47 year old male programming

[Cole Bares]

I have been training my dad who is 47 years old, 6’ 1”, 215lbs, for 9 months and he has been progressing very well.

Numbers:
Squat 115x5x3 — 287.5x5
Press 75x5x3 — 129x3x3
Bench 105x5x3 — 162x5
Deadlift 205x5 — 370x5
Starting BW: 208.8lbs

I am having a hard time knowing how to program him. I have been going through the normal progressions to his NLP as written in the books, but I’m not sure what the best programming changes are for him. He is older, but in good health so I’m not sure what type of approach I should take with him going forward. I have limited experience training clients his age, as the only other client I have over 40 is my mother who has had no problem progressing on her conservative 2 day a week program. However she is a woman, and my dad is much more intense than she is and so far he has been capable of being on a pretty much vanilla NLP, 3 days a week.

This is his current program:

Friday
Squat 1x5
Press 3x3
Deadlift 1x5

Sunday
Squat 2x5 (70-80% of Friday)
Bench 5x3
Chins

Tuesday
Squat 3x5 (90% of Friday)
Press 3x3
Deadlift 2x5 (80% of Friday)

I’m doing H-L-M for squat and deadlift and alternating workouts with press and bench. Press has been stuck doing 3x3 for a little while now since I switched him from 3x5, and bench he recently had pain in his shoulder so I switched him from 3x5 (top set + back-offs) to 5x3 (sets across) at a reduced weight, narrowed his grip, had him use Voltaren gel very liberally, and he has been making small progress for the past few weeks and now his shoulder has healed well.

H-L-M has been going well for his deadlift for the past month, and I just started him on H-L-M for squat just last week.

The problem I’ve been having is he seems to go between feeling great and making PRs often, to all of a sudden complaining about some ache in his body that is preventing him from completing his workouts, per his judgement. Just since I added a medium day for squat he was unable to do his medium deadlift that workout because he said he felt a soreness/pain in his back after squats and didn’t want to do deadlift incase he might have hurt himself. His squats looked great with no critical errors in his form and they moved just fine for a medium day. I usually trust his word and let him decide if he wants to finish his workouts, mostly because I don’t want to hurt him. So the tricky part for me has been programming him correctly so he never has to make that decision to go forward or not with his workouts. I'm afraid I might be overdoing it, with his programming being too much stress, causing his body to accumulate fatigue often so we're going forward and backward constantly.

I’ve been considering switching him to a 2 day a week program, using the starr 5x5 for both squats (heavy and light) and only deadlifting once a week and doing chins the other workout, as laid out in PP. Either that or staying at 3 days a week but still changing his squats to starr 5x5 HLM or something less stressful than sets across. As for press I was thinking of having him do singles one day and benching the other day on a two days a week program. I’m just worried 2 days a week and the Starr method won’t be necessary and it will slow down the rate of his progress unneccesarily, but I’m more concerned that what I’m having him do is overtraining him and he can’t recover from it so that’s why he’s in cycles of feeling good and feeling crumby and unable to complete workouts.

Is it as simple as just having him do one-on-two-off to get extra recovery? Or should change my whole approach and be thinking about this as what is the least amount of stress we can get away with, and not, what's the most amount of stress we can get away with?

Any help would be great.

Thanks.

[Matt James]

Speaking as a 46 year old, 47 isn't that old, but you will need to carefully manage low back fatigue and overall lower body volume. First thing I would do is consolidate his heavy pulls to one day. Top set and if needed, a backoff or two. Don't make any changes to his squats until you've tried this for a few weeks.

Second, I would figure out a way to get him pressing a lot more. Ideally 5x5 on one day and somewhere around a total of 10 reps on the second. But you'll have to figure out what he can tolerate.

Consistency is important. He will need to figure out the difference between achy and injured and train accordingly.

[Maybach]

The thing that should clue you into your mistaken approach is that his complaints are inconsistent. This means they do not represent a trend of overreaching. Being a little sore after one exercise in one workout is not an indication of fatigue, not is it a reason not to try to complete the workout. If *actually fails* workouts as a consistent pattern, it might be worth making some adjustments. He hasn't. So both of you need to sack up, just a tad.

It would be really great if no one ever had a bad workout. But as it stands, if you never have a bad workout, you're probably not training, which means a program that avoids producing a bad workout is probably not a good program.

[heinz83]

The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40 – The Aasgaard Company

1. Buy the book. Understand the concepts of intensity dependence vs. volume sensitivity in people training after age 40. Read it before changing you programming.
2. He should eat lots of protein. At least 250g per day.
3. If you cant convince your dad to train through soreness, then progress is going to be inconsistent no matter what your programming looks like. That being said, reducing volume or frequency, using some of the programming ideas in the book may relieve a lot of that soreness. Food, sleep, and ibuprofen will help too.
4. In the bench press, did you coach him to point his elbows down towards his feet instead of perpendicular to his torso? Changing his grip may have fixed his elbows, but it comes at the cost of weight on the bar and leaves out a lot of muscle mass.
5. Tuesday's squat session actually looks more intense than Friday's squat session and I am not sure this is your intent. Look at the programs in the book for how to balance out heavy days and light days.

Kudos to you for training your dad. It looks like he has made good progress without disowning you. Keep it up!

[Cole Bares]

1. Buy the book. Understand the concepts of intensity dependence vs. volume sensitivity in people training after age 40. Read it before changing you programming.
2. He should eat lots of protein. At least 250g per day.
3. If you cant convince your dad to train through soreness, then progress is going to be inconsistent no matter what your programming looks like. That being said, reducing volume or frequency, using some of the programming ideas in the book may relieve a lot of that soreness. Food, sleep, and ibuprofen will help too.
4. In the bench press, did you coach him to point his elbows down towards his feet instead of perpendicular to his torso? Changing his grip may have fixed his elbows, but it comes at the cost of weight on the bar and leaves out a lot of muscle mass.
5. Tuesday's squat session actually looks more intense than Friday's squat session and I am not sure this is your intent. Look at the programs in the book for how to balance out heavy days and light days.

Kudos to you for training your dad. It looks like he has made good progress without disowning you. Keep it up!

"Buy the book"..... Wow, that's so original. If I knew and understood everything about programming every age and level of training complexity of every lifter I wouldn't be on here asking for your help, not that your help means much because you didn't say one thing on this post that gave any bit of insight to my problem. And yes, it is a real problem for me because it involves something that is broken that needs a solution. If you actually read my post you would understand that I have been making a lot of progress with him up until recently which is why I am asking for advice on what to change/adjust in his programming.

Yeah it's pretty obvious we should all eat a lot of protein. I can't control what my clients do in their diets.

It's not that he doesn't want to train through soreness, he is convinced he is hurt and will further hurt himself if he continues the workouts. And this has not always been the case. In order to get to where he is now he had to train through a lot of soreness. He is also getting older, and he has run out of room in his NLP. Not everyone can do starting strength like they are a 22 year old man, even though everyone on here wants to tell you the solution is "not being a pussy", because that's what The Almighty Rippetoe said in the gospel of starting strength radio. Although its fun to watch Mark be the comedically rude, stoic man that he is, its not funny when someone like me comes on here for actual help and then is disappointed when I realize that all starting strength fans are just as stupid as the bottom 3% in the comments from the haters. Use your brain and give some real advice or get off your computer and go touch grass for once.

His shoulder is completely healed now and he is back to benching like normal however doing 3's instead of 5's at slightly more sets.

It is not my intent that Tuesdays squat session looks more intense than Fridays. If you feel this is the case, it would be appropriate for you to offer a solution that might fix this. Since it sounds like you've read the book and I haven't, Im sure you could tell me something I don't know. Although it sounds to me like you have never coached anyone before, let alone even read the books, because you can't actually seem to give real advice. You just keep referring me to the books. It's a reoccurring theme Ive been noticing from you and other SS fans, and wanna be coaches, posting on these forums. I think most of the people smart people posting questions on here have read the books, and the books don't even have all the answers. Experience gives you answers which you clearly don't have.

I appreciate the kind words, I just think you should maybe be more useful if you're going to be posting on here. Just because Rip talks like an asshole doesn't mean you need to. I have not once seen Andy Baker say anything that wasn't helpful and that didn't add to the conversation. Unfortunately you didn't add a lick on information to this conversation. But thanks anyways.

Thank you, Matt. This is helpful. It's good to hear some advice coming from someone who's my dads age. I will definitely get him pressing more and consolidate his deadlift and see how it goes. Does my squat programming look good or is there anything you would change about that if he still has low back fatigue after reducing deadlift volume?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Cole, old buddy, this is not a good 2nd post. Before you post: READ THIS

Before posting a thread on this board, please do the following:

Read the book(s). This forum is not a substitute for the texts upon which the method and model we use here are based. Basic questions about topics that are addressed at length in the foundational texts may get short answers, or not answered at all. Obviously this does not apply to follow-up questions, clarifications, counter-analyses, etc. However, the basic material of the book answers many questions we receive, so don't be surprised if we direct you there when appropriate.

Nobody on this board owes you a goddamn thing, so try to keep that in mind. Your apology should follow immediately.

[Matt James]

Thank you, Matt. This is helpful. It's good to hear some advice coming from someone who's my dads age. I will definitely get him pressing more and consolidate his deadlift and see how it goes. Does my squat programming look good or is there anything you would change about that if he still has low back fatigue after reducing deadlift volume?

I don't have any personal experience with HLM other than reading about it. Are you planning to work up to multiple sets on the heavy day? As I recall the Barbell Prescription goes into a lot of detail on setting it up and running it, I would start there and assess over the course of the next few weeks.

[Cole Bares]

True, no one owes me anything here. I’m just seeking information and insight on others experiences that might help me with coaching.

I should not have replied the way I did. I am very sorry for my inappropriate response and I am sorry to heinz83. And sorry Mark, for wasting your time.

[heinz83]

True, no one owes me anything here. I’m just seeking information and insight on others experiences that might help me with coaching.

I should not have replied the way I did. I am very sorry for my inappropriate response and I am sorry to heinz83. And sorry Mark, for wasting your time.

No worries man! Good luck.