Tuesday, October 13th - Back

It's all about the numbers.

I will most likely update Back more than anything else, because it's my favorite thing to do.  Tonight I broke a mental barrier, and then broke it again.  I began the evening with Partial Dead Lifts, which are basically dead lifts, but performed on a power rack with the safety catch bar thing set at just below knee level.  This removes the bottom 25% of the motion, which is primarily leg muscles anyways.  I have a number of reasons for doing this.  For one thing, it helps me train the back intensive portion of the movement, thereby improving my form on the arguably more important "lockout" portion of the lift, as well as isolating back muscles (duh).  I'm having trouble forming cohesive thoughts, so let me hit it with a series of random thoughts instead.

In any compound movement, there are a number of muscle groups involved.  With the deadlift, in addition to all of the muscles of the back (erectors, lats, and traps mostly) the early portion of the lift involves hamstrings, glutes, and quads (sort of in that order, I think), and calves for stabilization.  The forearms are also involved quite thoroughly throughout the entire motion, obviously.  Some people may forget, but if you use a traditional over/under grip (which I do), you are also using the bicep of your "under" hand.  This is how people occasionally pull or tear their biceps while doing deadlifts.  Well, to elaborate, that happens when someone's back is clearly outpulling the abilities of their biceps (per history, this happens more with people who are "artificially enhanced," and using aides such as wraps, which increase your grip ability).  You see, there are certain limiting factors sort of built in to movements like the deadlift or the squat, or really any compound movement.  For instance, I have lost a ton of my grip strength, but retained a surprising amount of back strength.  This means that my back can handle bigger numbers than what I'm actually using, but my forearms are too weak to hold the bar so I can't actually pile it on yet.  I am intentionally not using my wrist wraps or belt right now in order to force myself to keep the weight low and focus on form.

So, like I was trying to say, I am using Partial Dead Lifts because it allows me to test my back strength without being limited by so many other factors such as leg strength and lower movement form (which is still pretty shaky for me).  It's been a long time since I've broken 185 on a back movement, even though that used to be pretty common place for me.  Tonight I warmed up with 115 and then 135.  After that I felt really good, and my form was locked in, so I kept going.  I jumped straight to 185.  Then I moved on to 205 for 6, and finished with 225 for 4.  I'm about 100 pounds shy of what I used to do on full deads (I used to do a final set of 315 for 4-6, and a super heavy set of 405 for 2).  Anywho, I moved on to T-Bar Rows and locked in my form pretty well.  Didn't do any tremendous numbers or anything, because I was trying to focus on my form the whole time.  I then did some pulldowns.  These kind of mess with my shoulder a little bit, I might have to use an alternate movement.  Finished with Smith Machine shrugs.  Nothing impressive there either. 

Whenever I do Back day, I feel like trying to commit myself to power lifting.  Whenever I do Chest, on the other hand, I feel like trying to get a Pro card as a natural bodybuilder.  I think it's because I think that I could actually do well in competitive deadlift if I really trained for it, as my back tends to be my definite strong point.  With chest, on the other hand, I put up really terrible numbers, but my chest really responds and shows progress quickly.  Either way, I haven't been able to really commit to anything yet, so let's just get some of this weight off first and then choose a direction at that time.