Geezer Newb at Sea

[bbuszard]

When does true geezerdom begin? Do I truly geez? The following will be the results from my laboratory experiments on myself. How fast can I recover, and what concessions must I make to incipient geezerhood? My logging has been in a spiral notebook, and I've been at the program for some six weeks now, so I'll just record the first 2 sessions I wrote down (at about the 2nd week into the program) and my 2 most recent sessions.

I doubt this will be too interesting, except perhaps to other geezer / newbies who may learn something from my mistakes. The most obvious shift I've had to make is in recovery time. At my current weights, I need 6 minutes between squat sets, 5 between upper body sets, and 4 between the power-clean sets. I've also been conservative with weight gains; I didn't advance by 10 pound increments for long. I miss being 20 years old sometimes.

Stats: height 5' 9", weight 180, age 44

Monday 3/6

squat 165: 5/5/5
press 85: 5/5/5
row 105: 5/5/5
dips: 11/10/10

Yes, yes, the verboten rows. I transitioned to power cleans soon after, though. I incorporated dips for the first couple of weeks, then dropped them to help my recovery on the main lifts.

Wednesday 3/8

squat 175: 5/5/5
pseudo-bench 255 5/5/5
pull-ups: 11/7/7
back xt: 15/15/15

My workout partner bailed on me early on, so no spot and no true bench at the moment. The pseudo-benches are on one of those gawd-awful independent Hammer machines, and I look forward to being away from them asap. I should have a power cage arriving in the next couple of weeks at home and I can move back to a real bench press. The pseudo-bench clearly gives the lifter a mechanical advantage. My real bench numbers won't be anything like as high.

--- Time passes ---

Monday 4/10

squat 240: 5/5/5
pseudo-bench 345: 5/5/5
chinups: 11/9/8

Wednesday 4/12

squat 245: 5/5/5
press 115: 3/5/4 (first miss; form error or too hard on the warmups?)
pcln 95: 3/3/3/3/3

I discovered today that I have a tendency to shift forward and left on the tougher squats, which has been aggravating my left hip flexor and quad. Having identified the error I hope that mentally screaming "back and centered" will correct it. We'll see.

I'm having trouble with form on the power-clean, which isn't surprising, I suppose. I had it up to 110, but wasn't racking the bar well or consistently. I've backed off and have been practicing form with lighter weight. Hopefully I can progress up from here without any more major hiccups.

One other point to add: I alternate power-clean and deadlift, as per the program. The deadlift just hit 300 last Friday.