Lifting Update

So I've started squatting using a bungee cord to help signal to me that I've gone low enough in my lift. I back up...hold on a second.

 If you're interested in squatting I would give a few tips.

One when you get under the bar flex your neck muscles by kinda scrunching upwards your shoulders. This form seems to take A LOT of pressure off of my neck. I had always wondered how those huge dudes were able to do so much weight and with that one simple step it makes way more sense, is way more comfortable, and you kinda feel huge honestly. It feels like your this behemoth carrying a huge log or something impressively heavy though this may not be the case while you’re making your initial big gains/progress, but that doesn’t really matter as long as you have proper safe form.

Next step is to always un-rack and then re-rack the weight facing into the back of the rack. Maybe people already know this and have been doing it for years, but I hadn’t been and I’ve lifted weights every so often. This way you can properly do step one and two so that when you put the weight back you don’t EVER miss the racking position. Not that I ever have and if I did it would all just fall to the safety cross bars, but hey if we can avoid it then why not ya know? Now back to where I left off.

 After un-racking I step back and go slowly down till I feel the bungee hitting my leg/buttucks. I’ll have to somehow get the video my brother has of me doing it on his ipod on here sometime. I may have mentioned this previously, but when squatting your going to want to squat all the way down to where your leg is ideally just below parallel. This works the full quad and hammy, which is what you want. If you don’t go this low, stop it you lazy fake sack of weight lifting woosiness. This is part of my real world preparation, like for reals. If something is stuck and I need to lift it and I can only lift it if it allows my leg to already be three quarters of the way extended then I’d be all set up to about 250 lbs. If it any less than that I’d be totally hosed hence why I’m going so low into my squats.

 Other “form” notes. When grasping the bar, make sure your wrist is unbroken. This will help with proper alignment I find. Another note is to have your legs at about shoulder length apart and feet slightly pointing outwards.

 I used to use a belt cause I was afraid of hurting myself again, but have stopped so that I can build up my core muscles. This last squat session saw me do 165*7 as my first rep set, which equates to a one time equivalent of 198, a 1% increase on the year or two pound increase from my first lift this year of doing 185*3 for a one time equivalent of 196. I assume I’ll make some good gains though here in the coming weeks now that my form is much better and my strength increases legit.

 My bench…funny lil story. Monday when I lifted I knocked out my first two sets and thought they were really easy, which I was excited about. Then I went to adjust the weight for the final/third set and realized I was doing 5 lbs less than I should’ve been the whole time for each set.

I finished out the set then cause it was too late to start over with my muscles being sapped mostly already. Come yesterday though, boom, I was all set and knocked out all three sets at the proper weight starting at 160*7. Nice. That has my bench up on the year 45 lbs, 85% of goal, 31% increase from my first go at it at a laughable/pathetic 135*4 on 1/5/13. There you have it.

 I also printed out some exercise routines for my arms so that ought to help me one, do them and two not get too bored doing them.