Leaning forwards on squats going straight-leg on deads

[Johan]

What are glute ham raises? I might call it something else but i went to go look at it at the site we have stickied for all the lifts explanations and videos and some deuche bags hacked the site all up! I HATE THAT! anyways just a quick explanation is all i want. thanks fellas

[texasmax]

Starting in the "up" position, you've got your knees on a pad, body straight up, and your lower legs (below your knees) horizontal behind you. You slowly lower yourself down, bending at the knees, keeping your upper body generally straight.
Form what I've seen and read, a lot of gyms (like mine) don't have the piece of equipment to do this.

[EricT]

Yeah. And of course your feet would need to be locked underneath something . If your gym doesn't have one there are some ideas we just discussed in Sentinel's journal. Go look at that and there is a link to a thread with some ideas and a picture, etc.

Good tips from Riddick and I hope that all this helps.

Just getting the deadlifts up with good form in itself will help. On the parallel squatting I imagine this will be a big problem with a whole lot of people when switching to lower squats in general and A2G in particular. This is why people advice at least going a little below parallel. The thing is you hips (meaning all the associated muscles, hips, hams, etc) don't come into play as much until you go at least a little below parallel. And what little bit they do come in they will tend to play second fiddle to the stronger quads which tend to be dominant for most people to start with.

When you start the glute ham raises you will probably not be able to bring yourself up without using your hands to push off. What most people do is try to use there hands just the minimum necessary but then accentuate the negative. I would say just have a nice controlled negative, kinda slow. But don't do anything super slow at first, even if you can because you will end up paying a price for overdoing it. But the slowing down the neg in itself will go a long ways towared building stregth and you should soon be able to do reps unassisted. I would also say to build on them slowly with only 1 or 2 sets not to absolute failure and add to that if and when it seems tolerable and doesn't affect you progression on squats and/or deads.

[texasmax]

Gotcha. Yup, my quads are definitely dominant as I started off doing seated leg presses for a few months before learning what it was I should have been doing the whole time...
As a substitute for GHRs, would (I don't know the actual names) the laying-on-your-stomach ham curls and the seated-upright ham curls work, even though they're somewhat isolating moves? Don't have a GHR machine, and the one option I have to rig up is to place a flat bench next to one end of the cable crossover rack (don't know the name for that one either but I think you know what I'm referring to), and lower the pulley and hope my ankles can get under the pulley mechanism..

[BG5150]

Work the core! Work the core!

[EricT]

No, unfortunately the ham curls won't work anywhere near as well. Problem they work only the knee flexion part of the hams function and don't forget the "glute" part in glute-ham raises. Look at that thread I'd mentioned before and see what you can figure out. If not you'd be better off with some RDL's or Keystone Deads (which I personally have started liking better than RDL's).

[texasmax]

Will do. Thanks!