Are your weights moving fast?

[Deleted]

How fast are people moving their 75% and 80% weights? I feel like these weights should be flying up, but on my third time through 37 (not all in a row), things seem like they aren't moving all that quickly.

[starter20]

im just in the first week of #29, but yesterday i had to do 5x3 @ 75% squats and they were indeed flying. even while i was doing them back 2 back with my trainingspartner (less then 1 minute rest between the sets).

bench is the same story

[Deleted]

Yeah, that's the way I was when I started too. Not sure what's going on now.

[starter20]

did you lose bodyweight? are you eating enough to recover? do you train in the same way (belt, wrap, gear, nothing) like you set your 1rm? did you gain weight, changing your leverages so you have to adjust your technique? are you losing your mobility so it hurts your form (or you need to adjust your technique to that)? lot of stress outside training @ the moment that can possibly affect your recovery? do you get enough sleep to recover? if you train in gear; is it getting old & losing thigtness?

[superaveragebro]

If you were fast and the speed is decreasing there are two possible reasons in my opinion.

Reason 1 -- you started the program fresh and now your body is getting beat up
Reason 2 -- the weights are easy enough in shieko that it does not require you to put 100% effort in the repetition (lift) so you're teaching yourself to lift slower without recruiting all fibres at once, to save muscle fibres for work to come later

[joeldibattista]

Have you used the same max for all three blocks?

[Deleted]

Lots of good questions here and thanks for responding. I'm up for a big promotion at work. I haven't felt terribly stressed out about it, but I'm sure I've got some low level stress from that and I might not even be noticing it. As of this morning, I'm also feeling a bit under the weather, so that could be it as well.

Training-wise, I ran 29, 37, 32 and had a meet. I set some small prs at the meet and used the new numbers for my next cycle. I ran 37, took a week off for the Christmas holiday, and have now finished my first week of 37 (I found a meet I want to do and am going to do 37, 31, 32 to get ready for it). I was constantly upping the weights in my 37 block before the holiday as everything felt easy, so for this 37 block I bumped my maxes by 10 pounds. I have been trying to concentrate on exploding the weights up even though they are "light" but I guess it is possible I'm saving myself for the rest of the session. I'll try to get some video of my 80% squats and benches today to post.

[starter20]

vids are always cool!

[Deleted]

Okay, let's see if I can make this work. I took video of my first, third and final sets. Today was 80% for five sets of 2. The bar weight is 425. Watching the video, these are actually moving pretty well compared to how slow my squatting felt on Friday. I didn't get video of my benches, but they too were moving better today.

[starter20]

they look pretty easy to me... only thing i notice was that the last set was the "slowest", you can really see this well when you play all 3 movies at the same time. but i also noticed that the last set is not as deep as the other 2. maybe you need to hit that depth to make it able to bounce out of the hole. so it could be that last friday your squats were a bit higher, making them a slower at the same time?

[chreiz]

Nothing wrong with that speed.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Depth could certainly be an issue with speed as I do tend to use some rebound to come out of the hole.

[superaveragebro]

look fast enough for raw squatting. Everyone seems to slow as they come out of the hole in raw lifting as that's the usual sticking point.

[superaveragebro]

Since you brought up the issue of speed. I was never so concerned about speed. Powerlifting is about how much you lift not how fast you come up with the weight. These days every one talks about speed. And I reckon all this came from Loue simmons and the other multiply coaches. And that's because their sticking point is at lockout since multiply gear gives you so much help at the bottom that the weight just explodes up, right till a couple of inches from lockout. And there's no way you're going to lockout those weights unless you really focus on being fast and furious throught the bottom and middle portions of the lift. In single-ply and moreso in raw lifting the scenario changes. It's more about grinding out the rep 2 to 4 inches into the lift from the bottom which is usually the sticking point. There is more of an endurance element than speed. The training is different. It's a different sport altogether. You cannot read literature meant for multiply lifting and try to adapt it to raw. It's a mistake. You cannot generate enough speed out of the hole or off your chest to go through the sticking point in raw. The distance is too short, especially in bench where you have to wait for the "Press" command. In raw you just have to grind those reps out especially if it's a real max attempt.

[Deleted]

Re the speed issue, I don't agree. My sticking point in raw squatting and benching is mid-way up in the lift. You are correct that the ability to grind out reps is important, but rapidly accelerating the bar out of the hole on the squat and off the chest on the bench is important. Speed probably isn't as important for a raw lifter, but if your 80% weights aren't moving relatively fast, you've got a problem.

[starter20]

i agree with burt, if i dont explode my lifts with full speed and arrive @ my sticking points with no speed at all, i am not able to grind through them.

i also witnessed a few lifters (with ahtletic backgrounds) that lost lifts completely once the speed came out. 5-10 kilo could really make the difference for those guys. they could for example squat @ 95% with absurd speed. so i feel that when i could hit that same speed and combine it with my ability to grind my lifts would really benifit from it.

so i always, no matter the weight, focus on getting it up as fast as possible.

[superaveragebro]

you may be right, and you probably are, but I'm sure the issue of speed was blown out of proportion by the multiply guys. I'm curious to know how the pre multiply era lifters such as coan, frantz, arcidi ecc looked at speed in those days.

[starter20]

i do believe youre right on that point. i trained about 8 months using the westside principles as a raw lifter. i felt like the speed work (bands/chains) days added nothing for me. i always made better progression with a semi heavy day next to my heavy day.

if i am not mistaking, Coan did believe strongly in speed work for deadlifts because you start from the ground. when you start there you dont create the elastic/reverse tension (hopefully this is the correct term?) you create during the downwards phase of a lift like squat & bench. this was the reason he incorporated them in his trainingcycles, for example this very well-known cycle:
tsampa.org/training/scripts/coan_phillipi_deadlift/

[Deleted]

Jan 10, 2012 13:35:18 GMT -5 starter20 said:

i do believe youre right on that point. i trained about 8 months using the westside principles as a raw lifter. i felt like the speed work (bands/chains) days added nothing for me. i always made better progression with a semi heavy day next to my heavy day.

if i am not mistaking, Coan did believe strongly in speed work for deadlifts because you start from the ground. when you start there you dont create the elastic/reverse tension (hopefully this is the correct term?) you create during the downwards phase of a lift like squat & bench. this was the reason he incorporated them in his trainingcycles, for example this very well-known cycle:
tsampa.org/training/scripts/coan_phillipi_deadlift/

Coan didn't write that routine, Philippi did. Coan trained using traditional periodisation. He spent most of his time in the 5 range. He did move the weight relatively fast though in his lifting. That isn't a good example of how Ed trained though.

[starter20]

allright, i did see a interview with Ed Coan (by Rippetoe i believe) where he was talking about speed. it is possible that i misunderstood. if i can track it, ill post is here.