Dufisthenics

So I was doing squats today at the gym.  Generally speaking, I am lousy at squatting.  My stretch armstrong dimensions makes the movement tough for me.  As a result my squat numbers are generally very low.  I do the exercise just because I know it is a great full body strength movement, when done correctly.

There are so many people that do just awful squats, the infamous 1/2 and 1/4 reppers.  These are the people that will put large amounts of weight on the bar but then don’t go down anywhere close to full depth. (roughly thighs parallel to the ground)  Instead they will bounce up and down with tiny ROM, thinking they are actually accomplishing something.

I have to come clean, up until a few years ago I was one of those people.  My all time squat record was 275 pounds, but that was when I was in the half repper at best crowd.  I feel like I am getting way more out of squatting 185 pounds to full depth than 1 half ass rep at 100 pounds heavier weight.

So anyway today after doing a set of 4 reps at 205 I thought I would be daring and get under 225 pounds.  I have done this weight before since I converted to “in the hole” squatting but I don’t think my depth was as good as it should have been.  So for this attempt I tried to go down slow and deep.

Well something happened that never happened to me before when squatting, I couldn’t get back up.  Luckily I had the safety bars adjusted high enough that it wasn’t a total cluster f to bail out as I dropped the barbell.

Although I was frustrated that I failed at the attempt I reasoned with myself that trying to do a higher weight with better form and failing was better than to bail out with a half rep or to not even make the attempt at all.  I’ll get it next time.

I have had a good week doing pulling exercises, netting 23 pull ups for the first time ever and being able to knock out 12 “flying” pull ups (change grip from narrow to wide at top of the movement mid-air) with relative ease.  I used to be pretty awful at flying pull ups back in the days when a muscle up was a pipe dream.

I am hoping to ride this wave of better pulling power as far as I can.