Light and Medium Days in HLM Programming
This is my first post to the forums, and I hope it isn’t too long. Please be gentle. I appreciate the time and energy that you guys put into the forums. I know you do it for free on your own time.
About me: Male, 42, 5’10”, 300 lbs. Following Starting Strength programming since July 2017.
Recent PRs:
Squat: 465x5
Deadlift: 405x5
Bench: 215x3
Press: 137.5x5
Power Clean: 145x3 (recently added to training—delayed using it due to a thoracic spine injury)
Some background: I started lifting seriously in 2017 because I was tired of being fat and weak. Due to injuries and family issues, I ran NLP a few times, and now I’m much stronger than I’ve ever been in my life. Since February, I’ve been following a basic HLM approach with a bench press focus (for now), increasing weights each week. About a month ago, I reset my weights and began rotating heavy days between 5s, 3s, and 1s.
My question: I’m not sure what to do with light and medium days. Right now light day is 80% of my heavy 5s for three sets of five, and medium day is 90% of my heavy 5s for four sets of five. I’m using the same weights and reps on those days for three weeks at a time, but I wonder if I’d be better off waving the light and medium day weights or rotating rep schemes for each cycle of 5s, 3s, and 1s. Any ideas about weights and rep schemes would be appreciated.