AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

I was doing my squats a moment ago. The last rep of the second work set, I fell over backwards on the way back up. The couple of steps backward ran me into the cable machine, that I hit hard enough to scoot several inches across the floor. I managed to tweak my left knee and lower back, and I’m pretty banged up from all the sticky-outy bits of the cable machine.

Well, sheeit.

I suspect the main problem is lack of ankle flexion means my heels aren’t on the floor near the bottom of the squat. I’ve tried a board, but that didn’t work all that well - it had a tendency to scoot, and it took time to adjust my position on it.

It looks like some squat shoes just moved up several places on the "more stuff" list. I wonder how many pair I will have to mail back before I find some that fit.

In the meantime, I’ll start squatting inside the cage.

On the other hand, I finished the last work set without any problems. Best to do it before the soreness sets in.

The safety squat bar’s handgrip position and my shoulder problems mean my elbows don’t want to go down between my knees to get a parallel squat. After fighting that for a while, I noticed that my elbows naturally line up with my knees when using the SSB, it’s reasonably close to parallel. And the main part is, elbow-to-knee is absolutely repeatable.

I’m also using the "sumo" squat form. It’s way more comfortable and stable, and doesn’t leave me with shooting pains in the hips.

Glad you’re ok. Also glad you’re going to use the cage for what it is meant for.

Be sure to have your pins or straps in place to catch the bar if you get stuck at the bottom or lose balance. Not using them is a bit like not wearing a seatbelt in a car. They’re totally unnecessary until the one time when they save you.

Damn, glad it wasn’t a disaster. Gym accidents at our age don’t end well long term.

I didn’t realize you were squatting outside the rack but I agree on the pin settings, real good insurance once you get in the rack.
You’ll get used to it and be sure to start with bar on the pins in front of you so you can just step forward and set the bar down when you’re done.

I picked up a pair of Adidas Powerlift 5 shoes. They either work real well or I think they do, so either way, I get some benefit from them.
Got them on Amazon so returns are not an issue until you get it right.

I had the bench press in mind when I bought the cage. Power rack. Whatever. I never much thought about squatting in it. I’m pretty sure all the videos I’ve seen, they used a squat stand or the front of a cage, so it was "monkey see, monkey do."

I rarely see anyone squatting inside the rack when looking at videos online, no idea what the hell is going on with that so it’s not like you’re being a knucklehead or anything.

Either they have spotters just out of sight or they already know the weight won’t be an issue.

In my much younger days I benched without any stands a few times and had to roll the bar down my chest and over my belly to get out from under it. Not pretty.

I took a long look at my age and condition, considered things for a while, and decided to dump the "linear progression" concept. That’s what Starting Strength, Strong5x5, and others are based on. I love the idea of quantifiable progress, but I think I would get a better return from concentrating on mobility work.

I’m not going to stop the basic lifts - I’m just going to dial them back a bunch to "moderately difficult" and start increasing the reps. Hopefully that will help with the bone spur problems.

My workout pattern has been "A, B, C" for the last couple of months. Some are light and I do them every workout; every day, preferably. Heavy work is theoretically every fifth day, to allow for more recovery time.

This morning’s workout: (not counting warm-ups) [that’s workout "A"]

squats: 4x5 (safety squat bar, in rack)
deadlifts: 3x5 (bar)
bench press: 4x5 (in rack)
- also sessions on the bench for spinal kyphosis correction and hip flexor stretching

lateral pull-downs: 3x10 (cable machine)
stiff-arm pushdown: 3x10 (cable machine)
Arnold presses: 3x10 (dumbbells)
anterior raises: 3x10 (dumbbells)
lateral raises: 3x10 (dumbbells)
EZ curl: 5x5
supra/infra spinatus twists: 4x10 (bands)
hands: 5x20 (gripper)

juggle: 2x20 (left, right hand, 2 balls. Got tired of chasing dropped balls)
bicycle: somewhere around 8 miles (forgot to set trip counter)

I’ve been twiddling the workouts to try to minimize hitting the same muscles the same day for heavy work.

I think your new approach is great. You might even consider going for more reps with lighter weight and see how that does you, at least as an experiment.

For pretty much my whole life from early teenage years I used to be a progressive load, lower rep evangelist, and with a primary focus on the power lifts. I got really strong, but as I got into my 40s it seemed like the only time my body felt really good was when I was warmed up and lifting. The rest of the time I was limping around, or at least creaking and crackling.

I’ve left that all behind and now I do lighter weights, high reps (15-30—a Rippetoe deadly sin!!!), lots of slow reps, supersets, burnout sets, isolation work, etc. I haven’t felt this good or been this muscular since I was in my late 20s. Plus my joints are about as good as they can be after decades of abuse.

I think after the mid 40’s, while the main goal of weight training can be health, fitness and appearance, the main focus of weight training should primarily be not to get injured.

I’ll adjust the weight and reps as I go along.

That’s one advantage I have. Other than my knees, which started going bad in my early 20s, my joints are pretty low-mileage.

We’ve come from different angles, but it looks like we’ve reached the same conclusion. Though given your greater experience, your view is probably more valid than mine.

"Workout B" today. 3h 30m.

squats - skipped
deadlifts - skipped
- I had planned to do light lifts every day, but the right knee was being a bit dodgy, probably due to the long bicycle ride yesterday.

supra- and infra- spinatus with bands, 3x20
head harness for neck muscles, 3x10 (40#) and 2x5 (80#)
juggle
Arnold presses, 4x10

butterflies, 3x20
bench press, 4x10
10m neck straightening on bench
10m hip flexor stretch on bench
- I normally do 5x20 butterflies every day, but since I was using the bench for the spinal kyphosis exercises anyway, I substituted some lifts with the bare Swiss bar.

Zottman curls, 5x5
- I had been doing EZ-bar curls every day. After reading that different types of curls load the arms differently, I’m now alternating curl types. I’ll probably wind up with light/high rep sets split between two types of curls per day.

overhead press, 5x5
- just 22#, but the right shoulder is still improving.

hangs/chinups - failed
- the bone spur that causes problems witht the overhead press is *much* worse when lifting my arms to a monkey hang or chin-up.

hand exerciser/gripper, 5x20

an hour of yard work, cutting the neighbors’ damned thorn bushes that grow through the fence. Don’t laugh, the hedge nippers work muscles the cable machine can’t seem to find.

Workout "C".

supra- and infra- spinatus with bands, 3x20
head harness for neck muscles, 3x10 (40#). Skipped 80# reps today
juggle
Arnold presses, 4x10
butterflies, 5x20
overhead press, 5x5

EZ-bar curls, 5x5
concentration curls, 5x5

squat, SSB, 3x5 (seemed easy today)
deadlift, 3x5

cable machine:
1-hand pullbacks, 3x10
1-hand pushbacks, 3x10
diagonal pulldown, 3x10
diagonal pushdown, 3x10
2-hand pullback, 3x10
face pull, 3x10
cable twist (lower back/hips) 3x10
stiff-arm pushdown, 3x10

I also got a 6-foot 1x10 board and sanded a nice radius on all the corners. I can use that in bed instead of on the bench; that will give me more time to work on the spinal kyphosis thing.

Wow. You do a lot of sets per session-I just counted 60 working sets for workout C. I’m impressed. How long are you typically in the gym?

Two to four hours, depending on rests and messing around on the computer. Not counting biking, walking, and using some of the machines at the gym; primarily the hip adduction and rowing machines and treadmill.

I’m retired, so I have the time. Getting better is my primary activity nowadays. My main problem is avoiding doing too much.

Keep an eye on that, recovery time gets more important every year.

Yeah, that’s where I got into trouble last year. The current program spreads stuff out so I get two days of rest between workouts, but I will have to make some more adjustments as I see how things develop.

A lot of the work is basically corrective, working on the bone spurs. I’ve made excellent progress (as far as I’m concerned!) with that, so I will probably reduce or eliminate some of it. For example, I’ve been doing sixty or a hundred light reps of butterflies almost every day, except on days when I bench press. Soon I’ll be able drop the butterflies entirely and keep the bench. As long as I bench regularly, I expect the troublesome bone spur won’t grow back again, like it did last time.

Friday was a scheduled rest day.

Saturday was supposed to be an "A" workout day, but I was downtown in the state capitol when Mrs. Andy’s car had a mechanical failure. Best as I can tell, the right front CV joint exploded. Fortunately I was able to get the car out of the intersection and into a No Parking zone. Then came the hassle of getting a tow. The towing company kept wanting me to send them GPS coordinates. Uh, hello? No such thing on a flip phone. They had to call back several times for me to guide them in manually. Apparently looking up the intersection on an online map was too difficult. I was at the intersection of two of the major streets in the city; it would be the equivalent of being in Los Angeles and the driver couldn’t find the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.

Dropped the car off at the mechanic’s shop, got home, and felt pretty rough. Wound up sleeping most of the rest of the day.

Sunday - today - I still felt pretty rough. Some kind of flu, I guess. I’m feeling mostly okay now. It has been… maybe a year and a half since the last time I had a case of the crud.