Experiencing soreness in post-novice program

[Cromwell]

I'm a 46 year old trainee, training for general strength. I have moved on past a typical novice program (started Andy Baker's Strength & Mass over 40 program about 4 weeks ago).

This week, I started the 2d cycle through the program--so Tuesday was my heavy squat day (Wk 1 was 3x5, Wk 2 was 3x3, Wk 3 was 3x1, so this Tuesday was 3x5 again, 5lbs heavier than Wk1 3x5). I completed the sets and reps, but found myself pretty sore on Wednesday and today (Thursday). I haven't been sore in a long time; is this pretty normal when doing a program with fluctuating rep ranges like this? This program has heavy squats on Tuesday and lighter, tempo squats on Friday.

Just curious if others experience this same thing.

[AndrewLewis]

Soreness comes and goes. It's not weird for you to not be that sore in a while and then be sore suddenly especially if you have other stress in your life or recovery doesn't go well. Heavy 3x5 for you might have been enough to cause soreness, because after all, it is heavy for you.

What is the surrounding programming? What are you doing for deadlifts/chins, etc?

[Cromwell]

Thanks for that reply and sorry for the delayed response!

Sorrounding programming:

Monday: Heavy Press, Light Bench (3x5-8), LTE (3x8-10)
Tuesday: HEavy Squat, Chins (3xAMRAP--right now about 5), Barbell Rows (3x10), Barbell curls (3x8-12)
Wed: Off, or conditioning
Thursday: Heavy Bench, Light press (tempo, 5x3), incline dumbell press (3x10)
Friday: Heavy Deadlift, Light squat (5x3), Stiff leg deadlift (2x8)

That's it. On my second cycle through.

[AndrewLewis]

Like I said, you probably just got sore because sometimes you get sore. After all, you're a living human - not a machine, so most events don't correlate perfectly. I wouldn't worry about it. Get some sleep and protein.

[CanuckInOsaka]

I'm running that as well and oddly enough just started it about 3 weeks ago too. Just did day 1 of the second 3 week cycle yesterday. One tweak to it that Andy talked about in some posts and answers to questions on the program is to change out the 5/3/2 weekly rep pattern to an 8/5/2 rep pattern. IIRC the main reasons are: 1) more spread out rep range is harder to stall on/easier to recover from; 2) the higher range 8 week gives more hypertrophy which will help with the strength gains. Just search for "andy baker 852".

[CanuckInOsaka]

Was thinking about it a bit more and maybe you started the program with too high a weight? On your 5/3/1 setup did you set your 5 rep week to be the same as your previous programs 5 rep weight. Andy says in the program PDF:

The main thing is to not start too heavy and start missing reps on the first 1 or 2 cycles. It might take you a cycle to get through all the rep ranges and then you can go and tweak everything for cycle 2 if anything was either way too easy or way too hard.

Since I am doing an 8/5/2 rep rotation I set the first cycle's 2 rep week weights to be roughly my last cycle's weight on the main lifts. Some of them were 3x5 and some were 1x5 with back off sets. I was coming off a once a week increase on an Andy-inspired HLM program. That let my 8 rep and 5 rep weeks be a little lighter as he lays out in the program. It was a bit of a deload going into the new program.

[AndrewLewis]

He's a little sore. He didn't miss reps. The first cycle didn't kill him, so he probably picked his weights fine. You're probably overthinking this, CanuckInOsaka.

[Cromwell]

Yeah, this is right. Haven't missed reps--I did as Andy suggested (and consulted him on this) and slightly reduced 3x5 starting weight. Since I started this thread, I just kept trucking along--trying to get a bit more sleep, and did some light stretching and very light rowing that just got the blood flowing a bit. Enjoying the change of programming.