Reply With QuoteSo what have I learned during the 5/3/1 cycles with my attempts at PR’s? Several very useful things. It seems that this format works pretty well for me, at least so far. I have begun to learn some of my performance parameters when it comes to max singles. Getting too close to my max attempt with a warm up is counterproductive. What is truly astounding for me is discovering that I still have some unrealized strength potential at this late remove. I had firmly believed over the last 5 years that I was just about completely tapped out and would have to content myself with trying to hold on to what I had managed to achieve from my previous decades of lifting for as long as I could. Well much to my surprise, I haven’t got to the end point just yet. Incredible!
The last several years have had me asking myself a question that was posed by someone else on another website; “How strong is strong enough?” I can’t imagine I want a great deal more than I have achieved already, but I would like to get to a body weight overhead press and to 315 in the bench press. As for upper back strength, I have already accomplished way more than I ever anticipated with the dumbbell rows and chins. I think I may just let these coast for a while since my upper body pulls are way stronger than anything else. As for my lower body strength, if I was prepared to risk my low back, I know I could hit much bigger numbers there as well. When you wake up with a creaky complaining back in the mornings, you give this a lot of thought though. I’ll stick with the safer movements for me with the hip belt squats and build up the sumo deadlift to maybe a 350 single, but even for the latter, I’m not taking unnecessary liberties for bragging rights. The trap bar is safer for me and I may just revert back to that if I feel I need to. So far though, so good with the sumos. As much as I enjoy the challenge of lifting and finding and testing my limits, jujitsu is still my priority. I do not want to risk an injury that ends my participation in that activity.
In a way, the timing of this is really better now rather than earlier in my life. If I had figured this stuff out in my earlier years, I know just what would have happened. I’d have gotten bit by the competition bug bad. That would have lead to worse injuries than I got in judo during my late teens and early 20’s after college. As I have described in a post elsewhere on this board, I broke every toe on both of my feet at least once, I dislocated a shoulder, wrenched a knee, was concussed twice, and broke my ankle in the second round of eliminations in the NCAA regionals. I shudder to think of what I might have attempted when trying to squat or deadlift too much and damaging something important like a knee, a quad, or my back from it. How do I know this? At my age, you have had plenty of time to get to know yourself, your compulsions, and your need to feed the rat. I have a strong competitive drive and more ego than is good for me. It seems chance and happenstance has saved the best for last.
When I look back at my old excel spreadsheet logs, and I have 6 year’s worth of them, I realized that in the 6 months since I started trap bar deadlifts again this year, I had added nearly 2 inches to my chest now at 51”. My arms grew from just under 17” to 7 ½”, and my quads went from 26” to 27 ½”. Hell my wrist even grew from 7 ½” to nearly 7 ¾”. I know, we’re not about the suspect measuring game here, but even at my age my vanity is still strong enough to wonder about that stuff as I felt the sleeves and back on my XL polo shirts along with the legs of my size 36 Dockers getting tighter. So I got out the tape. All this happened when I cut the number of exercises in my routine in half and kept to one top work set, stopping at just under failure, with mainly low reps in the 1-5 range. I added 5 pounds to my bench press and that could have been 10 if I had not screwed up my warmup progression. I added 5 pounds to my overhead press and I am confident I could have added a couple more if I had not been as conservative as I was in microloading. I added 20 pounds to my hip belt squat, 25 pounds to my one arm dumbbell row, and 5 pounds to my pullup. The learning process continues.
I re-discovered some of the old exercises that gave me the willies; the bench press and the sumo deadlift. It seems that as long as I pay very close attention to good form and not go crazy on adding weight, I can do them safely.
Some other stuff I learned; keep it short, keep it simple, and use big basic movements. It may not work for everyone all the time but it worked for this geezer! Oh, and I lost over 10 pounds in the last 2 months despite cutting further back on my cardio. Speaking of cardio, I learned more about the interplay of cardio and lifting. On higher volume days (5’s and 5+) I get 70-75% of MHR with the attendant (although unintended) cardio benefits. On low volume PR sessions, this runs to 60-65% of MHR. Once I get my weight where I want it, I can probably reduce cardio some more. This past week I discovered my blood pressure spikes higher right after I get up in the mornings. I now have another med to take at night along with the other blood pressure one I already take and the cholesterol med. The doc says I needed to lose some more weight (!), but that will just be the next long term goal to strive for in 2011. I know I can do it with more assiduous attention to my eating and potent potables. Living longer to lift better and not have a stroke is an excellent incentive.
I read about all this stuff years ago, thought about it a lot, but didn’t act on it because I didn’t believe it was really for me or that I was ready for it. That stuff was for the real elite, and I wasn’t one of them. Never was, never would be. It wasn’t until I found this website and the other people who comprise it that I decided to dive in after it. Kilgore’s age adjusted charts were really the driving factor, as in try it now or never. Kilgore provided me with a mental framework very similar to an old article by John McCallum called “Your Measurements” in that collection of his articles, The Keys to Progress. The passage goes like this:
“But if he knows better, he can see that the published measurements have no bearing . . . He can accurately analyze how bad the distortion is and forget the whole thing.”
So there it is, once you know reality, and where you sit in relationship to that reality and others in it, you have a true perspective. And that, to conclude this lengthy entry, is where I am just now.
