New Geezer: Thoughts on increasing squat frequency and OLY lifts

[JMS]

Hi all,
First off I would like to say I am inspired and delighted to be in the company of geezers still training and pushing and (sometimes plodding) along. I would like a few opinions from like-aged trainees about my goals and programming with thoughts towards:
1) Increasing squats to three times per week
-Can weightlifters in their 50's squat 3x wk?
-Can a mature lifter benefit from the increased frequency, with the caveat of reducing the reps per workout to keep a constant volume?

2) Getting my snatch and C&J to 105% and 120% of BW
-How are mature lifters holding up with the OLY lifts?
-Is mature programming different?

For BACKGROUND I am 52 yrs., 5'8", 154 lbs (70kg) leaning towards being trim to skinny.
I eat well and have been increasing my food volume.
Over the years have acquired numerous injuries (hams, groin, Achilles tendon, and so on). The past 5yrs have been the hardest on my body. It seems I have become injury prone, which I have blamed on aging. Also I have issues getting more than 6+ hours sleep and improving this is a goal, but this is difficult (kids, gf, job,...).

My introduction to the OLY lifts, ~ 4 yrs ago was thru CF. I loved the intensity of CF but very quickly I realized I was doing more harm than good. In 2010 I found a basic but very well equipped PL/OLY gym and began training 1x/wk under the guidance of a certified USA Weightlifting coach.

My goals are:
Long term goals : (short term target or plan)
#1) Increase leg & hip strength: (BS to increase from 76 kg @ 5x4 sets to 100kg x 3 reps, FS to increase from 70 kg @ 5x4 sets to 90kg x 3reps)
#2) Improve OLY technique: (Snatch to increase from 89% to 105% of BW , C&J to increase from 104% to 120% of BW )
#3) introduce a general fitness component to program: (Increase endurance without reducing recovery or reducing BW )
#4) Continue training into my 60's and hopeful 70's & with thought towards reducing body pain and aches: ( improve the health of Achilles tendon/ bottom of foot/ knees/ hamstrings /groin)
#5) Increase body wt from 70.1 to a solid 75kg : ( Sleep more, eat more)

My Training program is 3x/wk, focused on improving my overall power, strength & learning correct form. A major problem I have is that my legs are having a hard time growing stronger. So in order to squat more, I plan to change my squats from 2x/wk at 4 sets of 5reps, to 3x/wk at ~4 sets of 3 reps, or in other words increase the frequency while keeping the volume constant.

The program below program is a revision on my current program, which calls for squats 2x/wk, FS on Monday and BS of Friday plus OLY grip DL on Wednesday.

Exercises listed for two weeks of an 8-week cycle:

Mon
C&J
FS
OHP
Power Jerk
Pull-up

Wed
Snatch
BS
BP
Row

Fri
C&J
FS
OHP
Power Jerk
Chin-up

Mon
Snatch
BS
BP
Row

Wed
C&J
FS
OHP
Power Jerk
Chin-up

Fri
Snatch
BS
BP
Row

-Some core works at the end of most workouts: planks, roman chair side bends, leg raises, back extensions, twists.
-Workouts end at 2hours (~ 1hour OLY work plus 1 hour strength training).

Sets & Reps scheme:
OLY: doubles and singles for ~10-15 work reps per workout (45-60 min total with warm-up reps)
Squats: triples to 36-45 reps per week (or ~4 sets of 3reps per workout)
OHP: 3 sets x 5 reps with 0.5 to 1kg progression per workout (OHP is at 78% of BW for 5reps which is out of proportion with my squatting wt)
Power Jerk: 4 sets x3reps, using starting wt below my clean and ending with wt beyond my clean wt, with 5kg jumps
Pull/Chin-up: 4 sets of 5 to 10 reps with 1 increased rep per workout throughout cycle starting at 5 reps using ~10/20 lbs wt
BP: 5x5: 1kg progression throughout cycle to allow continued gains in upper body strength without cutting into leg growth (BP is at 120% of BW for 5x5 which is out of proportion with squat wt)
Row: 4x 6-8 reps/ Not as focused with progression, using 6-8 reps with a moderate to heavy wt.

Any comments or suggestions would be helpful,
Mike

[Mark E. Hurling]

Welcome to team geezer. I have no advice for you about Olympic lifting, watching snatches and clean and jerks fly up always seemed like one of the dark arts to me. As in how do they DO that? Picking up and tossing 75 lb. hay bales as a young 'un was as close as I ever got to it. There is one guy on the board in the Intermediate Training Logs, fiftyfit who has had some Olympic lifting experience. I hope he doesn't mind me dropping his name on this. You will find the old guys here (and the younger ones too) are glad to help when needed. Good luck with your lifting.

[Deparko]

I can tell you want I'm doing and it seems to be working so far. I too am a crossfitter but for the last couple of months I've had the following program

Monday
60 mins of Oly weightlifting with a Oly coach. So far we have been working on all the progressions and assistance exercises for the lifts.

Tuesday
Wendler 5/3/1 - Bench and Deadlift
Short WOD

Weds
Rest

Thursday
Wendler 5/3/1 - Press and Squat
Short WOD

Friday
CF WOD

Sat/Sun
Recover, stretch and light running

Every 4th week I de-load and really take it easy and that really helps.

Recover/Sleep is definitely an issue. I work hard on my diet. I have been dealing with injuries as well (Hamstring, Quad) over the past 6 months. I've been doing CF for about 10 months.

I'm 55, 5'11" 185

Mark

[Scott Hanson]

Mike,

You inspired me to make my first post. We have very similar goals and backgrounds. I started CF in 2005, but have moved away from the program in search of greater strength. I'll be 52 next month, am currently about 159#, and about 5'-8". We differ in that I'm stronger on the squats and relatively weak on the presses.

I did SS for about 3 months last winter, starting out adhering to the program closely but as the weights got heavy, I had to drop to 2 workouts/week and reduced the increases to 5# per week. I did this when hitting about 260#x5 x 3 sets on my back squats, where I found that I could not recover from 3 heavy squatting sessions per week. Finally, about the end of January, I changed to a more intermediate type program, Wendler's 531. I've pretty much followed 531 for the past year+, with a 1 month hiatus in July. Not sure if you are familiar with 531, but recommend that you check it out. Basically, you are doing one major lift (BS,DL,Press,BP) per day, 4 days per week. My tweaks include adding power cleans before dead-lifts, power snatches before squats, weighted pullups and dips after presses or bench presses. Part of Wendler's program includes assistance work, for which he has suggested protocols, including the one I follow called "Boring But Big". This entails doing the major lift work sets (5's, 3's, or 1's), then high rep sets of the same excercise (5 sets of 10), as basically a hypertrophy protocol. I've tweaked this so that I do my squats after deads and vice versa, and presses after bench and vice versa. This really helped on the recovery, especially from the squats.

My week looks like this (days may vary due to schedule):

Monday: Press 531, Bench Press 5x10 at 50% to 60% of training max (90% of 1rm), Weighted chins (5x5, 5x3, 3x5)
Tuesday: Power Clean 10x2 or 10x1 on the 1:00 x10, Deadlift 531, Back Squats 5x10 at 50% to 60% of training max (90% of 1rm) supersetted with (toes to bar) x 13, conditioning some times, if I have the energy, which isn't often
Wed: Off
Thurs: BP 531, Press 5x10 at 50-60% of training max, something like dips or chins, Kroc Rows
Fri or Sat: Power Snatch (same protocol as cleans); BS 531; DL 5x10 at 50-60%, Conditioning sometimes (kb swings or snatches, sprints)

Switching the assistance work helped a lot in terms of recovery and reduced DOMS. This has me squatting 2x and dead-lifting 2x per week, so I think you could easily squat 3x, especially given that you are alternating front squats and back squats and with the reduced sets/reps.

My current bests are about 75% bwt power snatches (10 sets of 2) and 104% bwt power cleans (10 x 2). I really need to incorporate jerks somewhere. I've tried some light to moderate CJ's before benching, which seems to work.

As far as the aches, pains, and injuries, I highly recommend that you check out www.mobilitywod.blogspot.com. He has a lot of oly specific mobility work.

For the past 3 months, I've dropped all but the occasional conditioning work, other than walking with the dog a couple miles, in the interest of gaining mass. I've definitely gained about 5-6# so far, but not sure how much is muscle. I typically gain during the winter though, so we'll see how persistent this is. Take-home is that you are still lean at 52, thus you are going to have to change something to gain mass.

Sorry for the ramble, but hope some of this helps.

Scott

[JMS]

HI Mark,
I have a feeling you are right, it is a Dark Art or at least an art of some sort since it is not yet a precise science to me. Maybe mostly it is a work in progress and it floats my boat and keeps me striving and working hard. Thanks for the lead on another OLY-lifter too.
--------------------

Hey Mark "Deparko"
You have a wide program, maybe more balanced than my own but also maybe with more goals. I have pretty much had to focus on one goal since my recovery is not as efficient as in the past .
I am reading you are training both OLY and PL movements (assume standard DL and low bar squat?) plus CF.

OLY coaching questions:
Does the OLY work include full squatting movements?
Do you like the coach and are you training with other mature athletes?
Are you being coached in the full movements (full squat Snatch & clean) and how is your body responding? (So far I pulled both my groins over-reaching with my C&J / L-knee tendinitis issues return/ R-ham)

How are your legs responding (to the wide range of stress, running 1x/wk squat, 1x/wk DL, WOD?
This is quite different than the direction I plan to travel, as my thoughts are I need more squat stimulation per wk, with less volume per session.

Right now I deload every 8th week but that might not be enough.
The OLY lifts are pushed as my body dictates and I go for PR’s when the mood is right and the bar travels well, or about every 2 or 3 wks. Mostly I work on getting the movement right and just slowly push the wt higher and higher.
Struggling with over-pulling and not dropping under the bar fast enough. The lack of leg strength too is an issue since my lifts are approaching my squat wt.
------------------------------
Hi Scott,
Your input is very helpful and special thanks for the “pre-hab” site.
I am only the tiniest bit familiar with the 531, thanks for the lead. I understand it to be a PL structure and it looks like you have a very strong and balanced program. Perhaps more suited for mature lifters too with enough space between heavy legwork.
I will begin the 3x/wk squats in ~ 10 days and will post progress or lack of it as it moves along. My trainer just advised me to limit the number of goals and to aim for either my BS or FS goal wt, and that FS is the better of the two for my OLY lifts. Therefore, I suspect the program will be modified something like M=FS, W=BS, F=FS and repeat to do FS 2x/wk and BS 1x/wk. But this is not finalized.

As for my extra conditioning I drag a sled “sometimes”, right now ~1x/month, but I just don’t have energy after my workouts and I really don’t want to train on off days as the point of the conditioning is to recover faster. Catch-22.
--------------------------------
Thank you all for your comments and intro to the group,
Mike

[fiftyfit]

Mike, I wanted to say welcome to the group, and I'd be happy to give you what advice I can on integrating the OLY lifts into your program safely(a big priority at our age), and effectively. I competed in Olympic lifting through my 20s, and also coached a few kids who had some good results. I even considered competing in the Masters competitions during the last couple years, and felt I could have done well. Unfortunately, I suffered a freak accident last year on vacation which I think might prevent me from doing the OLY lifts again. The details of my accident were in my early posts in the Intermediate section of the site.

With regards to your own program, I do have some definite ideas I feel would help you, just need to organize them into a workable plan compatible with your goals. I'll get the bugs worked out and get back you, Walt(fiftyfit)

[Mark E. Hurling]

Whew! Glad I didn't cross any boundaries there fiftyfit. Next time I'll check with someone before offering up their name. I'm still getting the hang of manners and protocol in the on-line world.

[fiftyfit]

No problem Mark, glad to offer what I can.

Whew! Glad I didn't cross any boundaries there fiftyfit. Next time I'll check with someone before offering up their name. I'm still getting the hang of manners and protocol in the on-line world.

[JMS]

Hey Walt,
Thanks for the welcome.
I had a chance to read some of your posts today. Sorry about your knee and hope it heals quickly.
I suspect the ribs will heal too, right?
I have some quadriceps tendonitis that limits my progress, or at least the volume and intensity of my squatting. Normally the OLY lifts are not too much of an issue. Honestly the best thing I have done for the pain has been to use a 6’ PCV pipe to roll on and massage all four side of the leg. That and I wear knee sleeves for OLY lifts and then I also wear a Velcro knee brace over the sleeve for squats. Well, and I ice, heat and every other thing I can do to keep in the game.
Your OLY lifts are outstanding and I don’t know how I was so lame not to get bit by the OLY lifting bug early in life.
Well I suspect it was the fact that all that seemed important as a youth was to lift to get bigger…

I would love to hear your programming input. I suspect you see I have a half OLY, half PL/BB. I have a hard time abandoning my bench press (old fears of not getting big still haunt me). Some of this is also the idea that just too much lower/full bodywork will break me and my knees, hams and groins would just be over worked (fear again but this is a new fear of an aging body)
Thanks again,,
mike

[JMS]

Thanks for the input all.
Right now this will likely be my follow up program beginning next week, unless other brainstorms and idea are presented or come to me.
mike
----------------------------------------------
Incorporation of ideas to achieve FS goal and focus leg / total body recovery
- FS on Mon and Fri = 2x/wk
-BS on Wed = 1x/wk
-Begin squats at 85% of best triple wt: This wt was estimated using 1RM calculations to be 60kg FS and 66kg BS
-Reduce back work while keeping intensity and wt high
-Reduce BP volume while keeping intensity and wt high
-Remove redundant PJ
-Keep core work brief
Exercises listed for two weeks of an 8-week cycle:
Mon
C&J 45-60 min: wt & PR attempts to how the bar feels, singles, doubles for the bulk
FS 4x3rep (+1kg /workout =15kg in 8wks) [Goal: 60 to 74kg over 8wk]
OHP 3x5rep (heavy with+ 0.5kg /wk = ~5.5kg in 8 wks) [Goal: 52-57.5kg]
Pull-up 3x5-7rep with wt to remain within this range

Wed
Snatch 45-60min w wt to how the bar feels, singles & doubles for the bulk of work
BS 4x3rep (+1kg /workout = 8kg/8wks) [Goal: 66 to 73kg]
BP 3x5rep (heavy with +1kg/wk = 8kg in 8wks) [Goal: 80-87kg]
Row 4x6-8rep with mod-heavy wt

Fri
C&J
FS
OHP
Chin-up 3x5-7rep with wt to remain within this range

Mon
Snatch
FS
BP
Row

Wed
C&J
BS
OHP
Chin-up

Fri
Snatch
FS
BP
Row

Brief core work at the end of some workouts: planks, roman chair side bends, leg raises, back extensions, twists.
-Workouts end at 2hours (~ 1hour OLY work plus 1 hour strength training).

Sets & Reps scheme:
OLY: doubles and singles for ~10-15 work reps per workout (45-60 min total with warm-up reps)
Squats: (form to duplicate full clean) triples to 36-42 reps per week (or ~4 sets of 3reps per workout)
OHP: 3 sets x 5 reps with 0.5 progression per workout
Pull/Chin-up: 3 sets with wt to keep in the 5-7 rep range / Not as focused with progression
BP: 3x5: 1kg progression throughout cycle
Row: 4x 6-8 reps /Not as focused with progression, using a moderate to heavy wt.