Stalling on the squat

[Nick B]

Hey Coach,

I've been on the novice program in starting strength just roughly 3 weeks and I've already started hitting a wall with the squat. Last Wednesday I went up 10 lbs to 155, and was able to do 5/5/4. Two days later I tried 165, but only got 3 and went back down to 155 for my last two sets during which I could only bust out 3, thought it was CNS overload from the 165 failure.

I thought it was maybe my diet (I hadnt been doing the gallon of milk thing) so this past weekend I started drinking a gallon of milk a day.

And then today my squats were 155x5x1, last reps were crazy hard so then 145x5x2 and the last reps were real slow.

I dont have the multimedia capacity to post videos of technique but I'm assuming its adequate, my buddy has your book and says I'm going deep enough etc...

Sorry for the long write up, I just wanted to include adequate details. Thanks for your time - Nick

[Mark Rippetoe]

Counting back 3 weeks from 155 x 5, looks like you started at 75 x 5 x 3. That's pretty good progress for somebody that needed to start that light, and since you didn't follow the program precisely (milk), you may have experienced a bit of overtraining that you wouldn't have gotten had you done it right. You didn't include your bodyweight and height, but I suspect that if you reset back to 135 x 5 x 3 and start over with the milk, you'll get back on track.