In my youth I was a distance runner, ran a few marathons, etc., and never ever had a lick of upper body strength. Haven't really run for 30 years as my knees and hamstrings are a mess after all the thousands of not-gentle miles I put them through. My back has always been rather squirrely (which runs in the male line of my family), so now at 51 I've decided to try and get in some semblance of shape so I can hopefully teach a golf ball a lesson or two.
I sort of started SS last summer on my own, and advanced too fast and tweaked my back something fierce in early Dec (right before going on a two week vacation with the family which scored my BIG points with the Chief), so I took a solid 2 months off and completely deloaded, and more importantly spent a good long afternoon with Adam Skillin who very very patiently showed me proper form and set me on a schedule that fits my life as best as possible. Like I said, I'm 51, 6', 215lbs, spend several hours a day crammed into a seat commuting on a bus back and forth into Manhattan, and if I'm lucky I probably average 5 hrs max of sleep per night, so I'm Not Doing The Program in several areas but I do have the eating and drinking covered.
Adam set me on a 3 times per week plan:
Tues: Light Squats/OverHead Press/Chins;
Thurs: Med Squats/Dumb Bell Press/Chins ;
Sunday: Heavy Squats/Bench Press (which I'd never done before)/Dead Lifts
So here we go
Sat Feb 5 session with Adam
SQ 135
DL 155
BP 90
OHP 50
i have very poor shoulder flexibility, so I have the bar very high. with Adam I held it as low as possible and my shoulders ached like bloody hell. have to work with the broomstick to stretch them out as much as possible.
Tues 2/10/15 light day
SQ 125 2x5
OHP 65 2x5
Chins 2
Thurs 2/12/15 med
SQ 155 2x5
DBP worked up to 60 2x10
Chins 3
Sun 2/15/15
SQ 165 3x5
BP 100 3x5
DL 185 1x5
Tues 2/17/15
SQ 135 3x5
OHP 75 3x5
Chins 4
Thurs 2/19/15
SQ 155 3x5
DBP 70 3x10
Chins 2
Sun 2/22/15
snow, spent the day shovelling
Tues 2/24/15
missed, life kept me from gym
Thurs 2/26/15
SQ 175 3x5
DBP 75 33x10
OHP 65 3x5
DL 125 2x5
a stressful few days made me really just want to do a ton of work on Thurs, so I did the OHPs and light DLs but it felt REALLY good to slam the iron into the ground on the DLs
Sun 3/1/15
SQ 185 3x5
BP 105 3x5
DL 185 1x5
felt good, I didn't want to jump up too much given that I had missed a session or two in the previous week.
so far happy with progress but i need to keep my increases slow and steady and not try to do too much too soon. It's a marathon, not a sprint.