My Starting Strength log

[Adam Gottstein]

Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Squat: 290x5x3
Press: 117.5x5x3
Power clean: 132.5x3x5

Squats were tough. I was also really hungry before my pre-workout meal, and i doubt a protein drink and banana really countered that as much as I would have liked. Today was one of those where first set was the toughest, but I know i dive bombed a couple on the other sets. I'm going to still do 295, and I plan to record it and post it on Friday. I was pretty beat after squats, but I still had more to do.

Press was relatively easy. First set actually felt easy, but they got progressively tougher, which I guess makes sense.

Power clean first set sucked. So much so that I almost said screw it. I'm glad I didn't. Sets 2-4 went much better. I'd probably say they were solid.

I ended with what were supposed to be inverted rows, but due to bar height were more like inverted face pulls. The goal is to work myself to chins. I thought to give this a try before ordering bands for assisted chins. I'm not against the bands, but won't use them for lifting for probably quite a bit of time, if ever. Seems if I can save money, I should.

[hondotbt]

Nice squats ABG!

[Adam Gottstein]

Thanks, bt. I didn't record them yesterday, so not sure if they were nice squats (aka good form), or just squats (bar went up regardless of form). Will see that better with tomorrow's workout.

I am going to try and push for 315, and then I think I am going to start introducing advanced novice steps. PPST indicates back off sets first, then a light Wednesday. I'm deciding if I want to go in that order, or reverse them. I don't know if I'll ever drop to 3x3 before moving on to an intermediate program (looking a HLM model). That said, these were tough and the weight really felt heavy. We'll see if I get to 315 before making any modifications.

[positronbomb]

I'm deciding if I want to go in that order, or reverse them. I don't know if I'll ever drop to 3x3 before moving on to an intermediate program (looking a HLM model).

For me the reverse order made more sense as I was having trouble recovering, I'm 45 though.
You can easily judge for yourself though, by how you feel when you aporoach the bar for that first set, do you feel like a wild animal ready to destroy that set or are you second guessing yourself, or do you constant mild soreness anywhere in your body related to the squatting movement.

[Adam Gottstein]

By the time I get to working sets, I'm not sore at all. Blood flowing, legs are good. I do get nervous about that first set, and have mentioned before that first set is often my worst form for this reason. It's also my biggest concern with backoff sets. That said, i am working on it, and have had some really good first sets lately.

I did some tonnage comparisons by week, and assuming back-offs are 90% of the top set, and assuming that light day is 80% of the previous lift, and maybe only 2 sets, then back-off sets are still a higher stress, just not as much as 5's across. So it seems like back-offs first, then light day 2 squats makes most sense from stress/recovery management, but I will need to keep in my the psychological aspect.

[positronbomb]

Yeah, adjust as you feel necessary, sometimes the suck and see approach is the only way to know for sure.
Choose one, run it for a couple of weeks see how you feel, then decide whether your choice was the right one, change it around the other way if necessary.
You could run 2 weeks of each regardless and see what you think works best for you.

[Adam Gottstein]

Friday, February 8, 2019
Squat: 295x4, 5x2, 2 (set 1, set 2, set 3)
Bench: 185x5, 4, 3
Deadlift: 315x2 (working set, warmup 3, warmup 4, warmup 5)

Today was just one of those days. It was hard from the start and just kept getting harder. I'm thinking now that having the next week off is a good thing as it will provide ample time for recovery.

Squats, I sunk myself. You can see in set 1, rep 2, that I shifted forward and it took a bit to get it back. I did get it back, finished the rep and 2 more. However, reps 3 and 4 felt wrong after the 2nd rep mishap, and I was sure they were horrible as well and I needed to stop before I hurt myself or something. Then I watched the playback and reps 3 and 4 weren't that bad. Set 1 could have and should have had a fifth rep. Sets 2 and 3 happened, and I honestly thing set 3 was probably the best of them all. I thought I would take a solid rest and try a 4th set to get the 3rd set of 5 in. That didn't happen. 2 reps in and I knew I was too spent to do a full set, and those 2 reps were not very good (didn't feel it, and video goes along with what I felt this time). I can kick myself for not getting this all time PR. That said, this weight was going to be a repeat no matter what.

Bench just sucked today. I'll repeat it, and hopefully get it then. If not, this is due for a reset.

Deadlift....I had this great idea to do my working sets with hook grip. I do warmups with it, and have no doubt I could do singles with it (though rep 1 might disagree). However, I can't do 5 reps at working weight with hook grip right now. It's just not something my hands are ready for. So, I switched to mixed grip after the first rep, which you can tell I lost in hand a bit on the way down. I did rep 2, and honestly, was feeling discouraged over the overall workout and that I couldn't get more than 1 rep with hook grip, so I said screw it. This was hard, and not sure if I was going to get all 5 reps, but I had more than 2 in me. I whimped out. I posted the working set as well as the last 3 warmups. Regardless of fails, I believe I am doing better at keeping the bar against my shins and setting my back. My back setting can still improve, but I don't think it will be as pronounced an action at my current size (though I may be wrong and just bad at setting my back).


So, I'm thinking it's about time to start implementing advanced novice techniques. I'm going to give it one more week when I get back to see for sure, but I just don't think I'm recovering as quickly as I need to with sets across on everything all the time. Squats are REALLY starting to wear me down. I've also been really hungry lately, particularly on workout days before my workout. As it is, I eat about 1500 calories pre-workout, with about 150g carbs. I can't eat too much more on my diet without losing anything post-workout, and I need that as well. So, I will try again normal progression the week after I get back, perhaps with a slight reset (will decide on that when I get back). If I find myself in this same place pretty shortly after that, then I'll be switching to backoff sets, and possibly 3s on pressing movements (particularly bench). I may do this anyway just to try and speed up workouts a bit, if I can. I currently can't seem to squeeze things under 2 hours anymore. For some reason, I think this would be quicker. (even if it's just 15 mins or so).

[Adam Gottstein]

Monday, February 18, 2019
Squat: 265x5, 240x5x2
Press: 110x5x3
Power Clean: 125x3x5

BW: 303.4
Waist: 51"

Back from work travel, and glad to see my weight is about the same as when I left (it was 303.8 at 3am before I left). I actually continued to eat as I wanted through Saturday and Sunday, so I expect this was inflated a bit and will drop a decent amount by next Monday (or so I hope).

Plane trip and a week off gave me time to think. I definitely want to keep getting stronger, but I want to lose the weight even more so. I've also been feeling pretty beat after workouts, particularly after squats. It may be in my head, but I have been feeling it. So, I have decided on doing a relatively steep reset, which will also benefit in working on form. My reset was been such that all of my lifts will hit their pre-trip weight on the 3rd week, with the exception of squat which will hit its pre-trip weight on the 4th week. The reason for squat on the 4th week is to give deadlift an extra week to pull ahead of squat a bit more.

In addition to the reset, I am now doing back-off sets on squats as well as a light Wednesday. Back-off is 90% of working, and Wednesday weight is 80% of Monday's top set. Presses and Bench are still three sets of fives, and when I run into fails, I will be moving to five sets of three. My overall goal with this is to hopefully allow for better recovery while in the caloric deficit as I get into these higher weights. I am also hoping that I might be able to do +10 for deadlift when it is on Wednesday with light squats, while sticking to +5 on Mon/Wed deadlift days. That is probably ambitious, and is not required, but something I may try.

Regarding Monday's workout, everything was pretty good. I need to keep reminding myself that back-off sets are not easy, just easier than the top set. Even with the reset, it's still a good amount of work. Presses probably should have reset to 100 or 105 with a couple of +5s, but I went 110, will do +2.5 back to 117.5 and beyond. 110 was tough, but manageable. Power cleans were actually pretty solid today, though it did feel heavier than I expected. It was also supposed to be 120, but I messed it up and did 125, which will get me to previous weight one workout sooner. Not a big deal, but it happened.

[Adam Gottstein]

I meant to include, I'm working on dropping calories slowly. My average so far has been about 1.7#/week. This is pretty good, but supposedly I should be good losing up to about 1%, and I'm not always the most patient with things. So, my goal is to get to an average of 2.5lb lost per week, which is almost 50% faster weight loss.

With that in mind, I had been eating 2300 calories/day, so I have dropped to 2200/day. Most of it came in dropping fat by 10g/day to 50g, protein came down 10g to 220g/day, and carbs actually went up almost 20g/day to 220g/day. I will give this a couple of weeks and see how it impacts the weight loss. Any subsequent calorie drops will be predominantly carbs, though I may get protein as low as 200g/day along the way. I do expect this will impact lifts overall, but need to get to where I am going. At 250lbs, I'll assess whether to slow up the weight loss a bit or not.

[Adam Gottstein]

Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Light Day Squat: 215x5x3 (set 1, set 2, set 3)
Bench: 175x5x3
Deadlift: 290x5

Overall a good workout. It's Wednesday, so light squat day. Sets were easy, weight was still work, and it was a good time to focus on form and work on it. Bench is at reset weight and wasn't too bad. It's only down 10lb from my last attempt, so not too far back, and I will be doing 180 on Monday followed by 182.5 on Friday and back to 185 the following Wednesday.

Deadlifts were good overall. Watching over the video, only rep 4 was egregiously away from my legs for the first half of the pull while rep 2 was slightly off. A couple of things I think I'm noticing, and would like some feedback if you see it or see differently.
1) My shoulders seem further forward than they should be. I don't do this on purpose, and don't feel on my toes through most of the reps, but probably am more so than I realize. Any tips on moving them back? If I sit back further, I feel like my hips go down, which isn't really a goal, either.
2) I pull all my warm-ups hook grip. I can't do my working weight for reps with hook. I've tried and get 1-2 reps, then it's done and I have to switch grip. Alternate grip gets the job done, but I'm finding that the supine grip (my left hand) has a tendency to want to push the bar away from me. I feel this is noticeable in the fact that when the bar is against my right leg, it doesn't pull up the shorts at all on the left leg. I am assuming this is somewhat normal and its impact is probably exacerbated by the shoulders being too far forward.
3) My back doesn't look crazy tight. It tends to look relatively consistent through the pull, but not tight. I am thinking this is a result off me being fat and not being able to get quite as tight, or possibly that it just doesn't show as well regardless of how tight my back is. I think I might be able to get it a bit tighter w/ more typical looking extension if I drop hips a bit, but that's not the goal. I'm going to keep working on this, but it's frustrating to feel like I'm going tight just to see it look like almost not change on the video.