Yes

hahaha! great picture, Depalma! We use giant rubber bands for a similar effect. Doing squats with chains is interesting too

An alternative to using a heavier bar for deadlifts is to do them one legged and use a lighter bar. That uses many more muscles for stabilization so you'll need to try it with a much lighter bar the first time. I use about 200-250 pounds for 2 legged, stdls, but don't use much more than 40 for a onelegged. And my entire leg and butt is screaming at the end of a set.

Mel

Depalma:
I'm on kid patrol this morning so no workout for today. It's okay. I'll go in tomorrow morning before the company picnic. Gotta go, someone is trying to play my piano with their monster truck.

LOL Depalma. Love it.

That's a great idea! Thanks Mel.

Alrighty. I had a good look around the gym this afternoon. There's no squat rack that I could see, but there is both a power cage and a smith machine. I thought they were the same thing, but once I got up close, I could see the pegs vs the track. I'll insist to the trainer-who-helps-me that I want to move up to the cage, not the smith machine. Sometimes he has fixed opinions about things, but I'll triumph in the end.

I did 3x10 hack squats with the 45lb plates today! Yay me! I'll graduate to the cage in no time

I asked one of the other trainers about my deadlift problem today and she had 2 suggestions: try dumbbells instead of barbells, and try to make my deadlift form more perfect so that I'm working harder with the 100lb barbell. She watched me do a set and thought that I was bending too far down and engaging my back too much. I'm to decrease my bend and really work on sticking my hips back. Will do!

Thanks for all the help!

Rock on, power cage! Start with just the 45 pound bar and make sure your squat form is perfect before you progress. BB squats and hacksquats are different exercises, so don't be disappointed if your weights aren't as high on BB squats right away. Have you seen the links to squat videos that Krista posted on her site? http://www.stumptuous.com/cms/stumptuousblog.php Well worth checking out.

One more dumb question just to clarify (I'm easily confused ) ... when you talk about deadlifts, are you doing stiff legged deadlifts (a/k/a Romanian deadlifts, straight legged dead lifts, & SLDLs) or are you doing classic deadlifts where your knees are bent and the BB starts and ends on the floor?

Straight Legged Dead Lift

Deadlift

Just curious, because they're different exercises that use different form and hit different muscles. When most people talk about deadlifts, they're talking about the second ones, above, and I assumed that's what you meant when you were talking about deadlifts on the Smith machine. Aren't exercises confusing?

If you haven't tried deadlifts, give them a whirl. Some people consider them to be the king of compound exercises.

BTW I'm reading an excellent book now that I'll recommend to you: The New Rules of Lifting by Alwyn Cosgrove (my hero) and Lou Schuler.

They say there are six basic exercises: squats, lunges, deadlifts (the second kind, above), pushes, pulls, and twists. And they build all their workouts around those six exercises. I'm trying them out myself.

Don't be put off by the fact that the book is geared toward men. It's all applicable to us too. The authors are coming out with the New Rules of Lifting for Women at the end of December, which I'll be checking out.

Thanks for the book rec. I'll look into it. I'm starting to feel the need to vary up my routine, but I'm afraid of moving away from compounds (and there are only so many compounds that I like to do...) Does anyone bring their books into the actual gym with them? I keep my Body Sculpting Bible in my locker and when I want to try something new, I practice it a couple of times in the changing room before attempting it in the gym. I'd feel like a bit of a dork with the book in the gym, but then, getting form right on new exercises is tricky...

I do the stiff-legged deadlifts. I thought those were the crown prince of compounds (with squats being the actual king ). Should I be mixing it up with the bent-leg deadlifts? I'd definitely have to go down in weight there--the bent-leg deadlift required to lift the barbell off the rack is pretty punishing to my back

I'll second Meg's book recommendation.

And don't worry about moving away from the compounds. NROL is all about the compounds. It will give you a few new variations to learn and will introduce you to such things as "supersets with full rest" and undulating periodization.

Don't worry, you'll love the bulgarian split squats with overhead press

LOL, I bet I *won't*!

I need to look into these supersets a bit. That might be a good way of mixing up my routine without giving up the exercises I've come to love...right?

Yes, the supersets will be a different stress to your system than you are accustomed to.

And if you do decide to look into NROL, Alwyn moves you through a range of set/rep schemes and uses alternating A and B workouts so that in many of the programs, you work from a base of 10 exercises but you don't do the exact same workout for about 2 weeks.

As for giving up the exercises you've come to love, since you love compound exercises, you would love NROL.

Basically it is 4 or 5 squat variations
A few Deadlift Variations
A few lunge and split squat variations
A couple of good morning variations
Some hip extensions and back extenstions
Step ups
Pulldowns and pullups
dumbell, barbell, and seated rows
a few pushup variations
some dumbell and barbell bench variations
some core work
A few others

Basically, I think these are many of what you are looking at. You just may find a new twist on a current favorite.

A note about the "supersets with full rest" -- Lou Schuler, one of the authors of NROL, notes on the book's Amazon page that they accidentally left out the definition of what a superset with full rest actually is. So he posted the explanation there at Amazon. If you buy the book, be sure to print that page out and stick it in your book.

As to deadlifts versus stiff legged dead lifts, I may be an oddball but I've always considered SLDL's to be a kind of specialized subset of classic deadlifts. At least in my gym, if anyone talks about deadlifts, they're talking about the bent knee ones. And those are what I've always understood to be the king or crown prince of compound exercises.

In the NROL, they call SLDL's "Romanian deadlifts" and use them as a variant of classic deadlifts.

I use lifting straps when I do classic deadlifts (when my knees let me!) because my grip gives out much sooner than the rest of my muscles. And you're right, perfect form is necessary for all forms of deadlifts. Any time you're handling a lot of weight, like with deadlifts or squats, you really want to have the form nailed down. I practiced with a broom handle before I tried a real squat.

Here is a link to some NROL discussion. Lou Schuler himself participates quite frequently. Alwyn infrequently.

http://forums.jpfitness.com/forumdisplay.php?f=61

Thanks guys. I'll order that book; it sounds good and helpful. I'm thinking about actually hiring the trainer-who-always-helps-me to work with me during the upcoming semester. My life is about to change dramatically (no more 100% flexible time; first real full-time job) and I'm not sure about making the time to keep mixing up my weight training and being relatively serious about it--particularly since no one even sees my arms in the winter and so its harder to care about my muscles...(Yes, yes, I'm silly.)

I'd really like to have a big mental catalogue of interchangeable exercises so that I can do whatever I feel like on a particular day instead of doing the same stuff over and over. This will probably sound stupid, but the reason I haven't started to do this is because I haven't yet figured out how I'd keep track of the different exercises and what weights I use with them in my little book. It's much easier to keep doing the same stuff over and over and just increase the weights regularly.

But I'll order the book and I'll think about the crown-prince deadlifts.

Thanks guys! I always appreciate your help.