First time doing any sort of variation with squat. Outside of forgetting how to count for certain reps, these felt fine.
Being new to variations and implementing RPE, I am hoping for fast progress after an adjustment period.
Final set shown, from your eyes, what is the RPE?
The key to RPE is knowing how YOU felt. You might be someone like me who on a set of 6, even my first rep “looks” like it’s pretty heavy. My girlfriend on the other hand would blast through the first 5 reps of a 6 rep set and the 6th rep looks like she’s in slow motion. It’s very very hard to accurately rate someone else’s RPE without seeing a ton of their training history.
Since this is your first time going pause squats, I assume you are new to RPE. I, as well as most people here, had troubles when first switching to RPE. Most of us came from SSLP where we would grind the shit out of every set to keep our ego up. RPE is NOT about ego. I made some mistakes the first time through the Bridge and lied to myself about RPE just to get more weight on the bar. Once I accurately followed RPE, my lifts jumped up like crazy.
Did you 100% have 2 good reps left? That’s a 8
Did you think you have 2 more good ones, but not really sure if you could complete both? That’s a 8.5
DId you think you 100% had 1 good rep left but there’s not even a chance you had 2 left? That’s a 9
@ericjspencley thanks for the clarification. I guess with new territory I’ll need to just allow there to be a learning curve. I had these rated at an 8.5, it’s just difficult to judge right now with it being a new movement, as well as a small hiatus from lifting.
I always appreciate an outside perspective in these unfamiliar territories, even though that perspective doesn’t exactly change the way I would go about judging my RPE.
What @ericjspencley said.
My view: Big discrepancy between personal judgement of RPE and how sets look on camera? - Training Discussion - Barbell Medicine Forum
Also, in my totally unqualified opinion, your hips seem to be shooting up causing you to ‘good morning’ your squat. More load will only exacerbate this. Perhaps drop the weight a little and sharpen your form? Pause squats are all about staying tight and braced. They’re tough. Thats why most folks hate them…
Old mate in the background though…whats up with that?..
@Dave_E I’ll try to work on that shooting back, I think the shoot up is just the new movement honeymoon. I’ll try to implement some more quad action to initiate out of the hole, I know JTS really advocates quad dominance out of the hole.
Guy in the background is an all right dude, comes in does whatever he does in this video like once a week. Some curls, pull ups, pretty chill avg gym bro
For me the cue that helped fix my good morning problem was to constantly focus on my knees. Assuming you have good rack position (yours could be a little tighter… try a narrower grip with your elbows more pinned to your sides) and you can hit depth (looks like you have no problem there) on the concentric I tend to just scream “KNEES KNEES KNEES” in my head coming out of the hole.
Your good morning problem doesn’t look TOO severe though. Try a tighter rack position, I think that’ll help you feel a lot more solid and tight throughout the whole lift.