The Level 1 has been all upper body structural balance, that in basic terms means if your upper bodies ratio's of strength in different lifts is wrong there isnt a hope in hell of you reaching your potential 1 Rep Max in your upper body lifts.
Charles Poliquin has many examples of this on his website, including Adam Nelson increasing his Bench Press from around 300lbs up to 520lbs..... quite impressive huh!
We each has our structural balance tested and interestingly my limiting factor is not my pec power but actually my lower traps and scapula retractors that are limiting my bench press. This basically means for the next 4-8 weeks there is not a barbell in sight and im on a strict remedial program for my upper body to bring my 'trap 3' test score up! Once i have done this my bench press will make all sorts of gains. I was actually quite happy with my 1 Rep Max close grip bench press of 112.5kgs and Incline Bench Close Grip press of 97.5 kgs.
I passed my technical and practical exams on Lv 1 no problem and we started Level 2 today with a lower body structural balance assessment. Its complicated but makes perfect sense and luckily 'most' people have similar problems across the board, i think alot of these problems could potentially be solved with a good stretching and remedial program for the lower body. We went through a host of these remedial exercises for the lower body today and let me tell you it certainly doesnt feel like a remedial workout, Im gonna be sore tomorrow! And were training legs for 5 days in a row! Think i will need a wheel chair to the airport!
More info as it happens!
