First of all man, congratulations on starting. I'm glad me and lingleeyen encouraged you enough to begin your workout. This journal is a good way to keep track of your lifts. I sure wish I kept one when I first started. There's nothing like looking where you've been to appreciate where you are right now.

I can't watch youtube videos at work so I can't comment on your form. I'll try to do so by the time I get home but I usually get back quite late from training so I might miss out on doing so.

Get the 1.25kg plates. They're useful, especially on bench press and OHP. They're useful now as a beginner and super useful later as an intermediate when you have to fight tooth and nail for every kg you increase on your lifts. I got mine for 40 bucks in lelong. Before that, I used to use big ass chains I tied together with carabiners which costed me 10 bucks at the hardware shop. Leave it in your car so you don't forget about them when heading to the gym.

I wish you all the best and good luck. If you have any questions about training, feel free to PM me directly or comment on my training journal.

What? How do you squeeze your shoulder blades during deadlift? You're supposed to flex your lats to maintain upper back tightness. Imagine trying to bend the bar around your legs and rotate your arms as if to touch your triceps to your lats. For lower back, you brace with your core by breathing into your obliques rather than into your chest. Chris Duffin made a good video about this on youtube. Ideally, the entire back, upper and lower, is solid and moves as a single non-flexible unit.

Squats look good man. I like it. One thing to point out is the brace, looks like you let out your breath on a few concentric parts there. Don't. Breath into your stomach, imagine somebody is gonna punch you in the stomach, hold that breath, squat down, stand up, exhale.

I can't say much about OHP because I suck at OHP, I hate OHP, I don't do OHP. I might even advise you to not do OHP. Haha.

To be honest your deadlift doesn't look terrible at all. If I'm being nitpicky, on the descent you gotta break at your hips first and let the bar fall straight down. And I think you're setting up to far behind the barbell, you can see the barbell move backwards as you initiate the movement. You don't have any specific weaknesses, just that you're entire body is currently your weakness. Don't take that in a bad way, I'm just saying you just gotta work on overall strength. Also practice your bracing more, same comment from squats.

Yes, you can practice deadlift more often, just make sure it's not too heavy that you cannot recover from it. I personally think 1x5 is too little practice. One modification I'd do to SL is to do 3x5 deadlifts. If you miss any reps, increase sets and reduce reps so that you always get a total 15 working reps everytime you deadlift.

Also, what I found to help a lot with my deadlift is a stronger back. Find any machine in your gym that targets back, eg: seated cable row, lat pulldown, assisted pullup, T-bar row, etc. My suggestion would be to add 1 rowing assistance movement every session, just pick one that you are comfortable doing. So Monday you can do lat pulldown, Wednesday you can do seated cable rows, Friday you can do dumbbell rows. Do 3x8-12 and it shouldn't really take more than 10 mins. I personally do 2 rowing movements a session and it has tremendously helped my deadlift.

You're not tight on your deadlift. Very loosey goosey. You're pulling it back as well. You should be humping the bar and pushing the earth away from you.

Note: Do not let this get to your head. I know as beginners, we all tend to be paralyzed by analysis, whereby there's so much information and you want to be perfect at all times. Don't be. Sometimes, you just lack practice, that's all. You don't have to have your lifts perfect, you just need them to be good enough just to stay injury free. Most important is to lift consistently and stay healthy. "Perfect" form will come.

With that said, let me give you my own personal cues and processes when I deadlift:

1. Walk up to bar, hyped. I'm trying to kill the weight, regardless if its 60kg or 160kg. My intentions and intensity remains the same. 100% on all weights. When it gets heavy I like to have somebody slap the shit out of my lats and traps to get them engaged.
2. Stand with bar directly above midfoot. When I bend down it will touch my shins, this is normal.
3. Stand tall and straight. Now, I flex and squeeze my thighs and glutes to set my feet width. My feet will automatically go to the optimal angle and width by doing this.
4. Regarding point #3, I flex hard, as if somebody is trying to rape me in the ass and I am trying to prevent that.
5. Bend over and grab the bar with back still loose. Shoulders will be way in front of the barbell.
6. Secure my grip and breath a few short breaths.

7. This is the tricky part, it happens in 1 single motion but in successive order so pay attention.
7.1. Flex my triceps to straigten my arms.
7.2. Take a deep breath and brace my core by pushing my obliques out.
7.3. Flex my lats and straighten my upper back.
7.4. Now I use the barbell as an anchor like you mentioned and sit back to pull the slack out of the bar. I straighten my lower back here.
7.5. I keep sitting back until I feel max tension on my hamstring and my shoulder blades are exactly above the bar. That's the starting position. If the bar moves forward or backwards, it means you're not in the right starting position. If you sit back even lower you lose tightness in the hamstrings and you'll squat up the weight which is also bad.
7.6. This whole thing basically requires practice. What I recommend to practice this is by doing partials. Deadlift up to knees is a good way to teach yourself how to set up and initiate the lift. Basically doing this entire point over and over again but only up to your knees. This will prevent fatigue while teaching you the necessary skills. You can do this after your main deadlift sets. I like to do it in sets of 3x8 at much lower weight.

8. Initiate the lift by pushing with my feet against the ground and pulling the bar up by driving the hips forward. You need to "fuck" the bar.
9. Lockout with the hips and knees locked out at the same time.
10. Set down the bar by breaking at the hips first. This will prevent you from hitting your knees on the way down, which, if you've never experienced it, hurts like a mofo.

Yeah man, I noticed that as well. This is what I use personally so I don't really expect it to work for everybody, but it's a good starting point to teach anybody the deadlift. You kinda create your own setup eventually.

Maintaining a neutral spine during the negative of a deadlift is a good habit to nurture but not necessary IMO for general purposes. I agree if you slow down the negative you can gain some strength benefits from it, but for me I still think volume is king so to get more volume work in.

There's 2 cases to consider. If I'm working with a deadstop set, I usually just let the barbell pull me down without me trying to slow it on the way down. All I do is maintain control. This will be very evident when working with maximal or supramaximal weights. If however I'm working on a touch and go set, I maintain the brace and the neutral spine at all times even when it touches the ground.

Perhaps. Try this, do Romanian deadlift (RDL) for 1 or 2 sets sometimes (maybe once a week as warmup for deadlift) to train yourself how to brace during the negative. Make sure to go really really light though, maybe start with just the barbell first to see how it feels. As to how to perform RDL, I think youtube can be a good resource.

Don't apologize man, chill. That's why I suggested going very light on it to practice the movement. Keep practicing and you'll get better.

Chin ups all the way man. Way more superior.

Man, thumbless grip on bench is a big nono. Unnecessary risk. If you're experiencing wrist pain, it indicates either one of these:

1. Your wrists are hyperextended backwards when holding the weight. Keep your wrist straight at all times. Wear wrist wraps if you need to. I always wear wrist wraps for weights above 70kg as my tiny itty bitty wrists can't support that kind of weight on their own, for now.

2. Your grip might be too narrow or too wide and you're not gripping the bar right. Experiment what is most comfortable for you, excluding thumbless. Took me 2 years to find the best grip width and form for myself. Watch how the pros do it, emulate their form and you'll figure it out along the way. My current grip form and width shamelessly copies JP Cauchi's grip form.

Thumbless grip is also called suicide grip for a reason. Just don't.

I'm not against it for OHP as you can bail easily on it. Unlike the bench press, on OHP you can move backwards or forwards if the bar slips and falls. I still don't prefer it though.

I used to do that when I went for a super wide grip. Kept losing tightness in the upper back in the hole. Moved my arms in closer, started using normal grip, voila. No more elbow pain and super tight upper back.

For bench, if you're stalling that badly on that weight, I'd suggest lowering it to 40kg and do 25 reps. Doesn't matter how many sets, as long as you get 25 reps total. So you can do something like, 8x3, with last set being 4 reps. Get the volume in. That's how you grow your bench press. Keep doing that that until you can comfortably get 5x5 before increasing the weight.

It's one of the things I don't agree with SL 5x5 and Mehdi. His program is brute forcing the strength gains instead of slowly building a solid base foundation. Bench press requires a different approach, it's not a squat, or a deadlift. To build a base you gotta do volume. Deloading over and over again will not get you anywhere, that's what I learned after 2-3 months of SL. I've been where you are right now and continued to pound on the same weight, deload, go up and fail again, then deload again, and getting stuck. My suggestion is what I would have personally done differently.

My man Ryo, bro. You gotta change them shoes man. Those are running shoes. They're not meant for lifting heavy ass weights. I can see on the squats where the heel compressed a bit. Wear Converse Chucks instead, or something similar. I personally wear Admiral futsal shoes or an Everlast Chucks imitation. One day if you decide to get serious with lifting you can get a pair of squat shoes, but those are expensive as hell.

For squats, your balance is a bit off, or your ankles aren't mobile enough. I say that because your heels are rising out of the hole on every rep. That should never happen. Keep the center of mass directly on top of your mid foot, near the base of your ankles there. Also, like I said above, change your shoes.

For deadlift, I can't really judge your rounding. Get a tripod or record yourself from farther away. Looks ok IMO, definitely need more practice in setup and initiation but nothing too glaringly bad. Keep at it you'll get it soon enough.

There are a lot of mixed opinions about barefoot squatting and deadlifting. Some are for it, some are against it. Most gyms don't allow it though. I'd say try it if you're comfortable with it. If it hurts the arch of your feet then don't do it.

Agreed. I'm still rocking my RM50 Everlast (Converse Chucks style flat shoes) for deadlift and my RM25 Admiral futsal shoes for squats.

Form is looking good my man. Good job on grinding that last 2 reps on the squats. Depth is questionable but it doesn't matter. You did good. That's what separates strong people and whiny people. Shit is supposed to be difficult. Deadlift looking pretty light too. Like too easy for you. One thing I'd comment is your bench press setup. You're setting up too far from the barbell. The barbell has to travel so far to get to the starting position. I would advise going back further on the bench. My personal preference with the bench is having the bar right above my nose or eyes. Basically right on top of my face.

Good decision. Phraks gslp is much much better than SL.

Hey Ryo my man, you've trained for close to a year now, without much major breaks in between. For that, I think you deserve major praise. Congratulations! Consistency truly is key and you've been able to keep going despite facing setbacks here and there. Keep it up!

I hope you keep up at it and keep logging in your journal here, because I lurk and read every post of yours. Happy new years and may 2018 bring you even more gains.