35, and getting Stronger (almost) Every Day
Name: Andrew Chambers
Age: 35
Height: 5' 7"
Weight: 185 lbs at start of barbell training. 189 lbs at Week 4.
I've decided to start a log here to have add some incentive and accountability to weekly workouts. I would describe my programming as "mostly novice". I'm not obsessing about adding weight every workout. Two main reasons for this: 1) I'm only willing to gain a moderate amount of weight to gain strength. My target is to increase from 185 to 200 lbs over perhaps 3 months, and then re-evaluate. If gaining strength remains a priority at that point, I might opt to green-light additional weight. 2) I've been relatively inactive for long enough to feel an increased potential for injury. The upshot is that - while embracing my Novice status and being eager to steadily increase the weight on the bar - I'm in no rush to exhaust increases and am willing to be patient.
This first post will be a long one, covering approx. 6 months of relevant 'backstory.' Then I'll switch to short posts that back-log approx. 4 weeks of training to bring things up to date.
January-April. I decide that fat, weak and sore all of the time is so c.2012-2018 and it's time for a change. I get control of what I'm eating. Over 4 months I drop weight at a steady rate, from 220 to 190 lbs. During this time my activity is increased - mostly walking, stretching, some jogging and some flirting with HIIT.
May-July. I increase calories to maintenance levels, increase protein intake, and start full body resistance training with dumbbells. It feels great - but I'm not exactly adding much muscle or strength. At a certain point, I finally realize that goblet squats and DB RDLs are not going to be sufficient to add muscle to my frame. Research convinces me that what I need is a barbell, and so I decide on purchasing a decent power rack + barbell set for my basement. Everything up to now has only been prologue.
August. The first 3 weeks of barbell training aren't SSLP. During this time I was actually using Barbell Medicine's 'beginner prescription', which jumps around to different rep-ranges using RPE. Pros: It gave me lots of sets/reps to practice form on the lifts, and helped me gauge a suitable starting point for the eventual SSLP. Cons: The volume was too much for me to recover from and consistently improve. On top of that, improvements were difficult to track with so many varying metrics. Around the end of August, I read the Blue Book and decided to commit to the measurable simplicity of 3x5s.
Sept-Oct. This is where the individual weekly back-logged posts will pick up below. For simplicity's sake, I'll end up labelling my first 3x5 workout as "Week One", with everything that has come before this point only setting the stage.
Diet. By the time August rolled around I had reached 185 lbs and was maintaining that weight at ~2100 calories. With barbell training, I increased my calories to 2500 in the first week ... 2800 in the second ... 3000 in the third ... and now I'm up to 3500 calories/day, aiming for about 200g Protein. My weight didn't appreciably go up until I got over 3000 calories, which surprised me based on the initial break-even point of just over 2000.
Workout Schedule. At the time of posting (that would = Week 4 below) my weekly programming looks like this:
Saturday: Squat / Bench / Deadlift / Pullups
Monday: Squat / Press / Rows / Face-pulls
Wednesday: Squat / Bench / Deadlift / Chin-ups
Thursday: Press / pull-up negatives
Week Eight. 2019.11.02--2019.11.07
Prev. week avg weight = 191.3 lbs
Saturday:
Squat: 185x8 / 185x5 / 185x7 [The goal today was simply to put in volume with adjustments to elbow position]
Bench: 160x5x3 [PR. In fact, I actually squeezed out a 6th rep on the last set.]
Deadlift: 5x255 [Finally back to increasing the weight while holding onto the improved form.]
Pullups: 4@3 / 5@3 [Was just exhausted by this point today - Pullups suffered a little bit.]
Monday
Squat: 195x5x3 [Experiment of the week: allowing a wider grip to see if it lets me pull my elbows down. Moderate success so far.]
Press: 107x5 / 107x5 / 107x4 [Close to a new PR number. Here's the thing: if I had attempted this at 105 today, I might've got the same rep results (or - at best - just repeated 105x5x3). Instead, attempting the next weight gave an encouraging look at where my limit has progressed to.]
Bench: 170x3 / 155x6 / 155x7
Wednesday
Squat: 185x6 / 185x8 / 185x7 [Looking for working volume to practice the wide grip / elbows down. It's not perfect, but it might be good enough to hop back on the LP]
Bench: 163x5x3 [PR. Even though I'm usually going with more intermediate PR / volume / prep days each week for Bench Press, this week just felt good enough to tackle 2 5x3 increases.]
Deadlift: 260x4 [Apparently, counting to 5 can be hard sometimes. I video'd this set and had a hunch there weren't 5. Definitely could've got there. Will move on to 265 next time.]
Chins: 8@1 / 7@1 / 7@1
Thursday:
Press: 107x5x3 [PR]
NOTES:
Next week I'll travel for a few days. This will involve rearranging my workouts to have 2 barbell sessions + one lighter DB session in a hotel 'fitness centre'. This will be the closest I've come to taking any time off/missed workouts since August.
Looking back, progress looks like this:
Deadlift: 185lbs --> 260lbs (with a long stretch of fixing form)
Squat: 160lbs --> 215lbs (with half of the time spent resetting and working hard on form)
Bench: 140lbs --> 163lbs (hard-fought all the way. I've previously witnessed almost no growth in bench.)
Press: 95lbs --> 107lbs (95 was a high forced starting point. Progress has been slow but steady after early stall.)
Pullups: From sets of 8 with "level 6" assistance to sets of 8 with "level 4"assistance.
Weight: 185lbs --> 192lbs
After this upcoming modified week, I'll be diving back into weight increases on DL and Squat - but I'm not sure how far I should take Squats in their present state. Just hoping that continued practice helps to iron out some of the issues. Might just get desperate enough to post some more form checks...
One of those elusive landmarks which I've never accomplished is to bench my own bodyweight. Might've came within 10 lbs in high school - but never progressed in those days. I was always confused as to why my random workouts never seemed to increase my strength output. At this rate, I'll be making my first attempt at benching my weight sometime before 2020 at 35 years young.
