Men ONLY please...

[Waldo]

so i want to discuss a fitness related issue. yes this is a typically non fitness related thread but...oh well.

so my lifts...all of them...really sort of suck when you take into account my height and body weight. example.

6'1 and 190lbs ish.

squat: 210 (weak sauce)

bench (185 Weak sauce)

push presses (135-140)

dead lift (275)

rows (on the tbar thing not standing with the barbell): 110 (not counting the weight of the actual bar contraption)

I eat a lot. sleep alot and have been at it since last october/november. i don't really know what i'm doing wrong. maybe not eating enough??? i seriously just don't know what's going on. big changes in my body for sure but...still my biggest and best lift seems to be my shrugs with the barbell it is 250+lbs and i sort of explode into my shrug. so please someone explain to me what is wrong. i look a lot stronger than i am apparently. but...still...it is starting to get me down.

Your ht/wt should answer your question. You don't seem to have increased your weight at all. Look at your eating. My strength started rocketing upwards when I started eating a surplus, the pace of gains has been mind boggling.

Do you have long limbs? That really impacts how much weight you can move. The longer your limbs, the heavier weight feels to your muscle.

[Waldo]

Oh, snake, the other big thing was I went from 5x5 to 3x5. That's probably bigger than the other two.

While not doing the x5 part, moving from 4-5 sets to 3 working sets per exercise was a necessity for me as the resistance increased.

[mrRed]

I've gotten stuck a lot before / am always getting stuck / have figured out how to get myself unstuck.

A few things will help and have been mentioned before>

1) Eat more. 1lb protein at lunch and dinner, 6 eggs for breakfast, lots of veggies and some carbs (sweet potatoes, potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, etc ..). If you really want to make gains you need to be willing to pack a little padding around your mid-section.

2) Sleep more. 8 hours is ideal

3) Switch programs. I hate the consistent high volume of stronglifts for all but the most beginner stages. Even the basic starting strength format becomes too much volume for people who can't focus most of their time on lifting / recovery. It's too much, too hard to recover from and takes way too long. Look to either switching to a 3x5 from 5x5 or look up the Greyskull LP. My personal favorite is greyskull, squat 2x week, press before the big lifts, add in some vanity stuff and the AMRAP last set really stimulates intensity and a different type of muscular growth. You reset more frequently than with starting strength, but I gotta say that it really agrees with me as someone who gets less than ideal sleep and doesn't want to spend 2 hours lifting 3x a week.

[Guest Snake McClain]

Pft your benching 185? Total weak sauce man! I bench like ~90lbs, so you should really step up your game if you are going to get as beefy as me

You can squat and bench your BW, and can do that multiple times. As far as I am concerned, that is pretty dang good. Maybe you should try a smoothie diet, WAYYY better for you than paleo or anything else like that. </sarcasm>

I hope i don't sound mean but this made me laugh. When everyone is an anonymous face on the internet you sort of make up how you imagine them to be. i.e. people thinking i'm a beast or me being shocked that you don't bench a lot.

The goblet squat is the first one I was introduced to after regular prisoner squats. And I find the barbell hard to keep balanced, I just can't find a comfortable place to hold it. Unfortunately I have to figure it out though, cuz the dumbbells available to me only go up to 100 lbs. I'm not ready to exceed that yet, but I will be soon. So I gotta sort something out. Maybe barbell front squat? Which will allow me to easily bail the weights if something goes wrong.

have you considered (if your gym has it) the weight belt? so maybe tie a big weight to it and grab the 100lb dumbell and go to town. get creative if you honestly can't hold the bar for squats. I did this when my shoulder was so effed up i couldn't reach to hold the bar.

Just takes some grit and a few stacks to get the hang of it.

Bruce, 6 eggs a day is only approx 40grams of protein. You'll be wanting 1 gram per lb of bodyweight to keep on gaining that strength.

i eat a lot more than six eggs a day. there was a 2 month period where i ate a dozen a day. I was at 195lbs but recently i cut back how much i was eating and dropped ten lbs. a good bit of it was body fat (i know this because abs are showing up now)

Oh, snake, the other big thing was I went from 5x5 to 3x5. That's probably bigger than the other two.

so why would a 3x5 be more beneficial than 5x5? more weight can be pushed because i don't have to do as many reps?

Your ht/wt should answer your question. You don't seem to have increased your weight at all. Look at your eating. My strength started rocketing upwards when I started eating a surplus, the pace of gains has been mind boggling.

Do you have long limbs? That really impacts how much weight you can move. The longer your limbs, the heavier weight feels to your muscle.

i actually do have long limbs. this is interesting. i've never heard this before but this sort of makes sense.

While not doing the x5 part, moving from 4-5 sets to 3 working sets per exercise was a necessity for me as the resistance increased.

i am going to read on this now.

[Guest Snake McClain]

I've gotten stuck a lot before / am always getting stuck / have figured out how to get myself unstuck.

A few things will help and have been mentioned before>

1) Eat more. 1lb protein at lunch and dinner, 6 eggs for breakfast, lots of veggies and some carbs (sweet potatoes, potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, etc ..). If you really want to make gains you need to be willing to pack a little padding around your mid-section.

2) Sleep more. 8 hours is ideal

3) Switch programs. I hate the consistent high volume of stronglifts for all but the most beginner stages. Even the basic starting strength format becomes too much volume for people who can't focus most of their time on lifting / recovery. It's too much, too hard to recover from and takes way too long. Look to either switching to a 3x5 from 5x5 or look up the Greyskull LP. My personal favorite is greyskull, squat 2x week, press before the big lifts, add in some vanity stuff and the AMRAP last set really stimulates intensity and a different type of muscular growth. You reset more frequently than with starting strength, but I gotta say that it really agrees with me as someone who gets less than ideal sleep and doesn't want to spend 2 hours lifting 3x a week.

1) I don't mind a bit of padding. i just lost some and in a weird way i sort of miss it. it's weird. really weird. as i always wanted abs back and then when i said "f it who needs abs to show?" they started showing up because i was eating less and now i want my fat back. lol (wasn't much fat)

2) My sleep is pretty solid MOST of the time.

3) Greyskull huh...i'll check this out. that sounds interesting.

[mrRed]

I really think the ebook is worth it, but overly simplified, the program is:

Monday

Bench/ or Press (A/B) 2x 5, 1 x 5+

Curl 2x 10-15 (bench days)

Squat 2x 5, 1x 5+

Neck Harness

Wednesday

Bench/ or Press 2x5, 1x 5+

Weighted Chins 2 x 6-8 (press days, and only if you can do at least 6-8 BW chins)

Deadlift 1x 5+ (with or without power cleans as warmups)

Neck Harness

Friday

Bench/ or Press (A/B) 2x 5, 1 x 5+

Curl 2x 10-15 (bench days)

Squat 2x 5, 1x 5+

Neck Harness

Bodyweight Chins are done every day.

5 lb jumps on Squat and Deadlift

2.5lb jumps on pressing movements and curls (when rep ranges are satisfied)

When reps on last set fall below 5, take 10% off of bar and begin process over (on that lift only)

[Guest Snake McClain]

neck harness? never heard of this.

and i won't do curls. that's the only thing i wouldn't do. probably would replace them with rows if i did this program. just not a fan of curling. my arms get too big too quick and i look really f'd up and dissproportionate.

[mrRed]

I don't really dig the neck hardness, but basically, it allows you to do neck extensions (from head slumped forward to neutral spine) weighted.

The neck hardness and curls and the like are options to includes. Basically take what you think needs work and do lighter, higher rep stuff for that muscular group as a plug-in.

He also advocates high intensity conditioning work, which i program in between gym days and seems to make a big difference in terms of not feeling like a worthless pile.

[Waldo]

Moving to only 3 working sets when in the low rep ranges is out of necessity more than anything else. Heck I feel like I'm going to fall apart after 3 sets and have been doing only 2 sets of non-focus things as of late. In higher rep ranges or when the resistance was still a lot lower, I could/can go and go and go, but with higher resistance comes slower recovery and more damage per set. But what sort of exercises you are doing really makes a difference. I do pretty much compound exercises only, that really takes a toll.

[Guest Snake McClain]

Moving to only 3 working sets when in the low rep ranges is out of necessity more than anything else. Heck I feel like I'm going to fall apart after 3 sets and have been doing only 2 sets of non-focus things as of late. In higher rep ranges or when the resistance was still a lot lower, I could/can go and go and go, but with higher resistance comes slower recovery and more damage per set. But what sort of exercises you are doing really makes a difference. I do pretty much compound exercises only, that really takes a toll.

Same here. i pretty much do compound only.

[The Tin Man]

Going back to bachelor parties:

I went to one last summer that was outstanding. We were at a campsite for the weekend on Saturday we did a high ropes course. In the evenings we drank a ton around a campfire and chatted and played/sang songs on the guitar. The ropes course was a lot of fun but brutal. My arms were a little sore the next day but my abs hurt so much I could barely sit up.

And Bruce:

I may have missed this, but are those working weights or 1RM?

[aj_rock]

Hey Bruce, your bench is actually ahead of your squat and DL numbers, and squats are only lagging optimal levels for your DL by like 10 lbs.

Besides that, if you haven't changed your diet much from when you lost the fat, well, there's public enemy NUMERO UNO. Moar food. Carbs in particular.My best growth days over last winter came on days after I did a carb load with 600+g of carbs. Despite doing squats and deads on the same day, pushed squats to 275X5 and deads to 335X5.

[Guest Snake McClain]

Going back to bachelor parties:

I went to one last summer that was outstanding. We were at a campsite for the weekend on Saturday we did a high ropes course. In the evenings we drank a ton around a campfire and chatted and played/sang songs on the guitar. The ropes course was a lot of fun but brutal. My arms were a little sore the next day but my abs hurt so much I could barely sit up.

And Bruce:

I may have missed this, but are those working weights or 1RM?

this is for my working sets

Hey Bruce, your bench is actually ahead of your squat and DL numbers, and squats are only lagging optimal levels for your DL by like 10 lbs.

Besides that, if you haven't changed your diet much from when you lost the fat, well, there's public enemy NUMERO UNO. Moar food. Carbs in particular.My best growth days over last winter came on days after I did a carb load with 600+g of carbs. Despite doing squats and deads on the same day, pushed squats to 275X5 and deads to 335X5.

where did you find these "optimal levels"? i'd like to see this so i can compare and have a method to base myself on.

[161803398874989]

so why would a 3x5 be more beneficial than 5x5? more weight can be pushed because i don't have to do as many reps?

You can't recover from 5x5 anymore. I think 5x5 is more of a practice thing than anything else. According to this beautiful thing called "Prilepin's table", which is basically a summation of what you need to lift how many times to get stronger, you ought to be getting something around 18 reps, with a fairly large margin (+/- 6). 5*5=25, which falls just outside the range. So try 3x5 or 3x6.

Sleep more. 8 hours is ideal

That really depends on the person. I perform way better with about 9 hours of sleep on a moderately strict schedule than I do with 8 hours. I know a guy who functions very well with something like 6 hours a night, despite studying and working a near full-time job.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

where did you find these "optimal levels"? i'd like to see this so i can compare and have a method to base myself on.

Generally accepted ratios I've seen are 2/3/4/5 OHP/bench/squat/dead lift. For example, I'm aiming for 200/300/400/500 as my end game working sets (worked out well for my size). Right now I'm at 150/235/325/365 for my working sets and if I take my squats as being the one I want to compare the other lifts to, that ratio breaks down to 1.85/2.89/4/ 4.49, which shows that my bench and OHP are slightly below optimal and my deadlift is really trailing (damn dodeca-evil plates and no chalk).

As for going from 5 sets to 3, I noticed I was failing mostly on my 4th and 5th sets, and plateuing because of it. So I figured I was getting heavy enough that the muscular endurance to lift heavy for 25 reps was reaching it's limit, so I went to the 3x5 to get strength gains again, and it's worked awesome this challenge (OHP 125->150, bench 215->235, squat 285->325).

[mrRed]

As far as I'm concerned optimal ratios are BS, especially as we're mostly weak and getting stronger (we're about the same in terms of lifts, and both have a huge amount of progress to still make).

Lift with the goal of making progress every time you're under the bar (another reason I love greyskull is that even during resets you're hitting rep PRs). If you do that you might be off with the ratios a little bit due to anthropomorphic weirdness, injuries, initial strength imbalances, etc ... but you'll be pretty balanced overall. There are a lot of otherwordly strong people who have equal squats and deadlifts.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

The ratios are definitely more guidelines than rule. I for example expect my squats to always be ahead of everything else followed by my deadlifts as I have short legs compared to my torso (I should be 6'4" damnit!).

[andyTHFC]

Thanks for the Greyskull recommendation. I had never heard of it and it looks like a pretty good program.

[chairohkey]

Thanks for the Greyskull recommendation. I had never heard of it and it looks like a pretty good program.

GSLP is just a ripoff of SS, albeit a good one.

[wildross]

The ratios are definitely more guidelines than rule. I for example expect my squats to always be ahead of everything else followed by my deadlifts as I have short legs compared to my torso (I should be 6'4" damnit!).

Ditto here. My wife (5'2") has 30" inseams. I have 32" at 6'....I'm all neck and body with short stubby little legs...

[mrRed]

GSLP is just a ripoff of SS, albeit a good one.

Derivative yes. Ripoff no. If you read through the book you'd understand there's some good reason the program evolved into what it is.

edit: that being said, I'm not really doing that right now as it is, but the basic structure of intensity sets and resets works for me much better than SS ever did when the weights get heavy.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Ditto here. My wife (5'2") has 30" inseams. I have 32" at 6'....I'm all neck and body with short stubby little legs...

I found out too late in life that our body types actually make good swimmers. I coulda been Michael Phelps (not really, my feet and hands aren't big enough).

[Artinum]

Every time you guys mention this Greyskull thing, I see the sequence from He-Man...

[smedly]

Well someone had to do it-

[Church]

I'm one of the people that functions on 4-6 hours of sleep. When I have work I do just fine with 4-6 hours of sleep for the 2 weeks at a time when I'm working 12 hour days. But for my week off I usually get about 8-9 hours. Though I wake up feeling really stiff and sluggish.