42 years old, male, no injuries.
Squat 5RM PR: 315 (Jan 2020)
Background
Had a few recent major life events (bought and moved in to a fixer upper, and my daughter was born). In between those, I lifted sporadically (not a program). With those major events passed, I can sleep adequately again and I’m maintaining a disciplined diet. So I resumed more disciplined training.
A few weeks ago, I started out the NLP with squats at 225. I added 10 pounds per workout. 275 felt great. When I moved up to 285, I could only do 2 reps per set. It felt 50 pounds heavier.
At my next workout (Friday), I backed off to 250 and did 3 sets of 5. This morning (Monday), I did 255. I managed 3 sets of 5, but just barely. I’m not sure why I moved up to 275 so easily at first and then every workout after that has been so difficult.
Am I doing something wrong? Is this normal? I did 315 x 5 less than a year ago and now I’m struggling to crank out 20% less weight.
01-25-2021, 07:04 AM
Hayden-William Courtland
When you started up again were you squatting 3 days a week? You may be generating too much stress too quickly. 285 is reasonably close to 315, so a light day and 5lb jumps may be in order. Also, what was your programming like when you hit 315, was that in a NLP? If not, you would likely not be able to NLP up to that number and a programming modification would be needed before then.
Last year I did NLP up to around 285. Then I started doing just one set of 5 and one set of 3 to move up to 315. Where did I get that idea? I don’t know. It just seemed to work. I did 315x5 and 3x335 just before my daughter was born.
So, as you note, I guess it makes sense that this time I stalled at 285.
And that link that Rip posted had a nugget I wasn’t aware of. For some reason, I thought resting for more than 5 minutes between sets was cheating. Today I rested as long as I felt necessary (5 min and then 7 min). Today’s sets of 265 felt easy. I’ll be racking 270 on Monday.
02-08-2021, 04:45 AM
timmathews
It worked
Backed off, added 5 lbs per workout.
This morning: 285 x 5 x 3.
Racking 290 on Wednesday.
I re-read Practical Programming over the last week. I should have done so a while ago.
