I am 49 years old and I have never lifted weight until recently. The I started to follow the StrongLifts 5x5 program. I was quite disciplined until they shut down my gym here were I live.
One observation was that towards the end it started to feel like I did not properly recover between sessions. I have now read most of Starting Strength and selected parts of Practical Programming and next week when they open the gym again, I plan to start all over again with the Starting Strength program. I believe the 3x5 will suit me better and I tried powercleans a couple of times before and it surely is a fun exercise.
I was doing quite good with squats and deadlifts, progressing linearly for almost 3 months. However, I started to flatten out my progress in overhead press and bench press quite early, even by micro-loading.
My question is simply, are there any modifications I should do to the program to get a more steady progress for my upper-body training?
1. I rest 1.5min it the previous set feels "easy", 3min if it feels "heavy" and 5-6min if close to fail or fail.
2. The increase is determined by my lightest plates which are 1.25lb. The other plates are metric, so the increase is either 2.5lb or 3.1lb depending of I add the 1.25lb plates or 1.25kg plates. If I fail the last set, I usually try again next session when I will probably fail again. Then I deload and start again
3. I do eat and sleep adequately. I try to get my daily protein and calorie requirements, including whey protein milk shakes and some creatine. I do gain weight when I'm training and I have no problems progressing in squats and deadlifts.
I am just very weak in my upper-body since I used to do marathons when I was younger.
08-05-2020, 06:14 AM
Hayden-William Courtland
I would get used to taking 4-5 min rest between all work sets regardless of whether you feel it's needed or not. Poor eating and sleeping will for sure derail you, so try and look into way to improve both. If you think you can make some improvements in these areas, you could do a small resent for your upper body lifts and implement those changes. This may help you run them out a bit longer. However, you are probably still pretty close to needing some advanced novice programming changes for the upper body lifts.
