Using holiday season for strength gains for yearly PR

[UltraFatSubWeak]

A suggestion: The holidays are a time of great caloric intake. It seems that this could be used to the advantage of strength gains, if accompanied with a higher than normal stress from training. Instead of packing on extra fat, a person could turn up the frequency/volume/weight of their training sessions and be stronger, rather than fatter by the New Year by using the abnormally anabolic environment.

For example, I squatted last night to a new PR (280 lbs), and I am going to deadlift and press this morning, and then bench press and powerclean this afternoon, in preparation for eating myself silly at Thanksgiving on Thursday. Once my wife and I get back home this weekend, I am going to try a high volume session, where I do all 5 main lifts at 90+% to soak up the remaining calories.

If this works out, I am going to try this at Christmas, and try to max out a yearly PR for 5 main lifts, so I have a final number to say "2012 - Max Squat - 302" or whatever I can manage. An end-of-year PR could also be used for people like me who don't compete in any strength or other athletic events as a milestone or benchmark that we can use to motivate improvement, and are too old (42) to use anabolic strategies like GOMAD and not gain excessive fat.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to all!

[OCG]

I find I eat less on holidays actually. Mostly because I'm too busy socialising and drinking to eat enough.

[RussB]

I agree with OCG, and weekends are also tough. For me, not because of socializing and drinking, but simply because the schedule gets irregular up and I eat differently/less. Hopefully the addition of egg nog will offset the irregularity.

[UltraFatSubWeak]

...and I overtrained. I squatted 280X5,4,3,1, which was a +15lb jump for me, and ground out as many reps as possible on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I pressed 115, which was +5lb jump, but I tacked on extra push presses, and really ground out several lifts and then deadlifted 302x3x2, which was a rep PR at that weight. Felt slightly off the rest of the day, with little appetite, and now I am up at 1am with a slightly elevated heart rate and insomnia. I am going to drink 2 glasses of milk, a banana, and some leftovers to try to speed recovery and try to go back to bed in an hour or so.

I'll be damned - that Rippetoe guy does know something!

[PressesPeople]

Yep, that's what happens when you do unnecessary things.

[StrongLiftMyBalls]

Yeah the OP clearly gave too much weight to eating a lot. Just cause you eat a lot doesnt mean your recovery becomes super-human. Dem roids fo dat.

OTOH, I am using the winter excuse for warmth to eat more than I usually would. Aiming to eat slightly more than I might need on a program like this and evaluate after a month or so if weightgain > strength gains or not. So far its been working well.

As for the holidays, you are doing it wrong. eat everything offered to you, THEN socialise. Food is temporary, beer is always cold in the fridge.

[Kregna]

I find I eat less on holidays actually. Mostly because I'm too busy socialising and drinking to eat enough.

I agree with OCG, and weekends are also tough. For me, not because of socializing and drinking, but simply because the schedule gets irregular up and I eat differently/less. Hopefully the addition of egg nog will offset the irregularity.

This. I always loose weight when I am away from work, I usually walk in monday morning about 3 lbs lighter than Friday morning. I am not looking forward to this weekend, or the two weeks at the end of december when I will be out of town.

Glad this isn't just me! Being at work makes it easy to get my milk and food in because I can't get distracted with other stuff, and it's the same schedule every day.

[Gene61]

Hey UFSW, thanks for having the guts to come back and report the failure of your experiment. A lot of guys wouldn't do that!