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bblazer
Banned
OK, normally, I box squat to a box that is just about 2" below parallel. Today we shook things up a bit.
The idea came from my training partner, Bergmann. The idea here is that in strongman, you never "really" squat. Yes there are lots of squatting motions, but there is nothing like you do in a rack or at a PL meet. The car squat is a good example. You start in the hole, and are actually standing something up that is on a lever whose fulcrum is about 15' back from you, so the plane the bar moves in is actually an arc.
Anyway, today instead of going to the box, we went to the pins. Meaning we set the safety pins as close to parallel as we could, and then dropped into the hole until the bar hit the pins and then went back up. All we did was hit and go - no resting the bar on the pins.
It kicked my ass big time. Actually surprised the hell out me.
We did have one rule. If when the bar hit the pins and there were 2 distinct sounds - meaning you did not have a parallel bar and one end hit first - the rep didn't count.
While not a rule, we also tried to bang out the reps as fast as possible.
I'm pretty sure that the above mentioned stuff did contribute to my ass kicking, I am even more sure that it was mostly because of the fact that I wasn't prepared for the affect hitting the pins would have on my brain. You see, when I heard/felt the hit, for some reason I would deload my body and either end up leaving the bar on the pins, or herniating myself starting from out of the hole.
One side benefit was that this gave me another tool for working on my squat form. I allways worry about being deep enough, or having my ass back, or driving the knees out, that i end up forgetting about the top half of my body, and how it is handling the motion and the weight. Bar position, arch, tightness and hand placement can easily be taken for granted.
B-
The idea came from my training partner, Bergmann. The idea here is that in strongman, you never "really" squat. Yes there are lots of squatting motions, but there is nothing like you do in a rack or at a PL meet. The car squat is a good example. You start in the hole, and are actually standing something up that is on a lever whose fulcrum is about 15' back from you, so the plane the bar moves in is actually an arc.
Anyway, today instead of going to the box, we went to the pins. Meaning we set the safety pins as close to parallel as we could, and then dropped into the hole until the bar hit the pins and then went back up. All we did was hit and go - no resting the bar on the pins.
It kicked my ass big time. Actually surprised the hell out me.
We did have one rule. If when the bar hit the pins and there were 2 distinct sounds - meaning you did not have a parallel bar and one end hit first - the rep didn't count.
While not a rule, we also tried to bang out the reps as fast as possible.
I'm pretty sure that the above mentioned stuff did contribute to my ass kicking, I am even more sure that it was mostly because of the fact that I wasn't prepared for the affect hitting the pins would have on my brain. You see, when I heard/felt the hit, for some reason I would deload my body and either end up leaving the bar on the pins, or herniating myself starting from out of the hole.
One side benefit was that this gave me another tool for working on my squat form. I allways worry about being deep enough, or having my ass back, or driving the knees out, that i end up forgetting about the top half of my body, and how it is handling the motion and the weight. Bar position, arch, tightness and hand placement can easily be taken for granted.
B-
