New life log

[andre66]

Last year was a tough year, took a significant amount of time off work to care for my wife, changed jobs so I could work and care for her and ended the year as a widower.
I still have a 13 year old son to raise and I want to be as healthy and strong as possible so I am doing starting strength to help me reach my goals.

Here are my stats
Age-47
Weight-215lbs
Bodyfat-closer to 30 than 20 I would think.

Ive just had my first gym session to figure out what my starting weights should be for my LP.
Here is what I did today
Squat-135lbs
Press-70
Deadlift-145lbs
Benchpress-95lbs
Power clean-empty bar

Pretty light overall but then I'm in pretty poor shape and the gains will come by working the program correctly.
Take care.

[carson]

Andre,

I'm so very sorry for your loss but am happy that you are trying to put your life together as much as possible. I will pray for you and your son. It's always good to get started in SS. Don't worry about the numbers. As you say, you will make gains as you follow the program.

[Dahavol]

Sorry for your loss. Good call on finding something to do to improve your health, and maybe provide some mental relief. Your weights are actually more than I started with and I'm nearly 20 years younger. Good luck, and be sure to stick with it, it will pay off in the long term.

[Scot S]

Hey, welcome aboard! I can't begin to imagine the the life changes you are going through. Keep up with the training and posting here; i am very interested to follow your progress as we are about the same age and weight.

[Simon Rest]

good luck mate. You may be starting light, but you'll get strong quickly

[andre66]

DAY 2
Workout B

I found the starting strength warm up app, won't bother listing the warmups but I am doing them.

Squat-145 5x3
Benchpress-115 5x3
Deadlift-165 5x1
During my warmup I felt like I could increase the bench more than 5 lbs so I did and am probably at a better weight for starting that exercise.
I filmed my 3rd set of squats and my deadlift set, posted the squats in the q&a forum so once it is approved you can have a look and offer some advice, if you like. Went to the local gym and signed up, 5 minutes from home, one squat rack and one power cage which will do. I even did my benches in the cage, no one seemed to want to use them and they only seemed to have one olympic bench so I dragged a flat bench over and did my sets.

[Dahavol]

Good to see you back, how's squat treating you? I could barely walk my first week even at light weight. Not a bad adjustment on the bench jump, but in future workouts, feel free to let it be easier than you think it should. 5lb jumps 3 times every two weeks adds up to 30lbs per month or 120lbs over 4 months. It will be tempting to try and get there faster, but the old military adage "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast" really applies to the LP. Better to have steady smaller progress than taking bigger jumps and getting stuck faster.

[carson]

Went to the local gym and signed up, 5 minutes from home, one squat rack and one power cage which will do. I even did my benches in the cage, no one seemed to want to use them and they only seemed to have one olympic bench so I dragged a flat bench over and did my sets.

I suppose that they are loaded with silly nearly worthless machines. Did they at least have round plates and not many sided ones so you could do proper DLs?

[andre66]

Good to see you back, how's squat treating you? I could barely walk my first week even at light weight. Not a bad adjustment on the bench jump, but in future workouts, feel free to let it be easier than you think it should. 5lb jumps 3 times every two weeks adds up to 30lbs per month or 120lbs over 4 months. It will be tempting to try and get there faster, but the old military adage "slow is smooth, and smooth is fast" really applies to the LP. Better to have steady smaller progress than taking bigger jumps and getting stuck faster.

Regarding the squat I really need to improve my technique, Paul Horn, on the coaches forum, looked at my video and said my torso is to upright. I'm going to use my warmups and really work on that, as well as my bar placement which looked high. I'll be refraining from big jumps in benching weight from here on out, although today is a pressing day.
Thanks for the feedback Dahavol.

[Scot S]

Your starting weights are nearly exactly the same as mine were and your squat depth (watched video) looks much better than mine was the first two months. Nearly three months into the program I still feel the weights are nothing compared to what the young guns lift at this point, but it sure feels good to still be making progress.