Paleo eating and lifestyle. Eat better, sleep better, exercise better, and biohack your way to wellness.
Unapologetically Powerful - Squat Day
My roommate and I have been doing powerlifting since the beginning of the year on a not very strenuous basis. Basically, I joined Nerd Fitness Academy awhile ago and have been using their Barbell Level 1 routine.
Seen some decent improvement (hey! I can see the shape of the muscles under my fat now!) and she felt like she could lift containers of cat litter easier than before. So we thought we'd up our game.
We bought Jen Sinkler and JVB's Unapologetically Powerful program a couple of weeks ago.
I figured we'd get two things out of this: the biofeedback method and a greater variety of exercises, including accessory ones, which NFA didn't have.
The way the program works, there are 3 routines: Squat, Deadlift, Bench. And if you are good gym-goer who really wants to make progress, you'd do all three in one week. We are... not quite that dedicated. Within each day, there are 4 supersets, and within each superset, you'll do two exercises. Which exercises depends on the biofeedback.
We go to a Blink Fitness in Manhattan, so as it turns out, some of the exercises that were on the menu for Squat Day are just right out. They don't have kettlebells there. (Technically, they have 2, both under 20lb, but who does that help?) And they don't have TRX.
We both tried Zercher squats for the first time, box back squats, jump squats, dumbbell strict presses, and a few other smaller accessory type things.
The jump squats did me in. Holy crap. Using the biofeedback test, you're supposed to test your range of motion after every set of an exercise. After the second of three jump squat sets, my range of motion was worse, so I stopped there and didn't do another.
I think I'd have fallen over if I tried to do another. My knee is not thrilled with the ones that I did do.
Overall, I feel sore in all the right places. It was neat to actually see the biofeedback method tell me to stop. I wasn't sure anything was going to test poorly, when basically every exercise I tested before starting got a thumbs up.



