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Saturday 5/12/07

Squat A2G ------------- 3x5 187 lbs
Bench Press ------------ 3x5 194 lbs
Deadlift ---------------- 3x5 215 lbs

Dumbbell Curl ----------- 2x8 40 lb
Shull Chrusher ---------- 2x8 60 lb
(Superset Curls and Crushers)


Notes:
I have a confession to make...I've been using a pussy pad for my Squats. When I first started doing Squats, I was getting a bruise where the bar rests on my back, so I bought a pad. But I recently read that the pad can be dangerous because the bar can slip or roll easier, (and they're referred to as pussy pads) so no more pussy pad. It's not like I'm using a lot of weight anyway.

Speaking of Squats, they've been real hard lately. I know I haven't missed any reps, but I've been doing all I can do to get the reps in, maybe at the expense of keeping good form. I'm going to reset down to 160 and increase by 2 lbs every workout. This is working out good for my Military and Bench Presses, so I'll try it with Squats too.

I think my body has a lot better chance of keeping up with my workouts if I increase everything (except Deadlifts for now) by 2 lbs each workout. At 50 years old, I'm just not growing the muscle as fast as guys half my age do. 5 lb increases just are too drastic. Also, my diet is not hardcore, but I do eat pretty clean and try to get at least 200g of protein a day with servings every three hours or so.

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What don't kill you make you more strong -- Metallica - Death Magnetic

Tuesday 5/15/07

Squat A2G ------------ 3x5 160 lbs
Military Press ---------- 3x5 126 lbs
JS Row ---------------- 3x5 147 lbs

Chins ------------------ 1x8 1x7

Notes:
I reset Squats but they were still challenging...I took less time between sets.

Thursday 5/17/07

Squat A2G -------------- 3x5 162 lbs
Bench Press ------------- 3x5 196 lbs
Deadlift ----------------- 1x5 220 lbs

Skull Crushers ----------- 2x8 65 lbs

Notes:
No notes.

I'm glad I read this, Phil. The way you are handling the squat reset, if I'm getting this right, is actually counterproductive.

First thing is you actually set it back a little too far but you can work with 160. 170 would have been better. But regardless of that microsetting back up is is no-no. You wan't you're body to recover and "catch up", yes, but due to the frequency it is easy to go too far and turn that in to detraining. In other words it is possible to drop the intensity low enough and for a long enough period that you are actually losing strength rather than just doing a back-off.

Basically, the back off should constitute building back up to the weight your plateaued at in around 3 workouts with the 4th workout being the new higher weight over and above that. If after a backoff like that you can't contiunue to progress by any means then you've probably done all you could with backing off.

The way your doing it now is overkill and your going to be spinning your wheels and playing catchup rather than just recovering from a plateau. I'd suggest that you add enough weight on your next few squats to where you'll hit the 187 again within 3 workouts. Then see if you can go to 189 or 190 (if not more).

I hope this makes sense

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If you act sanctimonious I will just list out your logical fallacies until you get pissed off and spew blasphemous remarks.

I'm glad you read it too Eric.

Your explaination does makes sense, but I never would have thought that microloading my way back up would be counterproductive. I figured the reset and microloading would make it easier to progress again, but I think your point is that by the time I'm back up to my plateau point the way I was going to, I could have been there and past doing it your suggested way. At this point in my training, I just can't imagine getting "5 pounds stronger" every workout.

I'm approaching an unknown phase in my training and I'm likely to make other blunders along the way. Thanks for keeping me on track.

I havent read through your entire journal so i dont know, but how many weeks have you been loading? I don't know if Rippetoe includes it in the Starting Strength Program (as i havent read it over in a while) but you may be able to break out of the squat plateau by doing 3x3's.

I've been at it 4 months now. I had a back issue 2 months ago and had to take 10 days off. Then I took another about 10 days off from Squats and did Step-Ups instead. When I resumed Squats, I went low weight and started A2G.

What benefit would 3x3 have? I'd be able to progress because of less reps?

That's part of it. But it's more than that. The purpose of a back off is to just get a little recovery but not to LOSE anything strength wise. And in this case we're talking neural adapatations which are the first to come and the first to start going. This is of course different for everyone depending on many factors including training status. For instance, initial beginner gains may stick around a lot longer than later gains of a more trained individual.

But regardless all you want to do is recover and go past where you were. If you drop the intensity too much (and it is hard to say how much is too much) but say more than 15 percent and certainly if you remain at lower intensities for a period of weeks is is VERY probable that you are not just recovering and adapting but are detraining (a little) and then simply retraining. The result is you just get where you were before but you don't break the plateau or only break it for a very short period.

If you needed more of a backoff what you could do is instead of building back up very slowly you can just have the first one or two backoff workouts be lower volume but in general keeping the intensity somewhat high.

The 3x3 is the same general concept where you are dropping the volume but raising or keeping the intensity the same. In this case I doubt it would work because of the frequency. You'd need to drop a squat workout or change it to a lighter squat. Or keep the weight the same at the lower volume. But even then it is not guaranteed to work very well on this set up and certainly no better than a simple back off in the way I've described. I would save that for a later time when you want to "peak" and deload rather than simply continue progression.

The reason is that it's just not the optimum way. This is not an extended loading protocol. This is a workout to workout protocol. The best way to handle stalls is in a way that is as similar to the normal way of progressing in the program as possible. You don't want sudden changes in the type of stimuly your introducing. You just want a little rest while staying as close to your recent 5RM as possible while still allowing that rest to take place.

BTW, for some reason I was thinking along the lines of an intermediate 5x5 so I realize that when I said the backoff should be 3 workouts and then the fourth should be the higher weight, although that may well work it is certainly not so rigid as that and you could take a little longer but I wouldn't do more than around 2 weeks whereas the way you were doing it before you're talking an entire month (at least for squats).

Saturday 5/19/07

Squat A2G ----------- 1x5 1x4 1x4 167 lbs
Military Press --------- 3x5 128 lbs
JS Rows -------------- 3x5 149 lbs

Chin-ups -------------- 2x8

Supersets:
Dumbbell Curl ---------- 2x8 30 lb
Tricep Kickback -------- 2x8 22 lb


Notes:
None