Stalling and Next Step

[tca]

Mark,

I have been doing a 5x5 3 day per week program for about 10 weeks. I was injured and had to start over completely with squatting, deadlifts and power cleans. I was doing them all wrong, and your book really helped me. I am still only working with very light weight on these exercises to nail down the form. However, on the overhead press and bench press, weighted dips, pullups/chinups I am just about at my limit. I'm at 5 sets of 5 for 130 on the overhead, and 5 sets of 5 for 225 on the bench and 3 sets of 5 for 55 on the others. My question is, how do I change the program from here to keep gaining strength if I can't keep adding weight? Would you suggest 3 sets of 5 rather than 5 sets? If so, what is the big difference in 3 sets or 5 sets in general? I'm a little all over the place, but my basic question is what is my next step? Thanks.

[Mark Rippetoe]

You're making two mistakes: First, you're waiting for something cool to happen to you that will suddenly permit your squats, deadlifts, and cleans to be treated like the smaller upper body exercises in your program. Just go ahead and make the damn things get stronger every workout like you're supposed to. Waiting to add weight to the most important exercises in your program is terribly unproductive; when will you know to start going up? Who will tell you it's okay? If you have form problems, fix them and get busy.

Second, the fact that you have not made the bodyweight gains that are facilitated by the squat, deadlift, and clean have contributed to your being stuck on the upper-body stuff. This will take care of itself when you start doing the program correctly.

[tca]

wow! Now wait a minute.. I ripped my groin to the point that I could not even bend my knees. I wasn't able to do anything with my lower body. I just recently am starting to feel better, and I have been trying to get the from down perfectly. That's why I haven't done squats, deads and cleans. I would rather do them than any upper body exercise. That's the whole reason I am even lifting weights. I was devistated with the injury, but stuff happens. I worked a lot on stretching, and the only thing I could do was upper body. Now i'm stuck. I just ordered your other book, so maybe there's something in there to help me with being stalled.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I'm not assigning any value judgement to the fact that you are not training your lower body, and you didn't say what your injury was. I've had groin injuries and I understand how bad they can be. I pulled both my gracilis origins loose during a heavy squat triple once, and had to start rehab on them 4 days later. To say that it hurt badly is a pathetic understatement, but nonetheless the rehab took place.

But it doesn't matter what your injury is. What I am saying is that this is probably the reason your progress has stopped. The universe doesn't care about why -- it only cares about what. Goddamn universe. The program is set up the way it is because it works that way, and the fact that you can't do it that way is the reason it's not working. Why is irrelevant.