Do I Have Recovery Issues?

[michael dowling]

If I squat on Monday a typical 531 and BBB template I have DOMS and sore until sometimes Thursday or Friday. Sleep is interrupted here and there but not terrible at least 7 hours a night (not always unbroken). My typical diet looks like below (a random day from fitday):

2 ounces of Almonds
2 slices whole wheat bread
4 egg omelette with 3 slices of deli cheddar
6 slices of bacon
1 sweet potato
8 ounces pork loin
1 Greek salad with feta cheese, red onion, romaine, and campari tomato
1 Cheeseburger with two patties and cheese (1/4 lb each patty)
2 medium roasted red potatoes in olive oil and rosemary
2 pats of butter on the sweet potato
2 teaspoons of carlsons fish oil

depending on the day I'll have 3-4 scoops of protein power and/or a MetRx bar. I typically end up around 3500 calories and maintain a BW of around 203.

I seem to get significantly weaker on lifts like deadlift as I train it, squats, bench, and press seem OK so far.

I would look to low test but I don't have any symptoms of it, I'm not lethargic, my sex drive is normal (I want it at least twice a day).

Do I up the caloric intake to 4000 calories? Go to a doctor to get my test measured or what?

[b17vic]

Try eating more food for a while and see what happens.

[Mark Edward]

How old are you?

[michael dowling]

How old are you?

34 going on 60

[Mark Edward]

You've hit the long downward slope to the grave, then. There's nothing to do but wait to die.

Seriously, though, if you can't recover, then you're doing too much. Cut back on what you're doing and build your volume up slowly.

[skipbeat]

If it's just the deadlift that's not going up, maybe cut back on the DL volume? Or try cutting back on the squat volume so you're recovered to deadlift? If the upper body is going fine then no need to change everything up.

[Nic Lane]

Interesting. Your weight and target calories are pretty much mirror images of me. And I'm 43 fwiw. I almost never get notably sore doing my basic TM set up (I say blithely as my traps and low back are feeling it from squats and DL yesterday) and it was the same when I was doing 531. I'll get wicked DOMS if I take a week off and then come back to heavy weights, if I try something new or... if I do a bunch of extra volume at lower intensity.

Have you thought about the BBB volume as a culprit? Maybe knock a set or two off that, or switch the squat and DL assistance with each other so you're not doing 8 sets of squat on squat day (with the bonus of being able to squat at least 2x/wk).

[michael dowling]

The deadlift isn't just not going up it's going back, I pulled 400 a while ago coming off a long rest because of my back, and I barely moved 340 off the ground two weeks ago (I did lose 25 lbs since then too though).

I'm already doing 531 to avoid the 3 times a week squat volume, not sure how I cut my volume back more from once a week, I guess I can do once every two weeks for deadlift and sub something else in for the off weeks? Perhaps jazzercise is more my speed at my advanced age?

What I would give to be 10 years younger, all this work and because you're old you're spinning your fucking wheels.

[Nic Lane]

I seem to get significantly weaker on lifts like deadlift as I train it

Sorry, I missed this part the first time through. Again, I was having a similar-ish problem. Posed the question to Andy Baker and he suggested that I might be unintentionally using a bit of stretch reflex on my deads that was subtly hindering progress. I dropped the weight a bit and am ensuring that I have an honest to god dead stop/full reset for each rep. It's only been a few weeks, but so far, so good.

[Marlin]

How heavy are you going on the BBB set's of 10? 45% of max or more?