[Corollary]

When it comes to form, I'm one of the "good enough" guys. I think your form is good enough. If there's anything you can do, it's to more forcefully set your back between reps.

But in regards to the thread's original question, my answer is it's not always about what you do, but how you do it. Are you working hard enough? I don't know if it's possible to put into words, so it's probably something only you can answer.

Here's a video that explains the idea much better than I can:

I've never had any physique goals while training, but here's what not training hard enough looks like for me.

This my progress in the high-bar squat (no belt or wraps) while weighing between 170-175 lbs. Numbers are my max around the start of each year.

2009: untrained
2010: 319 lbs
2011: 363 lbs
2012: 374 lbs
2013: Didn't lift
2014: 418 lbs
2015: 418 lbs (injured)
2016: 440 lbs
2017: 473 lbs

As of right now, my numbers are fine, but I don't think it should have taken seven years to get there. Looking back, I made most of my progress over a few key months where I actually trained hard. The rest of the time I was spinning my wheels.

If I would have trained harder, I'm sure I could have made the same progress in less than a year or two instead of seven.

So ask yourself, are you working as hard as you can in the gym? Just showing up and picking up weights isn't enough. You have to push yourself every time you step into the gym.

[Steelex]

Great post. You actually get it. To make progress you have to actually make progress. You can't just go in to lift, but to lift more than you ever did before. Every. Single. Time.

[scorpion]

(02-18-2017 08:22 AM)Steelex Wrote:  

Great post. You actually get it. To make progress you have to actually make progress. You can't just go in to lift, but to lift more than you ever did before. Every. Single. Time.

This is one of those canards that gets repeated all the time, and which unfortunately leads to a lot of guys getting injured. No, you do not need to lift more than you ever did before every time you step foot in the gym. Unless you've been lifting for less than six months, expecting to set PRs every session (or even every month) is a surefire recipe for disappointment and injury. I have no doubt that you don't even actually believe this or practice it yourself. So why are you saying it?

To take it further, too many guys get caught up on just increasing their weights rather than on their overall health, fitness and aesthetics. Now, if you are competing directly in strength sports, then obviously pure strength increase should be your focus. But the vast majority of guys are not. Most guys who lift just want to look better and feel better. They gain nothing by developing an obsession about increasing their squat, bench and deadlift numbers. A focus on one-rep maximal lifting is much more reliant on CNS adaptation and genetics than on developing the hypertrophy that most guys associate with (and desire from) lifting.

Injury prevention should be every lifter's number one priority. Giving guys the idea that their muscles are going to shrivel up and fall off if they aren't constantly setting PRs is doing them a huge disservice. It's bullshit, and frankly it's dangerous. Guys who have been lifting for awhile recognize that it's not realistic, but newbies hear this and end up pushing themselves too hard, too fast and often wind up with an injury that will follow them around for the rest of their life, and which might possibly prevent them from ever reaching their full strength and aesthetic potential.

[CaptainChardonnay]

^Steelex I think is talking about improving upon the last session. This could mean lifting more, shorter rest period, drop sets, etc which I agree with. Ever time you are in the gym you should try to do better then the last time. Experienced guys will know which days they're feeling off and take those days easy but you should always try to progress.

[Steelex]

I'm not talking about one rep maxes. You might get an additional two reps on the first set of 3x12, then next workout you may get an additional two on the second set. There are many many ways to progress, whether it's weight, sets, reps, rest periods, increasing the negative portion of a rep, ect, and you should be focused on improving.

Of course you're going to have plateaus and speed bumps, and you deal with them accordingly. But the general theme of your training should be the slow, consistent trod towards being a strong motherfucker, for whatever exercise and rep range you choose.

[ZeZay]

I push myself every workout, I try to aim for progressive overload while keeping my form good of course. When I was really focused (eating like a pig etc, giving it my all every workout) I could get my squat and deadlift numbers up but my upper body lifts always lagged behind, and stalled a lot. I got fat as well eating like this. Sounds like something that happens on stronglifts 5x5 but I did greyskull LP focusing more on upper body movements. I know I'm able to get stronger because I've seen it many times, for example if I cut down my bodyfat and manage to maintain my deadlift strength I'll be at a 2x bodyweight deadlift which was one of my goals. But I did incline bench today and I struggled with 52.5kg for 3x5, at a bodyweight of 85kg. I can already see the next few weeks, I'll try 55kg, get 3x3, then the workout after that 4,3,3, then I stall at 4,3,3 and have to deload and I'll get back to 52.5kg. Then the same thing happens again. After a month or two I might have a good week and move up in weight. But for the effort I put in that's extremely slow.

The only explanation I can think of is that I never really did standard upper body exercises, but I always subbed them out, because of my shoulder issues. For example bench press for dumbbell bench press, where it's hard to move up weights because dumbbells weight jumps are too big. Last year I added in chinups and now I'm slowly adding in ohp, incline bench and dips while my shoulders are improving in mobility and start to hurt less. Although I'm not going all the way down on incline bench because I feel my arms are too long to go all the way down without shoulder pain. This is actually the same on flat bench, if I go a little bit lower than 90 degrees it doesn't hurt but I can't go any lower than that. However I heard on incline it's not that uncommon to not touch your chest so I do that instead.

I guess I'll try for a few more months if the exercise substitutions were the problem, and if I can progress now that I have changed a few exercises to more standard strength exercises. Otherwise I really don't know, I'll just focus on other aspects of my life, look into boxing/BJJ like scorpion suggested, while going 3x a week for an hour and just doing exercises I find the most fun. People always say, if it doesn't work, switch it up, so I made a new routine, how does it look? :

Day 1 Wednesday

3xf chins
3x5 BB Incline Bench
3x5 Squat (or box squat, depends on my knees)
3x12 Cable Rows
3xf Dips
3x15 Cable Crunch

Day 2 Friday

3x5 OHP
1x5 Deadlift
3x8 Close grip incline bench
3x8 DB row
3x12 Face pulls
3x15 ab exercise

Day 3 Sunday

3xf Chinups
3x5 BB incline bench
3x5 Squat/box squat
3x12 Cable rows
3xf Dips
3xf plank holds

And I'm eating less than before because I got too fat. I'll be eating at maintenance or slightly above.

[Steelex]

Routine is OK. Listen to your body and make tweaks as you go to help you improve more.

Whatever you do, don't quit. Believe it or not making progress is a skill, one you develope over time. Just keep chugging along. Give yourself 10 years of hard ass work and you'll do great.

[Matt3B]

(02-17-2017 03:14 PM)ZeZay Wrote:  

Okay so I was supposed to deadlift today but we had sprints at PE yesterday at school. My legs were really sore but since I wanted to stick to the program I did some lower weight deadlifts but with more reps and more sets. This is 120kg and I was on my last set of 3x9. Was pretty heavy not gonna lie, because I usually only do 1x5.

I know it's a bit harder to tell because I blur my face, I can send the real video via pm if it's hard to see. My lower back is straight but my shoulders sometimes go forward a little bit, I noticed. In my opinion it doesn't look that bad, or at least not bad enough to be injury provoking or preventing me from gaining strength. I could be wrong though.

Agreed, it's a bit difficult to see with the blur and I think fatigue is playing a part. Your shoulders do hunch forward, and I think they do it from the start but the blur is in the way. You really need to lock them back a bit but in general, your lower back is straight and not bent forward too which is good.

Try taking your time as you do the exercise instead of snapping up as fast as you can - I've never agreed with the idea of snapping the movement quickly. I was taught this originally but have had much better success by slowing the movements down and really engaging the correct muscles.

I'm fully in agreement with Scorpion too. People really need to make good form their priority. The amount of guys I see going to the gym and lifting heavier weights than they can handle with terrible form is too high. People need to leave their egos in the changing room and do things correctly.

Back to the original topic, I really think you just need to add a few more years to your life and you'll see some good growth. Just be consistent, every week, as you have been. I wish I had started at your age!

Sort your diet out and you'll be good mate.

[redbeard]

Deadlift form looks alright but your arms are between your legs. Can someone PM the mods? I thought women weren't allowed on this forum?

[Steelex]

Ahahaha. There are like 3 female powerlifters at my gym who deadlift just like that.

[Kieran]

Upper back rounding is fine on deads (and preferable). You maintain a neutral spine on most of the reps but I saw it round slightly on the descent on a few reps too - watch out for this. There's a member here that will be able to give you better pointers than me though who is seriously into powerlifting, forget his name now.

[ZeZay]

Last gym session I realised something.

After a few weeks of barbell bench pressing with stopping at 90 degrees, I noticed I still have the same kind of shoulder discomfort I had since the start of this thread. I'm starting to think this is the cause for my slow progress as well. Because despite never focusing on my legs I was still able to make substantial gains on that.

I thought my shoulders were mostly fixed and that it was going a lot better, but I realised I kind of pushed through the discomfort more because of my lack of progress. I stopped training for 3 months and did only physio and swimming, and then after that I started with calisthenics. Bodyweight exercises still strained my shoulders a bit, however because I was already rehabbing for 3 months I thought the discomfort probably just belonged to the exercise (for example, pushups still work out your shoulders) and the rest of it was genetic. I was still gaining a bit of strength as well so I thought that it was just normal to have that slight discomfort, especially after those 3 months i kind of thought ''if this rehabbing won't fix it nothing will''.

I'm now starting to realise maybe that the discomfort I trained through is not normal, after looking at all my symptoms. I find it really hard to tell however because I’ve never known any better, I’ve always trained with this discomfort, and mostly assumed it belonged to the exercises. It’s not sharp or acute pain. I actually have it with a lot of back exercises as well, like cable rows or barbell rows, and even face pulls slightly.

I have had shoulder issues for as long as I can remember out of the gym as well. I don't put a second thought to it anymore but I realised maybe it has something to do with it. My shoulders for example get pretty tired when holding the steering wheel in the car, or when blow drying my hair after a few seconds I have to stop blow drying to let my shoulder rest, before starting again. Otherwise it starts to burn. I believe if I can't even hold a blow dryer for a little while above my head I can't expect to overhead press or chinup effectively.
And bench pressing with a barbell with full rom is out of the question. Even with dumbbells I have discomfort when going low and I thought dips were doable but they seem to worsen the issues.

However because I've always had the discomfort I'm not sure if it's really an injury or if it's just something genetic that I have to find a way to work around. Or if it is even fixable, because I have had it for as long as I can remember. It might just be due to my narrow shoulders and I should live with never being able to bench press with full rom. Shouldn't everyone be able to bench press though? I can't really do dips or dumbbell bench either so there isn't much left. I thought I could but being honest with myself and the discomfort I feel it's probably not right.

I'm willing to give up a whole year if it means I can do all exercises discomfort free after the year. But I'm afraid that after trying to fix it for so long, the problems will still come back, and I have to find a way to work around it anyway. In that case I was thinking of picking up a slingshot by mark bell.

This is because I've already worked a lot on shoulder mobility, strengthened my rotator cuffs, swimmed and followed yoga youtube videos. My posture is still pretty bad though.

I went to a different doctor this time and he referred me to an ostheopath next week, to see if he can find out what the problem is. I'm a bit skeptical about it but might as well try.

I know this is not a forum for medical advice, but my question is does this sound normal, because it's just discomfort and not acute pain? And keeping in mind that I have narrow shoulders and long arms. I don't want to spend a lot of time with doctors and end up not being able to fix the issue anyway. After the X-ray showed nothing my doctor just told me do what you want with lifting, you're still young you can take a beating. X-rays don't show everything that can be wrong though.

Or is there definitely something wrong that I should spend my time fully correcting and I should not worry about lifting weights for now? I might ask for an MRI in that case, even though they cost a lot.

[Steelex]

Dude, long arms and narrow shoulders are a recipe for shoulder pain, especially at a low body weight.

While you can go to a doctor, don't be surprised if they don't find anything. Or just tell you it's tendonitis. Thats one of the shitty things about sports injuries, they can be very difficult to diagnose.

For what it's worth, at 6'2" I stop the bar 2 inches above my chest due to shoulder pain. Hasn't killed my gains.

[ZeZay]

(03-04-2017 07:11 PM)Steelex Wrote:  

Dude, long arms and narrow shoulders are a recipe for shoulder pain, especially at a low body weight.

While you can go to a doctor, don't be surprised if they don't find anything. Or just tell you it's tendonitis. Thats one of the shitty things about sports injuries, they can be very difficult to diagnose.

For what it's worth, at 6'2" I stop the bar 2 inches above my chest due to shoulder pain. Hasn't killed my gains.

Thank you, I wish I could rep you more than once.

I'll keep trying with doctors, otherwise I'll have to find some alternatives, maybe doing chinups on rings will put less discomfort on my shoulders.

I always felt guilty when not touching my chest with the bar, glad to know you can still make great gains that way.

[Steelex]

Put it this way, I didn't start really progressing on bench till I used the smaller range of motion.

Try this, decrease the load on the bar and do a very slow controlled negative (4-5 seconds) for each rep, stopping 3 inches above the chest, pausing for a full second, then back up. Try and stay out of the acute pain zone.

I have a feeling this might help build up the musculature around the chest and shoulder without causing too much pain.

[ZeZay]

(03-04-2017 07:48 PM)Steelex Wrote:  

Put it this way, I didn't start really progressing on bench till I used the smaller range of motion.

Try this, decrease the load on the bar and do a very slow controlled negative (4-5 seconds) for each rep, stopping 3 inches above the chest, pausing for a full second, then back up. Try and stay out of the acute pain zone.

I have a feeling this might help build up the musculature around the chest and shoulder without causing too much pain.

I just tried your suggestion, there was still a bit of strain that felt unnatural on my shoulders, despite not going down all the way. I could finish my sets but it didn't really feel that good.

I'm strongly considering picking up a slingshot (by mark bell), does anyone have any experience with this? It helps you overload on exercises like bench, pushups and dips but it's main purpose was to be able to train pain and injury free. If I can do dips pushups and bench press pain free with the slingshot I could train way more effectively.

[Rudius]

There's a couple of guys on YouTube on the channel "Twin Muscle Workout". Just search their channel for any answers you need. They have an answer for everything.

[rudebwoy]

@Zezay - I hurt my shoulders years ago (decade) doing heavy seated shoulder presses with the big barbell and heavy weight.

My shoulder has never fully healed and will always be one of those nagging injuries.

I now do the exercise with 25llbs a side for 12 reps, it gives me a good pump.

You are young and you need to let your body heal, or try and work around it.