Lifts stalling at Phase 3 of SS

[KrnxMan86]

Hey Rip,

I was wondering if I could get your personal advice on my situation. I'm currently on Phase 3 of SS.

The other week I deloaded my squat from 280 lbs to 230 lbs, after I struggled to complete the reps with that weight, and worked back up in 20 lbs increments each workout, before getting back up to 270 lbs adding 5 lbs from there on. Just last workout of last week I squeezed out 3x5 with 275 lbs.
I plan on doing a lighter squat day on the middle workout due to the increasing weight.
However, today I was only able to achieve 5 reps with 280 lbs the first time then I could only squeeze out 3 then 1.

I don't know if it was just down to an "off day", since my bench press sucked as well, I could only do 3x3,3,2 with 210 lbs when I achieved 3x5 last time.

How do I overcome plateaus like these? Is it time to employ a HLM approach?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Age/height/weight/sex/diet/video of your squat/page number in PPST3 that says to take a 20% deload.

[KrnxMan86]

I'm 20 years old, male, 5'10, weigh roughly 180 lbs and consume 3000-3500 calories a day. I already tried deloading the weight on squats (as detailed above), and previously on bench press. I'm also stuck on 140 lbs overhead press, but was advised to do 5 sets of 3.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I'm advising you to go up to at least 4000 calories/220g protein and just do the program as it's written in the book, since I know that it works.

[Michael Wolf]

Rip, to save you some time and headache, the OP has posted the same Q to Brent in Programming (Squat progression starting to stall?) and to use in the Staff Q&A (Squat stuck on 280lbs?!), and had the most recent and a couple other threads locked for not doing any of the things we ask people to do in the sticky - including not posting the same Q in not just two but three places, wasting all of our time by not doing any homework first, and generally acting entitled to our time despite all of this.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Not surprising.

[Bbinck1]

I'm 20 years old, male, 5'10, weigh roughly 180 lbs and consume 3000-3500 calories a day. I already tried deloading the weight on squats (as detailed above), and previously on bench press. I'm also stuck on 140 lbs overhead press, but was advised to do 5 sets of 3.

I found you have to eat a lot more than you realize to do these programs. I am more than twice your age and have done it the hard way by screwing around and not listening to the “3 questions”. It is a waste of time to try to get strong unless you are eating at least 200g of protein, sleeping a lot, and consuming more than 4000 calories a day. Rip says this over and over and over but for whatever reason there is a reluctance to do it. As soon as I started eating 225 g of protein with a large calorie surplus and sleeping 8 hours a night my plateaus miraculously disappeared. Do it EXACTLY as instructed and your lifts will go up, especially at your age. But you will have to GAIN WEIGHT. Probanly like 45lbs. Do not think, do not question, just eat, sleep and watch them go up. Please just stop overthinking this and you will be pleasantly surprised.