Pete's Training Log

[Petr]

Sup SS Community.

I've decided to create a training log on the SS Forum to stay accountable for my progress.

The beginning of my weight training career started with crossfit. I did it for 6 to 7 months in two different countries and two separate gyms. I came out of it barely having improved in my lifts, and with debilitating lower back pain because of squats and deadlifts. The pain was, well, painful, so I quit crossfit and just hit the gym on my own. I then learned more about training and programming, and after stumbling on the Starting Strength technique series for the main lifts, realized that the "trainers" at these crossfit boxes failed to teach a beginner me how to brace my core. I partially feel responsible for perhaps not looking into it myself, but without fail, I was assured my technique was fine, and the back pain was a mystery. Better late than never.

As a result of not doing squats or deadlifts post the crossfit days, I have heavily, and I mean heavily, skewed numbers towards the upper body lifts (I leg pressed lol). I have also relearned the technique on all the majour lifts, so upon starting SS properly a few weeks ago, I didn't over blow it with my squat or deadlift starting weights. Naturally they will move to where they need to be soon enough, and I obviously wanted to ingrain the right movement patterns into me.

As I said, I want to be accountable for my progress, so even though it might be a bit drab I'll try update after every session. I've chosen to Barbell Row instead of power clean because I'm not comfortable approaching a complex movement like that without more rigorous technique work. I also do 3 sets of light Face Pulls after workout B because I feel that it's helped me with general shoulder health in the past, due to the heavy front delt loading on bench and OHP. Nothing else silly though, doing SS as it is written.

Current #s:
Workout A (Next Session)
Squat 3x5 @ 112.5 kg
Bench Press 3x5 @ 100 kg
Deadlift 1x5 @ 145 kg
Pullups 3x10 @bodyweight


Workout B (Today's session)
Squat 3x5 @ 110 kg
Overhead Press 3x5 @ 70 kg
Barbell Row @ 97.5 kg
Face Pulls 3x15

[carson]

Welcome. We often follow along and make comments from time to time. I've found most of the comments helpful. I hope you do as well.

Could you share your present country, age, height, and weight?

[Petr]

Yeah, definitely!

I'm from the Czech Republic, but live in England right now.
Age: 22
Height: 178 cm
Weight: I am not up to date on my weight. In December I know was hitting about 78kg. For the sake of advice and comments, I will check it out next workout session.

Whatever the case is I'm weak at my weight, so I'm not trying to over blow it in terms of daily calories. Hitting about 3-3.1k a day so I can recover nicely but not fly up too quickly on the scale. After crossfit my friends and I more or less followed bodybuilding routines, and coupled with my athletic background I can say with confidence that most of my weight truly is the "good" kind.

Kind of makes me feel worse looking like I can handle more weight than I actually can, but oh well. We live and we learn.

[Petr]

Workout A
Squat 3x5 @ 112.5kg
Bench 3x5 @ 100kg
Deadlift 1x5 @145kg
Pullups 3x10 @bw

Today felt awesome, none of the lifts were particularly difficult. I've been on point with food and recovery if I do say so myself.
The deadlift reps in particular were just flying up. From my next Workout A onward, I'm going to be squatting and deadlifting weights I have never touched previously in my life, albeit with more knowledge about how to perform these lifts correctly. I've benched 110kg for 4 before (I think??), but I was lifting with ego and my ass was a good 63 inches off the bench. The reset was worth it.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, on with the grind. 2 days of rest now until Workout B.

[Petr]

Workout B
Squat 3x5 @ 115 kg
Overhead Press 3x5 @ 72.5kg
Barbell Row @ 100kg
Face Pulls 3x15

Felt harder than my ego-boosting workout A, but got all the work done. The OHP seemed quite tough initially, but I was able to avoid getting to a point where I had to grind reps out. I'll need to eat and sleep like a newborn to make sure I'm able to add weight and complete next sessions reps.

The barbell rows were the toughest of the bunch, as it's always hard to balance how much "body-english" is going into reps. I try focus on not excessively jerking the weight or lifting my torso too upright at any point. This exercise also makes my forehead vascular.

[Petr]

Workout A
Squat 3x5 @ 117.5kg
Bench Press 3x5 @ 102.5kg
Deadlift 1x5 @ 150kg
Pullups 3x10 @bw

Tough day today. Uni work has been really stressing me out and sleep hasn't been great, but I got through my reps. Hopefully I sort that out!

[Petr]

Workout B
Squat 3x5 @ 120kg
OHP 3x5 @ 75kg
Barbell Row 3x5 @ 100kg (again)
Face Pulls 3x15

Nothing particularly special about today. I was pleased with how easy the squats and the OHP felt, both being PB's for me. I had previously done 75kg OHP, but it was for an all out set of 5. Being able to perform 3x5 without massive reductions in bar speed surely means gains. I decided to repeat the Rows for the weight I did last Workout B, and really focus on being as string with the form as I possibly can and minimizing my body rocking the weight up.

Finally my gym got their scale fixed, and I weighed in today at 86kg. It was much more than I expected to be weighing, considering I was "cutting" before winter hitting about 78-77 kg. Yikes. While I'm happy with the strength, I have to be conscious about minimizing fat gain. Weighing as much as I do with these numbers isn't fantastic.

Maybe I'll pose the question to the forum. What do you guys think? How concerned should I be with gaining excess weight? Should I just keep on eating, recovering, and worry about shedding that off once my lifts are more solid? I certainly don't look or feel fat, and I feel like a good amount of it is water and some new muscle from going heavy on squats and deadlifts with good form for the first time in my life (although by Youtube fitness standards I'm probably morbidly obese hehe).

[Petr]

Workout A
Squat 3x5 @ 122.5kg
Bench Press 3x5 @ 105kg
Deadlift 1x5 @ 155kg
Pullups 3x10 @bw

[Petr]

Workout B
Squat 3x5 @ 125kg
OHP 3x5 @ 77.5 kg *didn't get the prescribed reps: did x4 w/77.5 (messed up balance on last rep, could have gotten 5), then did x5 successfully, but it ended up being a huge grind. Went down in weight and hit 75kg x4 for the last set.
Barbell Row 3x5 @ 102.5kg *didn't get the prescribed reps, did x5 102.5 first session, but I felt so fried from OHP. Went down to 100kg for x5 next set, and then went down to 90kg for x5 on my last.
Face Pulls 3x15

Today demolished me. The squats are getting tougher, and I'm fighting to maintain good form on them (in a good way, form isn't degrading). I knew my OHP would be difficult as "28.25 per side" is a huge PB for me. The first set had me lose balance and the bar drifted far from my body, not letting me get the weight up for the 5th rep. I knew I had the weight though, so was able to complete 5 reps on set 2. I didn't feel like it was the hardest set in the world, but considering my sleep was terrible the last two days (6 hours per night only) and I under ate yesterday due to work, it all caught up to me here. I'm not going to write off this failure as being due to exhausting my linear progression, because it was going so well up to this point. I feel like I wouldn't hit a will that suddenly. I simply need to eat and sleep more. The rest of the workout suffered as much. It proved to be very difficult to stay strict with those rows, and so I really decreased the weight last set to get clean, quality reps in.

I'll repeat the weights again next time for OHP and Rows. I'm confident that today was due to under-recovery. Only the next sessions will tell for sure. Now, to rest up and be ready for next session.

[Petr]

Workout A
Squat 3x1 @ 140kg (Really, really wanted to test 3 plates...)
Bench Press 3x5 @ 107.5
Deadlift 1x5 @ 160kg
Pullups 3x10 @bw

I felt much, much better today after properly sleeping and eating a lot of food in the past two days. The dud that was last session was clearly in part due to under-recovery. That being said, these past weeks on the linear novice progression are coming to a halt as of today. My knees are getting a little bit "tweaky" on my squats, all while I can see no form breakdown, and my right shoulder has a little bit of a thing going too. While it's nothing major at all, from what I understand, aches and pains will begin to appear once weekly intensity becomes too high. As a result, I wanted to decrease my squat volume a little bit this week, and just really fricken wanted to try out a 3 plate squat. The rep was actually very easy, and this put all kinds of sunshine on my day. I then just did two more sets of that single since I feel that I was actually working at about an RPE 7 or 8.

Bench went up real easy, which I was also stoked for, and deadlifts felt similar to how they have been feeling this whole time really. They've always been a little bit on the tough side, but I could always afford that considering I was working with 1 set of 5.

While not all my lifts are stalling, my overhead and squats are reaching this point quite soon. I also really want to maintain good form on deadlifts particularly. These things considered, I'm gonna move onto a weekly intermediate progression now. At the end of the day, the worst that can happen is I lag behind on strength by maybe 1 or 2 weeks. Slow and steady wins the race.