Constantly feeling stiff and tired?

Hello,

I am a 44 year old male that has been doing the NLP for several months now. For the last 3 months, I have transitioned to the 3 day a week "advanced" novice program where Wednesdays squats are 80% of Mondays and added chinups. While this certainly has helped, I feel like I am always feeling stiff (especially legs) and tired. With that said, I am still able to add weight to the bar every time, though my increments are no longer 5/10 lbs. :) Here is where I currently am:

Squat - 315
Bench - 250
Press - 160
DL - 360

Given that I am able to still put additional weight on the bar, do I suck it up and keep pushing forward? Do others feel like this? At what point should I consider moving to a 4 day split to increase recovery time or some other option? Given that I am able to still add weight to the bar, I am hesitant to change what seems to be still working.

-Josh

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Originally Posted by gemini929

Hello,

I am a 44 year old male that has been doing the NLP for several months now. For the last 3 months, I have transitioned to the 3 day a week "advanced" novice program where Wednesdays squats are 80% of Mondays and added chinups. While this certainly has helped, I feel like I am always feeling stiff (especially legs) and tired. With that said, I am still able to add weight to the bar every time, though my increments are no longer 5/10 lbs. :) Here is where I currently am:

Squat - 315
Bench - 250
Press - 160
DL - 360

Given that I am able to still put additional weight on the bar, do I suck it up and keep pushing forward? Do others feel like this? At what point should I consider moving to a 4 day split to increase recovery time or some other option? Given that I am able to still add weight to the bar, I am hesitant to change what seems to be still working.

-Josh

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The true end of the novice linear progression is the closest thing to training hell you will ever experience. It is an abysmal existence where the shear joy of completing yet another days fives is immediately replaced by the horror of the thought of adding more weight to the bar next time. The only thing worse than the end of the novice linear progression is the Texas Method, which is, indeed, hell on earth.


If you have the drive to do so, yes, keep adding weight to the bar. EVERYONE gets to this point. This is the part of the training, where things have become hard, improvements are not guaranteed, and the drive to quit is strong, that really separates the strong from the perpetually weak. As much as this phase of training sucks, you will look back in admiration of this time because you persevered. You will learn more about yourself during this time than at any other time in your training.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gemini929

I am a 44 year old male that has been doing the NLP for several months now. For the last 3 months, I have transitioned to the 3 day a week "advanced" novice program where Wednesdays squats are 80% of Mondays and added chinups. While this certainly has helped, I feel like I am always feeling stiff (especially legs) and tired. With that said, I am still able to add weight to the bar every time, though my increments are no longer 5/10 lbs. :) Here is where I currently am:

Squat - 315
Bench - 250
Press - 160
DL - 360

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Height/bodyweight?

The First Three Questions | Mark Rippetoe

260 lb, 6" 1'

Clearly I have weight to lose, but that hasn't been my focus so far. I'd like to focus on gaining strength and worry about addressing that later. I am consuming lots of protein and the scale seems to be going slowly up further. With that said, my legs don't seem to be recovering as fast as they did several weeks ago. I am already using 80% of Monday's weight on Wednesdays and going heavy again on Fridays. The feeling of tiredness/stiffness doesn't go away before the next workout begins. As Will mentioned above, maybe it is what it is. I just don't know. At this point, I am only adding 2.5 lbs to my squat on M/W and ~7 lbs on my deadlift. My bench and press continue to increase, but I am only adding 2.5/1.5 lbs respectively. I got to the point where adding 2.5 lbs to my press wouldn't work. Though I haven't run into the intensity/volume problem yet with these small increments, I am not clear if these increments are still to small either.

What do you feel is my next step?

Rest between sets?

The First Three Questions:

Question 1: I am resting 1 minute between warmup sets and 3 minutes between work sets.

Question 2: I am using the following weight increments between workouts (Advanced Novice)

Question 3: I am 2-3 protein shakes per day (30g protein each) in addition to 3 protein rich meals. While I don't have a specific calorie count, the scale is slowly creeping upward. As far as sleep goes, I average 6-8 hours per night.

Reading through the forums, it seems it is common to get your "T" checked out around my age. I haven't done that yet.

Did you read the article, or did you just answer the questions?

I read the article. In general though, it seems to be targeted at someone who is stuck and isn't making progress adding weight to the bar. I am still making progress, albeit slow progress. My issue is that I feel that fatigue is accumulating and isn't dissipating fast enough between workouts.

Resting between sets (question 1) doesn't seem to be the issue as my issue isn't fatigue between sets, its fatigue between workouts.

Adding to much weight (question 2) to each exercise doesn't seem to be my issue either. If anything, I would expect the amount of weight I am adding to eventually not be enough of an increase in intensity to drive an adaptation. The increases I am using aren't far off from what is discussed in the article.

As far as recovery is concerned (question 3), I feel that I am getting enough rest (6-8 hours) and consuming enough calories/protein based on what I have read. While I don't have a specific calorie count, my weight continues to climb.

All being said, recovery is my issue as fatigue isn't dissipating before the next workout. If the answer was in that article, I missed it as I still don't understand how I can address this.

Get your testosterone checked.

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Originally Posted by gemini929

As far as recovery is concerned (question 3), I feel that I am getting enough rest (6-8 hours) .

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I have read that Roger Federer and LeBron James sleep an average of 12 hours a night, and other pros sleep 10 hours a night.