Originally Posted by
Yonason Herschlag
After five years of progression on the SS program, it’s extremely hard to make any further progress in strength gains. What’s even more frustrating is that one has to constantly work extremely hard just to maintain one’s strength.
I am not qualified to give advice on this subject, but perhaps sharing what has helped my sanity against these frustrations can help some others in similar situations.
For me, seeing daily progress in something gives me emotional satisfaction.
I can easily progress in aerobic ability, as I’m in poor shape in that arena. I can also make some progress in physical appearance by doing some hypertrophy programming and body building protocols such as focusing more on inclined bench, and/or isolation exercises for biceps or certain areas of deltoids that appear underdeveloped. I’m thinking about taking up Tai-chi and perhaps get some boxing lessons. At 55 years old, my blood pressure has gotten a little out of hand, so focusing on aerobics, flexibility (stretching) would probably benefit my heart-health. I also had some tendinitis issues in my pecs that held back my bench, and I’ve found that high volume work on rotator cuffs has been beneficial for this.
Long story short, all this alternative physical activity is shoring up my physical weaknesses (a chain is as strong as its weakest link) and benefiting my overall health, while the lapse from the SS protocol has resulted in some losses in power-lifting strength. I’ve managed to minimize losses by maintaining a power-lifting protocol once a week, and I plan to cycle back into SS on and off in the future.
My main point is that by getting out of the tunnel vision of ONLY SS programming, for me personally, I see incorporating hypertrophy protocols with a broader array of programming will benefit my mind and health and in the long run (10-20 years from now) I feel that I will be able to lift heavier than would I focus my entire life exclusively on power-lifting.