Barbell — Blog — Healy Chen

Sick sucks, I know

Hello. I’ve returned to these pages after a month of involuntary off. The sickness got me good - for the third time this year! A lingering cold and cough that I truly did not fully recover from until just this past week. Mix in with two cold sore outbreaks, and a prolonged battle with invading mosquitos, August was a month to forget.

Never take normal for granted, folks. I try hard not to.

Today I was wondering why on the barbell bench I was failing at rep six, when two days I ago I was maxing out at nine reps with the same weight. Turns out my big galaxy brain used the incorrect plates. The barbell was 10 pound heavier than last time. That’s a jump I tend to avoid due to wanting to preserve my elbow tendons. I’m surprised I even got five reps out of it, and no lingering elbow discomfort afterwards.

I guess sometimes you just have to load up the bar and try to move it.

The aforementioned mosquitos: it took some trail and error - with the bites to prove it, but I’ve found the entry point for the invasion. It turns out the bug screen of my bathroom window isn't fine enough to stop mosquitos. Like Thanos’ army fighting through the Wakandan shield, these winged menaces have no qualms about squeezing though the blockade at the risk of their appendages.

One night I was woken up by four of those invaders. Naturally I did not go back to sleep until they were all dead. Moving forwards, my bathroom window will be shut at all times during mosquitos season. Thankfully there are other fresh air entry ways into this studio space. Chinese Feng Shui is all about fresh air!

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.