Novice programing of the Press and the Bench press

[whale]

Hi Rip,

I don't have a question but something I experienced myself as a novice doing LP. Hopefully my observations will make sense.

The program says do the Squat every training day 5x3 and increase it by 5lbs. So the 5x3 is a number of sets and reps you found it works the best empirically for general population. The novice from general population recovers from that stress and is able to perform better in 48 hours.

The program also says cycle the Press and Bench press 5x3 aswell. That means you will do (for example) the Press on Wed on the 1st week and Mon and Fri on the 2nd week. From Wed to Mon there are 5 days to recover, from Mon to Fri there are 4 days, From Fri to Wen there are 5 days. Since there is a day more to recover when you are doing the Press/BP on Fri and Wed I did an extra set but not going to failure. The reason I did that is because my progression was always worse on Mon and Wed and that helped me I believe. You drew an LP as bunch of ups and downs and that makes sense. So when you are recovering the performance is going up until it reaches some peak and starts going down if you stop applying stress. Pretty much like half period of a sine wave. I know it is impossible to time your training at the amplitude or the peak performance but getting close to it is still good because that level of performance will still be greater than the peak level of performance before that. You either train on the left side of it where you are not recovered fully or the right side where you start to detrain. It's nonsensical to talk about that in term of minutes and hours, but in terms of days it could make a difference.

The squat progression is doing well even though there is a weekend rest every 3 workouts. Maybe because I'm training on the close left side of the peak performance all the time meaning I did not recover fully and the stress is accumulated. Deadlift aswell.

This might not be the thing a novice should worry about, maybe a late novice. There's many variables here and I'm most likely overcomplicating. Could be my progression was better because of something else. I don't know. All I know I've put 5lbs on my those 2 movements every time I've done that and I don't think this is one of the novice feelings. If someone experiences the same thing it can be easily seen in a training log.

This is just a thought from a novice. I do not obviously expect it to be addressed in neither of your educational activities just so we're clear.

I'm currently at 100lbs Press, 165 Bench, 215 Squat, 225 Deadlift.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I think you may be ascribing more precision to the adaptive process than actually exists in reality. The process is really rather "fuzzy" at the top edges. An upcoming article will address this.

[crookedfinger]

Hi Rip,

I don't have a question but something I experienced myself as a novice doing LP. Hopefully my observations will make sense.

The program says do the Squat every training day 5x3 and increase it by 5lbs. So the 5x3 is a number of sets and reps you found it works the best empirically for general population. The novice from general population recovers from that stress and is able to perform better in 48 hours.

The program also says cycle the Press and Bench press 5x3 aswell. That means you will do (for example) the Press on Wed on the 1st week and Mon and Fri on the 2nd week. From Wed to Mon there are 5 days to recover, from Mon to Fri there are 4 days, From Fri to Wen there are 5 days. Since there is a day more to recover when you are doing the Press/BP on Fri and Wed I did an extra set but not going to failure. The reason I did that is because my progression was always worse on Mon and Wed and that helped me I believe. You drew an LP as bunch of ups and downs and that makes sense. So when you are recovering the performance is going up until it reaches some peak and starts going down if you stop applying stress. Pretty much like half period of a sine wave. I know it is impossible to time your training at the amplitude or the peak performance but getting close to it is still good because that level of performance will still be greater than the peak level of performance before that. You either train on the left side of it where you are not recovered fully or the right side where you start to detrain. It's nonsensical to talk about that in term of minutes and hours, but in terms of days it could make a difference.

The squat progression is doing well even though there is a weekend rest every 3 workouts. Maybe because I'm training on the close left side of the peak performance all the time meaning I did not recover fully and the stress is accumulated. Deadlift aswell.

This might not be the thing a novice should worry about, maybe a late novice. There's many variables here and I'm most likely overcomplicating. Could be my progression was better because of something else. I don't know. All I know I've put 5lbs on my those 2 movements every time I've done that and I don't think this is one of the novice feelings. If someone experiences the same thing it can be easily seen in a training log.

This is just a thought from a novice. I do not obviously expect it to be addressed in neither of your educational activities just so we're clear.

I'm currently at 100lbs Press, 165 Bench, 215 Squat, 225 Deadlift.

What's your age, height, weight, and gender? How long have you been running LP? I ask because your reality may change soon.

[whale]

What's your age, height, weight, and gender? How long have you been running LP? I ask because your reality may change soon.

Underweight young male. 2 months. I know and I'm ready for it.

Looking forward to the article, I wonder how fuzzy the graph could really get.

[musicmaster101]

I'm currently at 100lbs Press, 165 Bench, 215 Squat, 225 Deadlift.

Underweight young male. 2 months. I know and I'm ready for it.

Looking forward to the article, I wonder how fuzzy the graph could really get.

Your 5lbs jumps on the Press and Bench Press are probably going to end soon. I ran 5lbs jumps on the Press up to 115, Bench up to 190.

The change from 5lbs jumps to microloading has little to do with volume. It has more to do with the size of the muscle groups being stressed by a particular exercise.