8 wk HLM Intermediate Program

[rohano]

Hi.
I'm a 44 year old, 193 cm (6'3"), 107 kg (235 lbs) intermediate trainee. Recently tested 1 RM and they were: squat 180 kg (396), deadlift 205 kg (452), bench 115 kg (253) and press 80 kg(176). I'm generally eating 3000 kcal a day, sleep 8 hrs and don't drink, for everyone who's going to tell me that at 6'3" I should weight 130 kg, I just can't eat that much. I have been doing 3 sets of 5's seemingly forever most recently in a bastardized HLM setup, I think the lack of low reps affected my 1RM attempts. I'm happy with squat and want to bring the deadlift up but,obviously, bench has the furthest to go. 120 kg went about 5 cm from my chest and stopped. For my next 8 weeks I'm going to do the following, it's HLM but didn't want to do all the heavy stuff on one day, so heavy bench is actually on the light day:
H: squat: 155 kg (341) x 5 x 3
press: 70 kg (154) x 5 x 3
dead: 175 kg (385) x 5 x 3
L: dead: 140 kg (306) x 5 x3
bench: 105 kg (231) x 5 x 1
bench variant: ? x 3 x 4 (close grip 4 wks, pause 4 weeks)
chins: max x 3
M: squat: 140 kg (306) x 5 x 3
bench: 100 kg (220) x 5 x 5
power cleans: 75 kg (165) x 3 x 5
Plan is to keep adding weight every week, once I can't do sets of 5 across on heavy day, drop to 5 and some back offs, then 3's and finally singles across.
So my questions are:
1) Are the starting weights too much? Remember, I want to go to low reps and have recently completed all the above weights for sets across of 5. But seems like these are 85 - 90% of 1 RM, whereas I've seen HLM programs start at 75%.
2) Is swapping light squat for a light dead, in order to groove the lift a little bit, worth doing given the desired deadlift focus?
3) These workouts end up taking a while so I don't do accessory exercises. Are dips, DB presses etc needed for my weak bench?
Thanks in advance all and for the excellent resource here. Cheers!

[Acorn1993]

I highly recommend following one of Andy Baker's HLM programs. I ran his Garage Gym Warrior and was able to add 20 pounds to both my squat and deadlift, add 5 pounds to my press only training it once per week, and bench my old touch and go 1RM for a competition pause pretty easily all while (unintentionally) losing about 10 pounds. I didn't take my recovery seriously either (didn't eat enough, drank a bit too much, didn't sleep all that great, etc) so I can only imagine how good my results would have been had I prioritized stuff outside the gym. I'm 25 but Andy recommends the program for slightly older individuals as well. He also gives some ideas for accessories to throw in and how to do it as well as where to put cardio if that floats your boat. Here's a link to his programs: Training Programs - Andy Baker . I already bought his KSC Texas Method and plan on running it once I get my shit together. Good luck with whatever you decide!