue with low bar in the stabilisers rather than the main lifting muscles and lose tightness.
Interesting article I just read on low bar vs high bar you might like
Though the above article is interesting, its not the one I meant to link.
See below for proper low vs high bar discussion
A dangerous game sir
I’ll give the article a read tomoz. Sleep time now
Yeah, it seems odd that they would have you do another 8 week cycle of the same exact thing. Your meet is when exactly, 6 months or something? If the meet is too far away it doesn’t make sense to be in full meet prep mode so you have to do something in the mean time but peaking and testing every 2 months doesn’t make sense to me at all. If you look at what Chad Wesley Smith and Mike Israetel (who I mention because this is the JTS AI program, right?) say to do is alternate between strength and hypertrophy/volume phases until you are approaching a meet and then focus on strength for a bit and peak. That seems like a much better approach than constantly testing.
Anyway, maybe there’s a method to the madness or something but I don’t like the sound of it. This kind of thing is often the sort of issues you run into with these non-customized online coaching things, I knew a guy who was on RTS coaching and unless you paid extra for a custom program (which he eventually did) you get thrown into a group where everyone does the same program and same volume. They did 1rm tests every few months too, but not every 8 weeks. The way the thing was run and based on what I saw in other people’s training logs I was wondering if the whole point was to test various strategies and gather data, I think that is part of the reason the RTS online training log is free too.
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Yeah not encouraging tbh.
“Not as responsive and complex a system as all the fancy marketing would have one believe” would be the line in my thoughts/review.
If I don’t get a proper response I’ll cancel the subscription and move on. Now that I think of it at worst I’d have got:
a good template/s (real good actually I like a lot about it like the split between lifts and variations) to play with
a better idea of my training volume landmarks and actual concrete numbers on that
a great idea in fatigue levels/rating, autoregulation on the fly and where fatigue should be/feel in general and as one goes through a cycle
And much more. A learning growing experience.
Not how I planned to go forwards exactly (was thinking I’d ride AI all the way into the meet) but not too mad at all whatever happens
Edit: also a half decent peak for the first time ever (unfortunately complicated by illness but I learnt from that too)
Unrelated ish but while I have you here:
Could I get a quick run down on your opion of High Bar vs SSB Squats?
For a hypertrophy/volumey work. Answer is probably both and i probs will.
What I’m looking to work on:
It’s not like a crazy difference between the two, the SSB pulls you forward which teaches you to stay upright more but the movement is pretty similar. I like the SSB because too much squatting with a straight bar, and worse if it’s low bar, tends to fuck with my shoulders and arms after a while.
As far as back strength and leg strength (quads specifically if we are talking about squats), upper back strength can be more of a limiting factor with SSB squats so if you are struggling to keep your back from rounding you won’t be able to handle as much weight (or total volume) which will limit how much your quads get out of it. High bar squats are obviously good for the quads but if your upper back is a weak point they won’t do much to fix it. I find that SSB squats are great for my quads but I have been doing them on and off for a while and my upper back is not a weak point.
If you really want to build up your upper back then high rep SSB squats (like 6-10 reps) are great for that. Lately I’m doing some upper back good mornings because I started using a slightly higher bar position (I guess it’s in the middle of high bar and low bar) and I don’t want my upper back to become a limiting factor, but that’s more like preventive medicine than anything.
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Quads is the “weak point” for me I guess ir at least the limiting factor.
Upper back is secondary just cos I wanna be tighter this time around I only lost upper back tightness at 95+ 1RM
Also welcome to hybrid bar master race
This AI coaching thing sounds like an online version of the templates they sell at JTS. The biggest problem that I see is that it’s just looking at the short term and not taking your actual plan into account, as in competing in the summer (or is that winter in Australia?).
If you ask me, right now you would do well to focus mostly on hypertrophy for maybe 2 months or so, adding a bit of muscle will obviously help and you would improve work capacity too which would pay off later. A 3-4 month cycle of actual meet prep seems to be ideal for most people and that would fit right into this timeframe. It seems odd to me that JTS AI coaching doesn’t really follow the stuff that Chad talks about in his videos, books, and articles. I’m guessing that they do it like this because most of the people looking for online coaching just want some quick results and end up dropping out after a couple months, this is why TSA and some other coaching services have a big startup fee.
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Leg press wouldn’t hurt either, or hack squats. It all depends on what you are doing in each workout and the overall setup but sometimes doing stuff that requires no technique is good because you can get some decent work in once you’re already fatigued.
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Bit early to write it off. It does seem to have some issues but many guys have experienced good gains with it I think it’s been out long enough for some guys to have been doing a year of it. Maybe I’m an outlier or glitch in the system maybe these guys woulda progressed on anything reasonable I dunno
No denying it’s good money and business for these guys though. Can’t blame them for trying to make a living like everybody else
How does the price compare to customized coaching? I’m pretty sure that would get you better results, and also give you a long term plan that makes more sense.