Tweaking reps for a guy with unbalanced strength

[Benny1981]

Hey coach,

I trained like crap for years, neglecting deadlifts and squats - typical glossy magazine BS. I've tried to do SS by the book, but my pressing lifts are stalling repeatedly with no slow down on deads or squats

6'2" 205lbs

SQ 3x5x185
BP 3x5x200
P 3x5x125
PC 5x3x155
DL 1x5x280
Chins 10s
Pullups 8s

I obviously have some headroom/catchup for my squats and a little on my deadlifts and don't want to jump out of SS just yet. Is adding sets (5x5) to the presses a legitimate solution? Or, would you recommend backing off on the presses and just letting my other lifts catch up before switching the programming across the board at once? Thanks.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Jesus Christ With His Dog Charlie. Are you using 5 lb. jumps in the pressing movements?

[Steve Hill]

Jesus Christ With His Dog Charlie. Are you using 5 lb. jumps in the pressing movements?

Say, wasn't there some discussion of 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2.0 pounds weights in some obscure book on Programming for strength training or some such?

Anyone know a title / author?

[scotts]

I was in a similar situation to you when I started SS: my squat and bench were pretty close, (but my squat was still a bit heavier than my bench). But adding 5# to your squat 3x/week is going to get your squat much stronger in a hurry. Compare that to adding 2.5# 3x/every 2 weeks for presses, and you see that it'll sort itself out pretty fast.

You're problem is probably that you are trying to add too much weight to you're presses. Even novices can't continue adding 5# to their presses for too long, and if you've already trained them you have even more reason to be using jumps smaller than 5#.

[Benny1981]

Enough said. Ordered a nice set of fractional plates.