Squat Thursday: Pissweak but Painless

Squats w/cambered bar
50 kgs x 8 or 10
70 kgs x 5
90 kgs x 5
110 kgs x 5
125 kgs x 3
140 kgs x 1
150 kgs x 1

Upper-back lockouts
140 kgs x 15
190 kgs x 15
220 kgs x 12

MY PREVIOUS two squat sessions were terrible. The second was actually worse than the first one. There were several reasons for this, not least of which is that I, as usual, aren't sufficiently warmed up before I begin squatting. I need to devote more time to prepare for the session. It's as simple as that.

I did a thorough warmup tonight. I rotated my thighs for a couple of minutes just to get my hip flexors good and prepared, and then I assessed foot spacing, depth, knee positioning, and general discomfort while squatting without the bar.

From there, I had to adjust my depth in order to keep going without pain. My squats were around parallel and obviously with the cambered bar it's not kosher in terms of Powerlifting form. But it's something. For me, at least, it's good just to be able to work up to a (lil shallow) single of 150 with no pain. I can tell you, I am compensating; I can feel it and I'm trying to correct it. It is here where I can kinda feel the threshold of what's painful and what isn't, and adjust my depth in order to keep going.

The bottom line is: until I can get on top of both of my labrum tears, I'm going to be training these movements for myself and not for competition, PL or otherwise. I will be returning to the slow and steady programming I was on a couple of weeks ago, before it got derailed. Tonight I wasn't looking for a training response, I was assessing my safe loading ability without going overboard. I'm having to do all this because I'm no genius, but I'm not stupid either; testing near maximals is way, way off. Way off.

I was going to faff around with some pinwheelz (for the ladiez) before heading off, but my biceps were fried from last night so that was out. I gave my triceps a dose last night but I was looking at doing something triceps related. However, with dips still out of the question, my options were limited. Might have to reacquaint myself with Skull Crushers... and as we've got a swiss bar on the way, that might really help. The swiss bar will help out in general, actually, looking forward to using it (and I must say a big thank you to Les for all his great equipment - his stuff is used by both PTC Perth and WA Strongman and it exceeds all quality and strength expectations).

Instead I got yapping to Aaron (or, more appropriately, he got yapping to me) and I left having done nothing else significant. So I better make up for it with a solid events training session this weekend.