Squat & Deadlift FTW

4/4

BJJ in the evening.  H. and I went to PF where we had a new (to me) instructor.  Worked from side-control, got a lot of techniques in.  Last class for a week.  :(  Had a good rolling session at the end.  Was able to maintain control and overall felt pretty good.

4/5
Frisbee 30mins
Having a hard time getting games together lately.  If there isn't 2' of snow on the ground, it's not as fun apparently.  We are in a weird cold-Spring weather pattern though, and the wind does not make for quality fris.

4/6
Rest Day

4/7
O.M.G.

Learned how to back squat today. Just did the bar to ensure my form was right. My friend B. helped me. Wow. I was having a hard time getting low enough, so he put a couple of 2.5lb weights under my heels which really helped. After I did a couple of sets we took the weights away and it was easier. Need to keep chest tight and up. Need to go down slooow and then drive up. Chest should be relatively up and tight. Get the bar lower on the back instead of up on the neck to help keep from rolling forward. Probably did 4-5 sets of 10+. The good thing about squats is that on the reps where he said my form was good, it also *felt* good. So hopefully I'll be able to try it on my own have a decent sense of good form vs. poor form.

Also learned deadlifts. Was a bit of a pain to get it up since I was just using the bar with no plates on the end. Never deadlifted before. Double wow. Did not feel as comfortable with these as I did with the squats. I'll give these a try on my own, but suspect I will need more coaching soon. Get into natural foot position, although feet should probably be closer together than on my squat. Keep the arms perpendicular to the floor and drive up with the hips. I had a hard time not rolling my back and not trying to push the bar out instead of letting my arms hang straight down. I think part of my discomfort with the deadlift is that my legs were already fried from the squat.

After that, we did some abducter/adducter work, and then I knocked out 10 pullups b/c I had to prove that I wasn't a total disaster physically. Also did some wide bar pullups (3 or 4) which I wasn't even sure I could do.

All in all a great session and I'm excited to learn how to do some lifts!

Will try to do a flight of stairs a couple of times today to keep the muscles loose. Have a tennis match on Saturday and if I don't get my legs loose it's going to be a debacle.