Less weak than last week

[David Hooper]

Thanks! It's nice to get that to end the training year. Part of my upcoming plan will be to actually back off the squats a bit as I re-establish deadlift gains, but I wanted to at least get the mark.

Agreed on the cleans. It's odd, but I have a much easier time staying over the bar with snatches. it's probably that I'm still un-training bad habits, but I'm much more prone to leaning back on the cleans. Today was the first time I really felt how that made me want to arm pull, though, so perhaps that has been part of the causality this whole time. I still need to get better at the catch, but I have plans for that.

[David Hooper]

27 November 2021
Age - 45
Height - 5'9", 29" inseam (torso boy, short limbs)
Weight - 214
Bench - 190x3, 195x3, 197.5x3x3|5
Chin - BWx9,8,7
Elliptical - 20 min @ 120-130 BPM

Starting to ramp the worksets in the bench. Eventually it'll be something like 190, 195, 200, 202.5, 195, all sets of three, where the 202.5 would be the mark. But I'm going to keep the intensity as high as is workable between that and the straight sets across.

Chins are stagnant, but that's somewhat okay. I'm going to reorder a few things and I think I'll be able to address the chins better. I'm going to focus more on adding weight and 5-7 rep range work.

Elliptical for healing, as always. Joints are feeling better today, which may be due to not deadlifting and relieving a bit of the weekly stress.

This is the end of this log. My actual NLP ended a bit ago, but it felt convenient to get a full year out of it for comparison. So here we go.

Lift	Start	Approx. End of NLP	One Year	Comment
Squat	105	365	405	Went to weekly progress at around 365. Easily my best lift.
Press	45	135	142.5	Progress on 5x3 ended around 115. Running out singles ended around 135.
Bench	75	185	197.5	Stalled twice. Like the press, I should have gone intermediate much sooner.
Deadlift	155	385	415	Went to weekly deads at 385. Went to 5 lb jumps at 405. Several setbacks during the year.
Power Clean	65	-	137.5	Setbacks with form issues and no good coaching in the area. Currently my best form, though.
Snatch	85	-	97.5	I've been very conservative on these since learning. I don't want to repeat the clean mistakes.
Chin	2,1	-	9,8,7	Wasn't always consistent with these.

I added additional details in the header this time (age, dimensions, etc.) for perspective. I'm best at squats partly because of anthropometry. I'm worst at presses because I lived a life of weakling desk work and remained skinny (typically about 155 lb). I'm not explosive, so the fast lifts will lag. Regardless, all the slow lifts have improved in the 2-3x starting weight range in the course of a year. All from reading two very well-written books and simply doing what they said.

Other notes:

- I had several setbacks. A broken rib on deadlifts, a herniated disc (on deadlifts too), a strained hamstring (yep, deadlifts), squatter's elbow, a three-week vacation, and occasional days where training wasn't available. All of the injuries except the strained hammy could have been avoided with a coach to tell me I was doing something wrong.

- A completely new wardrobe. I need relaxed fit jeans just to get my thighs in them. (What in the world do elite lifters wear?). I've gone from Medium to XL in everything. 2 1/2" on my neck. I'm fatter than before, but not egregiously so. I look much better and I haven't even tried for aesthetics.

- I've had some of the strong guys (and they're actually strong) show interest in how I got here. It's still disorienting to be viewed as strong. It all happened so fast.

- I love food. :-D

...I think that's it. Thanks, everybody, for the support. I'll get a new log in the intermediate section once I start there (and post in a link here when I do). It'll probably be updated weekly rather than daily since all of my programming is organized as such, and I'll probably be more high-level with my comments. December will be a mess, but I think I'll be able to get a clean start in January with a program somewhat derived from Texas Method, but more amenable to my schedule and life.

[Bill Anders]

Great work, Hooper! You should definite be proud of how far you've come in the past year.

It's interesting to read about your clothing change, which is the opposite of me. I'm approximately the same weight as I was when I started this lifting journey several years ago, but the composition has changed so much that I can now wear the concert t-shirts that I picked up when I was in my teens, even though I now weigh 50+ lbs more. But the jeans have become more problematic; I've always been blessed with glorious calves (16"+), which made finding a good fit a pain, but now it's even more so. Even the bodybuilder brand pants that I've bought recently that fit the legs just fine are really loose in the waist and I need to have them taken in. Ahh, what a struggle to have.

I'm looking forward to seeing how to start getting creative with your training to keep achieving strength gains.

Keep at it!

[Nikola Blagojevic]

Outstanding run! See you over in the intermediate section.

I would describe anyone who's moving four plates around as working weight as "strong".

[David Hooper]

New log is here.

[David Hooper]

At the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022, I had just progressed to intermediate, having run out the NLP. Right at that time, all the lockdown-delayed work travel came back in a big way. I ended up on the road a little less than half of 2022, with few opportunities to train. Out of frustration, I quit going to the gym on my short return trips and ended up taking a year off. This March, I finally got back in. There's still travel to deal with, but I was able to keep my training going despite several trips so far. I'll break things up into months to catch up. Long story short, this NLP is going pretty smooth. I still have work to do on cleans, but every lift started better and is progressing better than before.

In the tables, if only a number is given, the weight was successful at the requisite sets/reps of the NLP.

Date	Weight	Squat	Press	Bench	Deadlift	Power Clean	Chin	Comments
4 March 2023		185	85				2xBW, 5x2 banded	Had DOMS after this. A week to recover.
11 March 2023	200	185	90		225
14 March 2023		195	92.5		243			Was on travel and deadlifts were in kg. Overshot a bit.
16 March 2023		205		125	254			Kg on deads again. Weight is in lbs.
18 March 2023	203	215	95		265
21 March 2023		225		130	275
23 March 2023		230	100		283			On travel again. Deadlift was on a 15 kg bar by accident.
25 March 2023	204	235		135		105		Re-introduced power clean. Squats on 5 lb jumps.
29 March 2023	202	240	102.5		295			A nice 50-55 lb gap between squats and deadlifts.

[David Hooper]

April went mostly well. The lessons learned from prior NLP runs are helping. I was able to negotiate around travel to keep somewhat consistent.

Date	Weight	Squat	Press	Bench	Deadlift	Power Clean	Chin	Comments
1 April 2023	203	245		140		110	7,6,5 banded
4 April 2023	203	250	105		305
6 April 2023	206	255	107.5			115	8,7,5 banded	Misread log and did presses instead of bench.
8 April 2023		260		145	315		7,5,5 banded
12 April 2023	205	265	110			120		Felt awful but DTP anyhow.
15 April 2023	207	270		150	325		8,6,4 banded
19 April 2023		275	112.5			115	4,4,3 BW	BW = bodyweight. Misread log and underloaded cleans.
22 April 2023	205	280		155	335		9,7,5 banded
24 April 2023	207	285	115			125	5,3,3 BW
26 April 2023	207	290		157.5	345		10,7,5 banded
29 April 2023	210	295	117.5			130		On travel.

[David Hooper]

I waited on posting until I had gotten clear of several work trips. I have about a month without trips, so I can hopefully be a bit consistent. This also let me get my third plate back on squats, which makes for a nice re-entry into the logs.

Date	Weight	Squat	Press	Bench	Deadlift	Power Clean	Chin	Comments
2 May 2023		300						Different travel. Terrible gym. Left when unsafe.
6 May 2023	209	300	120		355		9,7,5 banded	Back home.
10 May 2023	210	305		160		135	5,4,3 BW	Cleans were rough. Will repeat. Bench was easy.
13 May 2023	211	310	122.5		365		9,7,5 banded
16 May 2023	209	315		165		135		Cleans much better. 5 lb on bench.

The unsafe gym had racks that were too short to be able to press within. When pressing outside the rack, machines were only a couple feet behind, meaning people were too close for comfort. The "deadlift" area was the bit of floor where all the bros were posing. No platform, just an open space in front of the mirror. I got my squats in and left.

This catches the new NLP up to today. Great progress overall.

[Bill Anders]

The lessons learned from prior NLP runs are helping.

That's the best part of resuming any of the training. We're all a bit smarter for it.

Keep at it as you can, Hoop. If you can't keep consistency, keep intensity. I've now done two winter/snowboard seasons with only one heavy session of each lift each week or so. That helped maintain levels, or at least minimize the losses.

Welcome back!

[David Hooper]

Welcome back!

Thanks! It drove me nuts to be out that long. I'll have more missed weeks and such, but I'm figuring out how to minimize the impacts. Many times I'll just have two sessions in a week, but that's okay so long as it's still working.