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Hey rebels, long time no talk. My name's Justin. I was on the Facebook men's group for a while but ditched Facebook at the beginning of the year indefinitely. Freedom never felt so good Anyways...on topic. I've been doing Stronglifts more or less on the proper schedule for...3 months plus now? Here's the numbers so far... Squat 205@5x5 Deadlift 235@1x5 Bench 130@5x5 OHP 105@5x5 Row 130@5x5 My last squat attempt, I made it to the 4th set at 210 and chickened out. Deadlifts are still going strong. Bench feels like it is starting to top out, but no failures yet. OHP I've failed 3 times now, but not in a row. I started failing quite early...85lbs I think. The row is also going strong still. I feel very under-stressed on this lift. The SL bible says that I'm supposed to have 3 de-loads before essentially changing up the rep scheme for a given movement. But that requires 3 failures in a row for a single de-load. I haven't really found any other literature that supports that much failure before changing things up. On top of that, I'm not sure I have the patience. On squats, I'm having to wait 3-5 minutes between each and every set to get them done and it is stretching the length of the workouts beyond what my schedule can manage. Back when each lift was hyper-easy, I could get the whole thing done including warm-up and cool-down in 40 minutes or less. I've had my wife, who is a certified trainer and CF coach put my form for various lifts under a microscope to make sure there wasn't something obvious holding me back...nothing really to report there. My primary intention was to build a foundation of strength and then begin a more varied routine to help me lean out more and increase intensity/explosiveness (vs just strength or endurance). So the big question...what should I explore from here on? Should I adopt a SS 3x5 scheme? What kinds of thresholds should I be looking for with each of these lifts? Any help or guidance would be useful. Many thanks!

Since I'm not going with a new theme or changing my routine in any significant way, I decided to just go on with the last challenge. Exercise: 3 WODs a week 3 lifting sessions a week 2 Krav Maga classes a week Nutrition: Aim towards 200g of protein a day. Stay under 100g of carbs. (Yes, I'm back to tracking macros) Batch cooking will be of much help to attain those goals, so I'll try to do it for the entire duration of the challenge. Key word is TRY.

Ok, noob question here.. I know that the term "5x5" somehow includes 5 sets with 5 reps, but since both numbers are the same I didn't pay attention to which number is which. I've also read about "3x5"... is this 3 sets of 5 reps, or 3 reps for 5 sets? I'm guessing the former, since I seem to remember seeing "3x15" or something silly elsewhere, and I am skeptical that any routine would have a person doing 15 sets of anything. Just want to clarify. Furthermore, I've noticed that when doing my 5x5 routine, I definitely am lifting enough weight that it's difficult but possible, and yet my muscles aren't crazy sore afterward. What does this mean? It seems like if I'm really working them out as hard as I want to, I should be feeling it when I'm done for the day, or at least the next morning. Instead what happens is I work up a sweat and get my heart rate up while I'm doing it, but feel fine ten or fifteen minutes later. It's weird. Or maybe I'm just not used to it.