Hey guys, first of all, thanks for all the amazing info.
Anyways, I’m pretty new to barbell training and I have very large femur-height ratio. I’ve been able to lowbar squat Layne Norton style (big fold, wide stance) fairly effectively but it puts a decent amount of strain on the hips (which I guess are quite underdeveloped due to history of using the LOL-legpress). I’m really struggling with finding a decent solution for deadlifts though as conventional form puts me in a somewhat comically folded over position and I struggle to generate initial force, whereas sumo seems awesome for me but I can’t really manage it with my pre-strained hip flexors in terms of both pain and weakness. So thinking of solutions
keep plugging away at conventional
trap bar / mid shin rack pull until the hips come along a bit more
very light sumo
fwiw I’ve hit 275 sumo pretty comfortably whereas I can’t manage more than 185 conventional with halfway decent form. any ideas?
running novice LP lower body with intermediate style press programming
Compared to? Only reason I ask or say this is because if you identify as a person with long femurs and associate that (having long femurs) with certain outcomes or issues, you can really hinder yourself. I’d guess that you’re probably within 1 standard deviation of the the mean femur length for your height.
Just as an aside, Layne’s squat is not just a function of his femur length, but rather the bar is very low on his back and his stance isn’t that wide. The wider the stance is, the less bent over a person is if all else remains the same. Anyway, moving on.
I don’t really know if you need to worry about sumo vs. conventional as far as training effects go, as we wouldn’t expect any differences in strength or hypertrophy between the two.
I also don’t know what you mean about “pre-strained” hip flexors, as if you’re attributing this issue to your squat, which seems unlikely. On the other hand, if you have pain then I think the most likely cause is load mismanagement, i.e. you’re creating too much fatigue for your current tolerance and should be on a different program.
Again, I don’t know what your asking about re: your hips, so my recommendations are as follows:
Stop running novice LP. Switch to a program that builds up work capacity over time, uses more exercise variety, is not associated with a toxic community, uses subjective and objective feedback to determine loading and volume for the workouts, etc.