Why are Mondays such a drag?

[Steve Hill]

Since everyone posts stats:
Age: 45
height: 5' 10"
Wt: 220-ish

Today's workout was squat 390x5x3, press 125x5x3, DL 425x5x3.

I've been using a novice progression after an extended layoff to work back up to weights I was formerly high-bar squatting / DL'ing. Increment is 5# on squat and 10# on DL.

My question is this: why do I struggle on Mondays but do fine on W/FR? By struggle, I mean that 390 was hard, but 395 on Wednesday and 400 on Friday, will, if the tend holds, be almost easy, and certainly easier than today. Is this a work capacity thing?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Probably the partying.

[Justinnnnnn]

I think Mondayitis is a pretty common thing, regardless of the level of partying over the weekend. If you are free Saturday mornings and don't usually have too many heavy friday nights, I'd recommend going Tue/Thu/Sat. The last few months this has made for much better workouts for myself than M/W/F

[MikeC1]

Isn't it obvious Steve? Your body likes to lift with one day off. Give it two days and a small but noticeable amount of detraining occurs and you end up feeling a little flat on Mondays. But what do I know, I could be wrong; if your schedule permits why not try lifting every other day and see if that isn't the problem. And yes cut down on the booze and late night partying.

[Steve Hill]

I should have been clearer: This happens on the first workout each week, be it Monday or Tuesday (I'm doing T-Th-Sat this week due to the holiday on Monday).

And no, Rip, I do not have a spectacular party life. Things are pretty slow out in the sticks.

[jlwilson]

Uh-oh. Sounds like somebody's got a case of the Monday's.

[FKYT]

Something similar happens to me, and I go Fri-Sun-Tues. I guess I get a little lazy after the extra day off.

[nisora33]

Steve, I've noticed the same thing happening for as far back as I can remember. I've also thought about why it happens, and my (probably bullshit) theory is, at least in my case--where I don't do a helluva lot physically over weekends--the whole organism just sort of falls into a slump (opposite of potentiation). When Monday rolls around, it's like there's a mental-physical disconnect (I go to move the weight, and it's like I've got the rough outline of the lift down, but things aren't quite dialed-in. I don't think this is "detraining" proper, but your body (and mind) needs to know that you're going to continue to expect it to perform, so even doing something low intensity could help curb that slump. Have you considered doing very light sets of the movements on Saturdays, nothing intense but enough to ensure everything stays "dialed in"? Now, just as sure as I type that, somebody on the board is going to take that as permission to have another full-blown workout on weekends...

Oh, and my love-affair with bourbon could have something to do with all of this as well.

[BryanM]

Isn't it obvious Steve? Your body likes to lift with one day off. Give it two days and a small but noticeable amount of detraining occurs and you end up feeling a little flat on Mondays. But what do I know, I could be wrong;

Came to the same conclusion, myself.

I don't know if the average person can build up to a 1:1 onff schedule with a program with 3 worksets; never managed to make it work persistently. I value frequency over volume now, but that's only my current opinion.