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Thread: SS in 1 hour sessions

  1. #1
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    Default SS in 1 hour sessions

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    Hi,

    I was wondering if you could help me out with a problem I've had lately. I'm a 36 year old male, 6'1", 190 lbs body weight. I've been doing SS for the past few months and I was very happy with my progress, until recently. Due to several limiting factors, I can only train for one hour, three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). This was fine at the beginning of my LP, but as the weight gets heavier, it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to finish each workout in one hour. I feel I'm not getting enough rest between sets and I often have no time to finish my pulls at the end of the session. I've been stuck on all my lifts for the past few weeks. Here are my 5RMs at the moment:
    Squat: 265
    Press: 130
    Deadlift: 305
    Bench: 160
    Power Cleans: 135

    I've already tried to do the warm up sets of the next lift between my working sets, but I still can't finish in one hour. Since adding sessions or doing longer sessions is not an option for me, I was thinking of making each session shorter, by doing only two lifts per session. This is what I had in mind:
    Monday: Squat 3x5, Bench Press 3x5.
    Wednesday: Deadlift 1x5, Press 3x5.
    Friday: Squat 3x5, Power Cleans 5x3.

    Does this make sense? And if it does, should I modify the number of sets and/or reps for each lift? I'd really appreciate any advice you could give me.

  2. #2
    Brent Carter's Avatar
    Brent Carter is offline Owner, Starting Strength Dallas
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    That looks fine. Hopefully you can put yourself in a position that you can train longer than 60min.

    Obviously anything less than "doing the program" is less than ideal BUT another alternative is to superset your work sets as well. I do this with some of my "personal training" clients because the standard model is a 60min session. It's tough though and certainly not ideal...

  3. #3
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    Just a couple of thoughts, as time was always a limiting factor for me, until recently...

    What about ditching power cleans instead of one press workout? I've always found the 5 work sets awfully long, and at 36 it's not as important (or is it Brent?)... When I ran SS a second time after 4 years, I did more or less at the beginning:
    M: squat, press mvt supersetted with chins/row
    W: squat, press mvt, DL
    F: squat, press mvt supersetted with chins/row

    with bench press and press rotated. Supersetting press with chins/rows is not too difficult (at least it's less hard than supersetting squat with anything), so timewise you almost do only 2 lifts; wednesday you do 3 lifts, but the last one has only 1 work set. With advanced novice, which is not far if you're a few months in, light squat on wednesday makes the extra work set not noticeable as you rest less for squats. I don't know if this setup is good or not, but at least I made progress.

    Also don't overwarmup. I trained in my unheated garage, and even in the middle of winter, my warmup was fairly quick: no stretching, no "activation drills", no treadmill, no stationary, no pause between warmups. Don't focus on weights it's just an example:
    enter garage, straight to the rack, empty bar x 20, 135x5, 185x3, 205x1, 235x1, 255x1, all this while rushing plates loading/deloading. 1'-2' rest, then I was good for the first work set @ 265.

    So with all this combined: 10/15' squat warmup+25' (squats+press warmup)+20/25' (press/pulling) and I was done in less than 1h.

  4. #4
    Brent Carter's Avatar
    Brent Carter is offline Owner, Starting Strength Dallas
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    Totally agreed. This is solid.

  5. #5
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    This is essentially what I’ve been doing, and it’s been working fine for me, though I’d have been happier doing the program as written. I’ve found supersetting works wel with pull-ups, since you don’t need another bar and there’s not a lot of set-up. The fatigue from the supersets is a bit of a beat, though, so be ready for that.

    The one issue I’m running into now is that my upper body movements are stalling, moving to 5X3 means extra rest time between sets, and I’m not sure I can make it out of the gym on time to get to work, especially since rest periods are getting longer now. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for the best alternative to 5X3 that doesn’t involve extra sets.

  6. #6
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    I was about to post almost this exact question after another disappointing squat session (38 yr old male)

    I'm limited to an hour at what is basically a commercial gym. I am able to do 4 days a week though (M T Th F).

    I think I'm going to try Yaums's template.

    Brent - any modification you would suggest for a 4 day plan?

    Maybe
    M: squat, press mvt & chins
    T: squat, press
    TH: deadlift, press
    F: squat, press

    Thanks.

  7. #7
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    For what my experience is worth I back Yaums' statement 100%. I've ran press & chins in a superset to PRs on both, and it saved a good deal of time. Personally, bench & rows superset didn't go quite as well, but that's more of a "me problem" due to gym setup, hardly a valid reason. It's one of those changes that's technically NDTP but it works well.

  8. #8
    Brent Carter's Avatar
    Brent Carter is offline Owner, Starting Strength Dallas
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    starting strength coach development program
    Quote Originally Posted by Erik Y View Post
    I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for the best alternative to 5X3 that doesn’t involve extra sets.
    Not really. That kind of defeats the purpose of checking the rep scheme to both get the heavier weight AND get the volume required.

    Brent - any modification you would suggest for a 4 day plan?

    Maybe
    M: squat, press mvt & chins
    T: squat, press
    TH: deadlift, press
    F: squat, press
    Might as well go to a standard 4 day upper/lower split at this point

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