fj333
First Post
Hi. I'm 38 years old, 6ft, 160-175lb depending how much fat I'm carrying. I've been a hard gainer my whole life. I've been doing SL on and off for 3 years or so. A year ago I was hitting my strongest weights ever (still puny by most people's standards). My OHP was hitting around 108lb. But I had to take a year off for a number of reasons.
I started back recently and a few weeks in, after a day of doing OHP @ 95lb I woke up the next morning with a seized lower back. I am not sure if it was the OHP or the DL, but I suspect the former. The back felt better after 2 days, but I waited 10 before lifting again just to be safe. I dropped my weight to 80lb and started reassessing my form, with video, very carefully, I read the entire SL literature on OHP a few times. I don't need any video feedback, I think I have the form dialed in now, but I do have a question that I don't think is covered in the OHP literature on the SL site.
Do you pause and breathe in/out a couple times between reps? And if so do your shoulders get tired holding the bar at the bottom of the stroke? Proper form dictates that we take a deep breath before the rep and hold it through the entire up/down. At the end of a rep, I have been holding my breath and flexing all of my core, and leg/glute muscles for a few seconds, along with the strain of the press itself. So I want to breathe in/out a couple times before holding my breath for the next rep. But doing that, I realized I can barely do a full set of 5 with 80lb... because the rests are actually wearing out my shoulder muscles a bit. I'm trying to be neutral in that short rest phase, but obviously they're still engaged.
Any advice is welcome.
I started back recently and a few weeks in, after a day of doing OHP @ 95lb I woke up the next morning with a seized lower back. I am not sure if it was the OHP or the DL, but I suspect the former. The back felt better after 2 days, but I waited 10 before lifting again just to be safe. I dropped my weight to 80lb and started reassessing my form, with video, very carefully, I read the entire SL literature on OHP a few times. I don't need any video feedback, I think I have the form dialed in now, but I do have a question that I don't think is covered in the OHP literature on the SL site.
Do you pause and breathe in/out a couple times between reps? And if so do your shoulders get tired holding the bar at the bottom of the stroke? Proper form dictates that we take a deep breath before the rep and hold it through the entire up/down. At the end of a rep, I have been holding my breath and flexing all of my core, and leg/glute muscles for a few seconds, along with the strain of the press itself. So I want to breathe in/out a couple times before holding my breath for the next rep. But doing that, I realized I can barely do a full set of 5 with 80lb... because the rests are actually wearing out my shoulder muscles a bit. I'm trying to be neutral in that short rest phase, but obviously they're still engaged.
Any advice is welcome.