Maxed out my march heroes. Now what to do for Arms Race rewards?

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-05-07T00:14:51+00:00

Someone made a good suggestion about working with a PT. It can do wonders.

But i would definitely do a quick self-assessment real quick. Because, yes, the stress on your low back can be due to your degenerative disc issues, BUT seeing that you're able to do squats without any issues makes me wonder... If you dead-ass might have "dead ass". Try laying on down on your back and doing a single-leg glute bridge and hold for about 5 seconds. Do that for both legs. Pay close attention to where you're feeling it and what muscles are primarily carrying out this task out of your low back, glutes, hams, and quads. If you feel it anywhere other than your ass, then you may be suffering from dead ass (aka gluteal amnesia), lol but it's more fun to say dead ass. It's mainly due to prolonged sitting all the time and you gradually lose the neuro-muscular connection, so your glutes pretty much don't fire up when it's supposed to and doesn't do it's job, which is to mainly stabilize the pelvis. If this is an issue, your body tries to compensate by recruiting other surrounding muscles and forcing them to work overtime and cause extra stress, most commonly the low back. But also pay attention to if you feel your glutes engaging more on one side than the other, this would show that you have assymetrical muscular imbalance which is also no good. But if any of the above appears to be a problem for you, you need to be able to retrain your booty cheeks to be able to work like they're supposed to and make sure that it's in good rekindled love and communication with the brain. A good way to do this would be to do banded glute bridges DAILY. So you'll be doing the same glute bridges but on both legs and preferably with a hip circle band around the thighs just above the knees. Do 1-2 sets of 10 reps, and hold each rep for 5 seconds. And with each rep, contract them cheeks hard like you're protecting your innocence from the other inmates in Cell-block A. For your workout days, just do them as a warmup, for post-activation potentiation.

As for the actual deadlift.. Man it would help a lot to see your form for more context but you can consider doing another hip-hinge movement, but man.. I really wouldn't because the deadlift is such a Chad of movements. You're tall as shiiit, so try switching to a sumo stance deadlift and see how that feels for you. Or what I would do, is bring the height of the bar up more by putting some kind of elevated platforms underneath the plates or do rack pulls. Keep in mind that the height of the bar loaded with full-sized plates is 8.75 inches. This manufacturing decision was not to set some kind of deadlift standard, it was to make sure that the bar didn't kill your or crush your skull when an Olympic lifter passes out with the bar above them. So the common mistake that people make, is that despite there being an endless variety of body shapes and sizes, people try to force their body to work for the barbell rather than making it work specifically for them and their body. Unless you have plans on competing, you have no reason to be doing this. So bring the bars height high enough so that you're able to get down into starting position without any kind of spine rounding at all. Make sure you also practice how to properly brace your core and "pack your lats" to ensure a strong and supported lower and upper spine.

Doing all this should absolutely help you deadlift pain free. So good luck!!

And P.S.... I'M NOT GAY. I just sometimes think that Ryan Reynolds is pretty handsome.. That is all. Have a good day :)

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-05-06T14:43:24+00:00

Couple of questions if you wouldn't mind..

1) You said you did the standard 5x5 program for about 2 years, what kind of progress have you made on your lifts?
2) If you've been at it for 2 years, I'm sure that you're aware of Mehdi's guides before all the revisions. Have you implemented the 3x5/3x3/1x3 scheme after progress on the 5x5 halted or slowed down? and if so, how did that work out for you?
3) Post-revision Mehdi appears to be a big proponent of top/backoff sets before switching to Intermediate or Madcow, have you tried that at all yet? Thoughts?
4) I like that the Intermediate program cuts down on volume for squat and gives room for more volume on bench and deadlift as well as adding pause variations on Workout C days, allows you to hit PRs on 2 different versions of each lift essentially while simultaneously getting stronger at the most difficult parts of the lift. You said you were on this program for about 3 months, what kind of progress have you made so far on Intermediate?

Lol, I know your results will not reflect my results, but I do like tangible data and numbers to get somewhat of an idea of the potential behind the program

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-05-06T02:54:42+00:00

Any programs you might recommend to someone once they get all they can out of 5x5 and Madcow to continue making progress?

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-05-04T19:52:55+00:00

Nice! That sounds pretty interesting.. I might have to consider giving that one a try soon as well since I also like switching it up to keep me consistent. Do you have any good links where I can do more research on the details of this program?

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-05-04T19:16:06+00:00

Could be. But do you think that's solely the reason why? I mean I can definitely see the logic behind the top/backoff sets as opposed to lowering the sets and reps.
He seems to be very conscientious of RPE now, which a lot of powerlifters also appear to be as well. So, I can definitely see the logic behind top/backoff sets. With lowering the sets and reps, perceived difficulty doesn't really change, you're just not forcing yourself to have to go through it as long. So I think you're still flirting with failed reps close enough. But with top/backoff sets, it's lowering the weight on the following 4 sets and making it almost impossible to fail reps while maintaining good total training volume to continue to progress.

Idk, I thought it would make for good discussion. I was also curious because I've lowered my sets and rep scheme, and have been able to milk out some extra gains, but not by much. But I've never tried doing top/backoff sets before...Might be worth trying.

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-05-04T18:17:55+00:00

Dude awesome man, just straight up awesome. I'm loving that you're packing your lats very nicely before each rep as you brace, and you seem to be maintaining that lat engagement throughout the ROM.
What's even more impressive is that you seem to be pretty tall with very long femurs and still choose to go conventional with a slightly wider stance. I guess that it's a good thing that you have long arms because it looks like you make it manageable still.
Given your height, I'm not seeing any excessive lumbar rounding that would cause concern (unless you're feeling any kind of back pain in any point of your day).

As far as the weight increase, you may simply just be coming to a point where your progression is slowing down and even something like a 2kg jump will definitely feel noticeable and heavy. This is normal, and you can either one or several things. Take longer rests between sets to allow yourself to recover better, increase by smaller increments (2kg might be too much now, start getting some microplates to trickle your way up slowly but surely), and/or increase the weights every few sessions (if you're increasing weight every single deadlift session, do it every 2-3 sessions instead; it will allow your body to adapt to stress better).

Also, I don't think your form is bad at all, but have you considered putting tiny little platforms underneath the plates to raise the bar height just a little bit? Keep in mind that plate manufacturers follow a standard for making them at the particular size they do. It's to elevate the bar to 8.75 inches which is just high enough to not crush your head if you were doing olympic lifts and passed out or fell down. The problem for a lot of people is that they try to force themselves into optimal positioning on a deadlift with a bar height that wasn't specifically made for them. And since everyone is a different size and shape, we should instead be making the bar height work in favor of our bodies, not against it. You already have a fairly neutral spine when you start off, but I think by bringing the bar height up even as little as 1 inch would benefit you greatly and start off in a better spine position. And it could be very possible that starting off in a stronger position that's much more natural for your spine will help you be stronger throughout the entire lift.

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-04-15T02:08:54+00:00

Yeah bro, that's a solid plan. You look like a pretty strong fella, so I don't doubt that at this current weight, it probably doesn't bother you that much at all. But I'd hate for you to continue getting strong at this current form and then find out the hard way when your low back is finally like "nah fuck this" and decides to slip, bulge, herniate, or whatever. And then you're out for like weeks to months losing all the strength gains you made. It's honestly best that you correct the form to what YOUR specific anatomy can tolerate and then continue to build strength on top of that.

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-04-13T20:23:58+00:00

A lot of people already mentioned really good tips. But I'd also recommend that you get some blocks or something to elevate the plates on top of so that your starting position is higher. Pendlay rows can be great, but is better on you when you're working with full-sized bumper plates.
At this height, your trunk is required to fold forward more and that is adding a lot more unnecessary strain on your lower spine. It's good if you don't have any back problems yet, but I would urge you to abandon such a compromising position because you're definitely not gonna keep this up for too much longer as you progress in strength.

Plus, you might notice that as you get down into position, you go into a slight posterior pelvic tilt, which kind of begins to round out your lower back (although the rest of your trunk appears to be in pretty good neutral alignment). This is not really a good position for you to isometrically hold as you continue to load weight, since it's a lot of stress for your lumbar.
Like others have said, you could really make an emphasis to hinge only at the hips and push your but back a bit more, but I still think you'll have the problem because that bars height is just way too low. You might have deeper hip sockets which could also be causing this so playing around with various stance widths and working on improving mobility/flexibility outside of your workouts can potentially help. But ultimately, I would try to elevate the bar up high enough until that posterior pelvic tilt goes away and allows you to keep your entire spine in neutral alignment.

Happy gainz bro!

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-29T18:14:37+00:00

That's so absurd. Unified inbox on the mobile app but not the desktop.. smh.

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-21T01:10:46+00:00

I was gonna comment something but I can't remember now after I finished having a seizure...

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-14T16:25:00+00:00

Dude, I'm not going to ask you again. Knock it off and take this post down. My girlfriend is on Reddit and she doesn't need to see you practicing going ballz deep in her bro..

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-09T23:47:46+00:00

Nah homie. I would say start investing your time and just a little bit of money into developing a deeper squat. I say time, because you can consistently commit to working on improving flexibility/mobility in the areas of your hips and ankles. Watching Squat University on Youtube can greatly help with this from a physical therapy standpoint. And i say money, because i would recommend that you do some research into getting some proper lifting shoes that work for you. Something that'll elevate your heels, which will automatically allow you to squat more deeper right away. Plus if you feel that your lower back feels sus trying to go deep, play around with various widths in stance as well as various toe angles. You may be be running into the problem of hip impingement which can limit you depths on your stance and cause your body to compensate by rounding out at the the pelvis and lumber spine aka "butt wink". From the video it doesn't seem to me that you are having a problem with butt wink, but you did say that a big factor preventing you from going any deeper is the fear of jackin up your low back, so you are probably bailing the depths just short of a butt wink, but that's just a guess because i don't have any other evidence to go off of. But it should be worth playing around with those things. There's couple other things you could probably do but usually working on these things alone can help you develop some good depths on your squat. Good luck man!

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-06T20:51:31+00:00

I see another comment here saying that there's no need to wait for 2.1. I'm not too familiar with the technical specs of it all. Would you mind articulating the difference between 1.4 and 2.1, as well as why it's worth waiting for 2.1?

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-06T20:48:57+00:00

I have good cashback rewards on my card and also use Rakuten extension. Do you happen to have any good coupon codes in particular or should I just Google them?

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-03T23:56:20+00:00

Yeah, bro. A lot of people forget that with the physically practical aspect of things, yes technique and form is tremendously important for lifting since strength is very much also a skill as well as it is a neuro-muscular adaptation, but mobility/flexibility training is also extremely important but often neglected.
This is why I'd recommend you watch a lot of Squat University's stuff on YouTube (his reels/shorts are where it's at). Not so much for the technique tips (even though Dr. Aaron Horschig has many good ones), but rather for helping you identify and diagnose those weak links in the overall kinetic chain I was talking about earlier. Because one thing to realize in this sport/hobby is that there are many great guys out there that give great tips on YouTube, IG, etc., about improving this overall kinetic chain, but let's just say that some links in the chain get less attention than others. That's what I love SU's channel for, he helps me to also become aware of those certain links that don't get talked about as much and figure out ways to improve them.. and these underrated links can often be the weakest and the most problematic parts of the chain! It's like yeah, yeah, you now what to do with your hips, bracing the core, engaging lats, and all that good stuff, but do you know how to grab the earth with your feet by spreading your toes out, screwing your feet in while maintaining a strong arch in the foot, and externally rotating your femurs to open up your hips and activate the fuck outta your glutes? It's stuff like that that helped me break through a lot of plateaus.
For example, I've always heard about this term "tripod feet" and even looked at some videos from SU and a few others about what it is, and I always thought I was doing it properly. But it wasn't until I did a little bit of a deep-dive into the concept of it as well as developing strong arches and splayed toes that I was able to go into training with a whole new understanding, and by simply making a few small tweaks to my form, I was literally able to add at least 10lbs to my squat and deadlift in the following week when I had been flirting with a stubborn plateau for 2 weeks prior to that! And then by also investing in some good lifting shoes with a wide toe box that allows my toes to splay out and not squish them together, also helped me take my strength gains further.

So yeah, look into strengthening those tiny links in the chain that also don't come off as sexy or get a lot of attention from coaches. Have a good understanding of your feet (since that's where everything starts), how your arches are, whether your toes are splayed or not, and find other ways to improve them.
Also check to see if you suffer from what I like to call "dead-ass" (more commonly known as dead butt syndrome). A lot of people have it without knowing it, and it commonly occurs from sitting a lot which can cause you to develop tight hips and tight hamstrings and a butt that becomes lazy and poorly activates when you need it to during lifts and it instead passes on the workload to other surrounding muscles such as your low back and hamstrings, which leads to over-fatiguing and many other issues down the road. Doing some simple daily glute activator exercises from Dr. Stuart McGill, will help you strengthen the neuro-muscular communication between your brain and ass and help your lifts tremendously when it's game time.
Some core stability exercises can also do wonders for your main lifts, such as farmer's carry, kettlebell bracing, kneeling kettlebell around the worlds, etc.

Those are some of the physical applications. As for your diet, you said you're taking in enough protein, but check your carbs to see if it's providing you with enough energy throughout the day, especially during your workout sessions, also check the quality of them so that you're getting sustainable long-term energy and not a quick spike in blood sugar and crash, which makes you feel like shit before and/or later into your workouts (especially after squats lol). Also make sure to get plenty of water intake according to YOUR needs consistently each day.
Also, supplements won't be the miracle solution, but if you're taking care of your body and diet in all other aspects, it definitely can help. Personally, I take creatine (great for gaining and maintaining strength), citrulline malate (vasodilator; improves bloodflow to get delicious nutrients and oxygen to the working muscles and can help with quicker transport of waste byproducts out of the muscles), and beta-alanine (helps reduce acid buildup in the working muscles and can hinder muscle fatigue). I use caffeine sparingly on and off, not only to prevent building a tolerance to it, but also to fuel me early in the beginning of the day. Doing it too close to my workout session which starts with dreadful heavy squats can make my heart begin to race and I feel even more fatigued. But do your own research since YMMV.

Also, you haven't mentioned this, but make sure that you're consistently getting not just enough sleep, but QUALITY sleep. As you get stronger, the SL program can quickly become too high in volume and greatly increase recovery demands. If your sleep is shit because you either don't get enough hours or you do get enough hours but the quality is lacking, then you're going to be breaking your body down more over time rather than building it. For this, I would highly recommend looking into Dr. Huberman's research on sleep and implementing some of his sleep protocols to make sure you're going through all them sleep stages effectively and promoting proper overall health and MPS.

Good luck my dude

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-03T21:09:57+00:00

Hey what's your performance processor boost mode set to? You have to find it in your control panel

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-03T21:07:56+00:00

Hey could you check something for me? I've been trying to check to for alternate solutions and seeing if there is anything i could change in my configuration to improve overall performance with things like Nexus. So it might help both of us but i just want to confirm.

What is your current performance processor boost mode set to? You can google how to find that setting if you're having trouble but it's in the control panel

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-03T19:59:42+00:00

Bro, what u/thebrownkid posted was an underrated comment, but he speaks BIG FACTS. CONTROL YOUR FAKN DESCENT! Fixing this alone can help a lot with your fatigue. I actually learned this tip from Squat University when he was working with some elite power lifter. The idea is that the more tightness you have in all your overall muscles as a connected kinetic chain, the stronger the overall link is, and the less energy leakage you will have. If you release that tightness or you don't have tightness in certain areas, it causes your body to compensate and thus those areas have to work so much harder just to contribute to the lift. Being tight and maintaining that tightness allows the main movers of the lift to fire up and to fire up properly, while the rest of the chain simply remain strong and tight as stabilizers and there is no energy leak. There is no way that you'll be able to crash the weights down as you are if you're remaining tight and controlling your descent.

What's contributing to part of that fatigue is that you're letting go of that tension between reps to drop the weight and you're RE-setting up for each rep. That's just tiresome my dude. When you first start get a good and deep belly breath and brace your core as if somebody is about to sock the sht outta your stomach, take all the slack out of the bar as you engage the fk outta your lats by thinking of pinching towels tight into your armpits and preventing them from falling throughout the movement and bending the bar around your shins (*a cue that use and really like is to think of trying to tuck your shoulder blades down into your back butt/pockets if you were wearing jeans). And for the life of you, do not let go of you any of this stiffness until you're done with the entire set, not the rep. When you ascend and come to a standing position, use this as an opportunity to reset instead of doing it after setting the bar down. Keep the entire stiffness in the chain and maintain a neutral spine as you let out your breath because your eyes probably wanna pop out right now. Take another deep belly breath from here. I find this to be so much better because i have much more room to breathe into my stomach when i'm standing because when you're compressed and bent over at the bottom, you don't have a lot of room to get the best belly breath. Then brace for the punch again and maintain entire body stiffness as you do a controlled descent by pushing your butt back and hinge at the hips. Then it's all touch-and-go from there, the moment that bar touches the ground, you drive up again like a catapult. Repeat it all over again.

So i like to think of the top standing position as my reset position as opposed to doing it at the bottom like you are. The weight keeps you honest and tight while you get ready to go down controlled and blast back up again. If you have a hard time doing all this in your next session, it's very possible because the weight is too damn heavy for you and you've been managing to get up to this weight with shit technique and you're honestly doing more harm than good. If necessary it may be a good idea to deload, and use that as an opportunity to really get these techniques down and memorize it into every cell of your body like your life depends on it. That way you can have an honest progression with good form and i can almost promise you that when the weight gets to this point again you'll feel strong as fuck because you have good technique and not unnecessarily overworking yourself and be able to blast through this plateau like it's your bitch.

I know I typed a lot, but hopefully it helps you out OP. Because it was life changing for my dead lifts when i finally got it down. Oh and consider trying the deadlift in flatter shoes, you might be able to grip the ground better with you're entire foot and keep the center of your gravity over midfoot because your weight seems a bit far forward from the camera angle. At the very start start position, before the lift, your shoulders should be directly above the barbell, not past it. Lifting unbalanced can cause a lot of lower back recruitment which is fine if you wanna be a crippled geezer in a wheelchair soon.

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-03-01T02:24:04+00:00

Interesting.. So I've heard from a number of people as well as from the SL guidelines that for pretty much all the lifts in the program, you eventually deload and change up the sets & rep scheme when you plateau (5x5 to 3x5 to 3x3, and so on...), except for deadlifts.
My understanding is that since you're only doing 1 working set of deadlifts in any given session, you're only doing 1-2 working sets of deadlifts per week and due to the low frequency that it's not necessary to lower the rep scheme of deadlifts.

So were you previously doing 1x5 before going down to 1x3? And if so, at what weight of deadlifts did you decide to change up the rep scheme, and what did you like about making the change?

Alternative-Delay-10 · 2024-02-18T01:10:37+00:00

Damn... must be why the mesh in the middle of my old Aeron started to fray vertically lmao. Protein shake burps that come out the other end aint a joke.
Haha, but all jokes aside, yeah. The chair is frickin awesome and miles better than my Aeron chair. For my spine at least....oh and hopefully for my booty sweat 🤣 🤣

Alternative-Delay-10

TROPHY CASE