Reply With QuoteHi there! Welcome.
What's your height?
You'll get there! Bench is magical for push-ups. How are you training chins?Originally Posted by redrobot
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45 yo woman - Novice
Age: what it says on the tin
weight: 141
bf: 25%ish
June 15
Squat 3x5 60
Press 3x5 25
Deadlift 1x5 100
June 17
SQ 3x5 70
BP 52.5
DL 1x5 110
Started strength training a few years ago when I finally found a competent trainer who took my strength goals seriously. Learned good form on the big lifts, and was making real progress when I got side-tracked (1 month of travel without access even to hotel gym, and then my trainer moved). I've started and stopped several times since then.
I feel like my form hasn't degraded too much, but I'm still starting light and being conservative with increases just to make sure. I'm going to see how long I can keep incrementing by 10 lbs for SQ and DL, and 5 lbs for PR, but I know my BP is going to be hard to progress based on previous experience, so I'm staying with 2.5lbs. I've got the SS app, which is super-helpful for calculating warm-ups (which I suck at).
I am (potentially counterproductive, we'll see) trying to drop some bodyfat while I'm in the novice honeymoon phase. I'd be satisfied with 22%, which I think will be about 135lbs. I jog 3 miles (10 min/mi) five times a week to help with this, since I don't want to reduce calories too much.
My eventual goal is to be able to do 5 chinups and 20 pushups; right now I can do zero chinups and only a few good pushups.
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Hi there! Welcome.
What's your height?
You'll get there! Bench is magical for push-ups. How are you training chins?
cwd
If/when recovery from squats is a problem, you might try less running. I.e. maybe just one or two 3m runs on non-lifting days to maintain your conditioning.
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Welcome, and congrats on starting back! I would suggest replacing the distance running with a couple of sprint sessions per week during this phase. 20s on, 1:40 off, for 6-8 reps. Also, if you don't have to run (i.e. Army), recovery will be better if you do these intervals on a bike or rower.
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Oh yeah, duh. 5'7".
I'm planning to add eccentric chins after I've been doing cleans for a while. Any other suggestions?
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I'll definitely reduce the running if my recovery seems to be affected, good point. When it becomes clear to me that I can either get stronger or lose five pounds, I'll choose the former.
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I'm being nosy AF, but 135 could be a bit light for even a woman with muscle mass at 5'7". Just saying I hope you don't get hung up on the scale and have your gainz suffer. ;-)
I dunno what to suggest for chins/pull-ups other than a junkton of volume and persistence. I did banded pull-ups for a fair while and negatives like you're planning. I really liked every minute on the minute workouts for about 10 minutes for chins since you'll get to a point where you can do 1 or 2 and that's it, and it's a nice way to accumulate volume. If you have a assisted pull-up machine or whatever I bet you could just linear progress them like you do the main lifts.
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Yes, well. That is the salient problem. By the time I get down to 135 I will have <crosses fingers> gained some muscle, so it'll probably be closer to 137? We'll see. My gainz are more important to me.
The what with the what now?
I tried that before, but I really need the fractional plates, and I haven't figured out how to insert them in the weight stack yet. Worth pondering some more...
cwd
I have a pair of 1.25lb magnet weights I use for microloading barbells, but they would work on a cable/plate-stack machine too.
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Magnet weights!!! I NEED. Thanks for the tip.
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