SS and Age

[St7]

Hello Mark,
I am very pleased to now be a part of this forum. I have been training since my junior hockey days here in Canada when I was 18. I am now 38. My focus, however, has been different over the years. My playing weight was 192 lbs in 1987. I was training inefficiently using a bb routine and focussing on chest and arms. After that I have played university hockey and did not train much better.

After getting married, I began running and completed a marathon at a weight of 150lbs in 1997. Since then,I have trained consistent with the writings of Stuart McRobert in his Hardgainer work and have weighed as much as 186 with a 406 lb 5 rep max DL.

Over the last year, I have shifted to a crossfit protocol and now weigh 164 lbs very lean but not very strong. I want to get bigger and stronger. My starting weights for the big 5 in the SS program are exaclty the same as those of Johhny Pain before he began SS. 185 squat, 175 bench, 120 press, 155 clean, 310 DL( a little more than Johnny Pain.) I am very impressed with his gains.

My Question... I am not a rank beginner. I know how to perform the the lifts and have been quite strong in the past. Do you recommend the SS program for me. Am I a novice? I am 38 and very motivated to gain muscular weight. I do not want to get overly fat in the process though I know fat gain is essential.

Thanks Rip.

St7

[Mark Rippetoe]

This question has been asked many times, and the search function should turn up some stuff. Briefly, a novice linear progression works for everybody just starting the program, but the length of time it works depends on your level of training advancement. A real novice will show linear progress for months, while an advanced man coming back to training after a layoff would advance this way for just a few weeks. PPST deals with these mechanisms in detail.

[fluxboy]

Hey St,

I personally think the age thing is BS. And even if I'm wrong, I'd still think the age thing is BS. A Pascal's Wager, if you will.

I did the SS verbatim at the age of 37. Here were my results for the first two months:

http://www.strengthmill.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2144

You'll do better.

Best,
Flux

[St7]

Hi Mark,

As noted in other posts, you have mentioned that at 36, guys still have the hormonal requirements needed for muscular growth. Does this hold true for guys approaching 40. I am 38 now and as mentioned in my SS and Age post, beginning SS after previoudly being relatively strong a feew years back.

Thank you for your time.

St7

[Mark Rippetoe]

Hi Mark,

As noted in other posts, you have mentioned that at 36, guys still have the hormonal requirements needed for muscular growth. Does this hold true for guys approaching 40. I am 38 now and as mentioned in my SS and Age post, beginning SS after previously being relatively strong a few years back.

There is obviously a continuum of adaptation efficiency.

[Expat]

Hey ST,

I've got to agree with Fluxboy. Stop worrying about your hormones and just do SS.

I started the program about nine months ago at the age of 45. I'm 5'6" and weigh about 210. A few weeks back I decided to do some heavy singles and put up a 374 lb squat, a 404 lb deadlift, and a 250 lb bench. I don't like to risk injuries and didn't go to failure, so I could have added some weight to all the lifts. These aren't big numbers around here, but I haven't been this strong in many years. Sure, 10 or 20 years ago I'd have made more progress, but I'm very happy with what SS has done for me.

For me strength gains have been the easy part. Now I need to diet and lose 20 pounds or so...

Good luck!

[mlentzner]

I'm 40 and I don't see any issues. If you're older you should expect to go slower and hit intermediate sooner. I'm being realistic and upping my big lifts (squat and dead) at only 5# per workout and that's with 2 squats sessions a week and 1 dead a week. I was having recovery issues so I dialed the volume of the SS program back a little.

I just had my first experience with missing a set on the press at 125 and went 5-5-3. That corresponds to a 1RM of about 145 which is right there at the intermediate level for my weight at 195. So I am happy about that since that chart in PP is for much younger athletes. Next week time I will try the same weight again and go for 2# jumps going forward.

There's no reason why you can't SS. You just have to temper your expectations a bit. And doing SS will improve your hormone profile. I feel years younger since I started.

Matt

[travelgirl1978]

Reminds me of the joke:

How do you make a hormone?

[Mark Rippetoe]

Oh, how indelicate.

[Jim Slade]

I trained with a guy who at the age of 62 was still easily hitting 500lbs on deadlift, 400lbs on bench and 400lbs on squat, give or take a few pounds. Those numbers were for raw lifts too, and the old guy was very anti anabolic steriods/ GH etc...
What would interest me would be to see the results of research into the hormone levels of older trained people rather than ordinary sedentary people. I'm sure there are plenty of us who have examples of older lifters still getting good numbers, they either are stuffed with natural testosterone or there's some other mechanism at work, in which case don't worry about your own hormone levels.