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Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

Save the elbows

I recently added a barbell back squat to my weightlifting routine, and I couldn’t figure out why the inside of my elbows were sore afterwards. Kind of doesn’t make sense for parts of the arm to sore for what is a lower body exercise, right?

At first the soreness only occurred after a session, so I figured it was simply delayed onset muscle soreness. Those typically go away with enough squatting sessions in the log book. Well, wrong. During today’s workout, the inner elbows started to hurt during my warmup set. The general rule of thumb is: if something hurts during the exercise, then it needs to be addressed immediately.

Intuitively, I moved my grip on the bar further outwards. Because if the elbows are hurting during the squat movement, then it’s got to be the position that I am putting them in. And what do you know: it absolutely worked. Zero elbow pain on my working sets simply by widening my grip. I guess how well(?) our limbs can contort is highly individualized.

I’m just glad I don’t have to give up the barbell squat movement entirely. Like I had to do for the upright row, because it was hurting my shoulder. Once you get past a certain weight point, it’s difficult to progressively overload the lower body using dumbbells. Holding a 100 pounder to perform a goblet squat is not feasible, because my grip would give out way before my leg muscles do.

Set the stage.

Light weight, baby!

Pro tip for those into the habit of weightlifting: rent from your friend whose garage has a squat rack. Not for actually squatting, but for the ability to do pull-ups. The pull-up is such an essential exercise (for back and lat muscles) that I would have bought one of those power towers on Amazon for my (small) studio if there weren’t a squat rack already. The movement is that crucial, well worth the sacrifice in room space. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do that.

Recently, I have graduated to actually using the squat rack for (barbell back) squats. For the past year I’ve done goblet squats, clasping onto a single dumbbell with both hands to my chest. I seem to have reached critical mass with that, because my arms are tiring of holding onto 60 pounds well before my legs are giving up. Make sense: our leg muscles measurably bigger and stronger than the arms. The need to graduate to proper squats with a barbell is obvious.

What I did not realize is that having a huge metal rod putting pressure on my trap muscles kind of hurts! And my first attempt wasn’t even heavy: it was just the 45 pounds of the barbell itself! I guess (and hope) it is merely something to get used to. Surely it will feel more comfortable as I do more sets.

I am extremely lucky to have access to this setup right at home. While a set of adjustable dumbbells can take the upper body pretty far, leg day is a bit compromised as you advance in poundage. There comes an inflection point where It’s difficult to hold in your hands enough weight to stimulate the legs muscles properly (without doing a crazy amount of reps). The hands will get tired before the legs do. A barbell with weight plates solve that problem so easily.

Tower of pain.