How to know when and how to push further my body? are my abs weak?

Question

been doing something mildly extreme for a few weeks now.

100 sets of 1 repetition of 125% of what used to be my one rep max strict curl. I only do the negative part of the curl, clean and slow, to get the weight up I just clean it to my chest then lower it slowly in a bicep curl eccentric.

overall perceived fatigue = 9.9 out of 10. Red face, grunting and heavy breathing.

the workout takes between two and three hours a day, depends on how much sleep I got the night before. I do get absurd doms in the morning, specially in my traps and forearms but as I keep working the pain goes away during the workout.

For now the gains are good, got veins popping on my biceps almost 24/7, which I didn't have prior.

But my abdomen is killing me, sure my posture got a lot better due to all this cleaning the weight up and my traps are finally starting to be visible with a shirt on from the front. But every time I do a repetition, I get a lot of pain in my abdomen. Not sharp pain but fatigue pain. Almost as if my abdominal muscles are one step from giving in.

The workout feels good overall and I manage to add more plates to the barbel almost every 5 or 6 days for my negatives, but the abdominal fatigue is kind of worrying. Is this a sign of weak abdomen or is it to be expected? Consider I'm not doing ''heavy'' cleans, I'm merely cleaning up something that could be possible curled up.

I would like to keep going, specially for the posture thing but also for the bicep gains.

so what methodologies are there to asset how should I keep going? do I need to incorporate some abdomen training on the side? do I need to slow down so my abdomen can catch up? Do I just ignore it and it will get better?

Answer 1

Training your abdominal muscles will surely help. After all our core connects our lower to upper limb. If it’s not efficient or “strong”, the kinetic chain is broken. I suggest to cut down on the weight to a level where you don’t feel that fatigue. If your core can’t take the load, somewhere else got to kick in to do it. We just don’t want that somewhere else to be your lower back.

Practice bracing your core before cleaning. Look up “TRa activation” and you can try to see if that helps.

2 questions to find out more:

1. When you’re cleaning the weights up, do you notice your stomach shooting forward?

2. As you lower the weights, just your body bend forward?