Intellectual Laziness

I have a bad habit of being intellectually lazy at the gym. When something starts to hurt (usually my knees but also sometimes my shoulder or back) I tend to immediately 1) panic, 2) panic some more, 3) tell Chris about it in excruciating detail hoping for a magic answer to make it go away, and 4) continue panicking. It's very productive.

Today was deload squat day, and I was a little apprehensive going in since my left knee has been bothering me since my squat session last week when I was frustrated, not moving the weight well and fully aware that my mechanics sucked. I've been able to bodyweight squat past 90 degrees for the past couple days without pain, but when I started squatting this morning with just the bar on my back, my left knee immediately started hurting as I came up from the the bottom of each squat. I spent some time watching my form in the mirror (they are helpful at times) and could see I was having trouble distributing my weight evenly, tending to shift to the right at the bottom of each squat with my left leg taking less weight and also rotating in. I took a video of myself from behind (I love my iPhone for making this so easy) and it told me the same thing, basically that my left glute wasn't firing and my left tibia was rotating in every time I came out of the hole. This is all pretty easy analysis, especially since I've spent the last two years in PT school and biomechanics are (or at least should be) our bread and butter, and I've also spent the last 20 months training with Chris almost every week applying those biomechanics and learning a bajillion other cool tips and tricks on top of that.

Chris had given me a mini-band to wear around my knees while squatting to help work on firing my glutes more and keeping my knees out. Surprise, surprise, with the addition of the mini-band and extra concentration on driving and keeping my knees out at the bottom of each squat, I was able to squat the bar pain-free, and eventually work up to 155#x5 pause squats, with a 2-3 second hold at the bottom of each squat. Pause squats are, in my estimation, 583% harder than regular squats, so I was pretty pleased with this result.

Though I continue to be really bummed about Chris and Emily moving to Providence, I do hope that it will help make me more of my own coach in the gym, and encourage/force me to actually apply all the PT-school and training knowledge I have accumulated over the past couple years.

Training:
Squat: 7x5 sets of pause squats working up to 2 sets at 155#x5, supersetted with core stability work
Accessory: modified pistol squats and snatch grip deads
Finishers: kettlebell complex and jump rope