Thursday, December 08, 2005

I hate Squats!

Today I knew I had to do legs and as the time grew near I was tempted to bag it altogether, but I did get off my fat butt and did the following:

Squats - 12 x 135 fast, 6 x 225, 6 x 245 slow

Man were those hard! At that point I had completely lost all motivation and I admit my attitude was extremely lame, but I was in no mood to to leg presses or anything else. I don't know what the source of my issues with legs is, but a few possibilities are:
  • Not having a partner
  • Having childlike leg matter
  • Lack of confidence from doing Squats without being in a cage.
  • I don't like having all that weight resting on my neck, it just doesn't seem natural!
  • More and more, but enough of my whining and excuses!

After the squats I tried out the jump rope I bought over a month ago and haven't even really tried. I did three sets of running in place with the jump rope at relatively high speed. I was frustrated with my timing. A second grade girl would have laughed at my attempts. I did get a slightly elevated heart rate, but nothing to consider aerobic as my three sets probably totaled 100 jumps and about 1 minute of total execise.

Not a good day at all. I'm looking forward to deadlifts tomorrow though.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

confidence and form tend to go hand in hand when it comes to squats.

its worth considering dropping the weight and inreasing the reps to nearer 12 until you regain confidence, practice good form and learn to enjoy the pain of training legs :).

(maybe 145lb or 155lb for 12 - DEEP!)

btw: rest the bar on your upper traps, it shouldnt be on the neck.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tip John. Sounds like a plan. I'll try that next week and hopefully the experience will be better.

Anonymous said...

I agree with John here. More time under the bar will definately help matters. I, like you, used to hate squatting, I felt more confident with the weight in my hands on the bench than on my shoulders. That has definately changed for me.
I love the squat now, it's so technical. Try box squatting if you can to get used to sitting back and not so much down. Widen your stance to become more stable(if you have a narrow stance). Watch ALOT of video too...that helps.
...Man I want to go squat now! Hopefully my legs will be up to it by then!

Anonymous said...

Aside from squat adjustments and more squats, get yourself together a few good assistance exercises that will improve the squat for you. You already to SLDLs, and that's good. Try bulgarian split squats, side step ups, RDLs, GHRs of any kind (I've done them on a lat machine and now do them using bands and a ball).

Anonymous said...

Alberto - I've researched the exercises you mentioned there, but unable to identify with what GHR's are. What does it stand for?

Anonymous said...

Glute Ham Raise, about as good as it gets in terms of assistance.