Need training advice: Calling all vets

[Nate Dawg]

Recently my training has just gone to shit, mainly my bench poundage, but squat has dropped too, although not as much as bench. This will be a long post, but I am going to outline my training so you have a better idea of what I have been doing.

-In the middle of december I started the 5x5 routine for squats, squatting 3 times a week, came off a cycle of 1test cyp/4ad cyp at the end of november. For bench I was doing max effort work, working up to heavy singles constantly each week. The 5x5 for squat went excellent, added 40lbs to my 5x5 weight, and that is even better considering it was post cycle.

-Starting in the middle of January I began training for a powerlifting meet coming up in March, it was March 19. The week before starting the training cycle in january, I took kind of easy in the gym, just light stuff, trying to get recovered for the training cycle. Most of my training was westside style. For legs I was working up to a heavy single each week, alternating exercises each week i.e. box squat, free squat, deadlift, suspended good mornings, etc.. For bench work I was working up to a 3rm, as I found that worked best for me. I also started a AAS cycle then when beginning training for the meet. Strength increases went pretty good during the training cycle. 2 weeks out from the week, I worked up to my opening weights for the meet in bench and squat, and the week before I didnt lift at all.

-Here is the beginning of where I think I screwed myself over. The meet was Saturday March 19th, well monday I went home for spring break and all my buddies were lifting and I thought I would do a little bit, not planning on much, I wanted to take it easy that week since it was the week after the meet, but that monday I worked up to a max single on close grip bench. Wednesday I worked up to a pretty heavy single on box squats, all of this is just days following the meet.

-For the next few weeks I was working up to 3RM on bench and 2-3RM on box squats, not gaining any strength at all during this period, I dropped the tren and dbol, but was still on test at this time. The AAS cycle was over in the 3rd week of April. I took the week after coming off totally off training to help recover. Decided to try to incorporate a little bit of the 5x5 into my routine for pct since it worked so well for my squat in my previous post cycle in december.

-After a week off I started my 5x5 weight for bench at 275, that was very easy to complete. The next week was finals week and I became quite sick, but still managed 285 for 5x5 without much of a struggle while sick, I know I could have gotten 295 for 5x5 that day. The next week after 285, I went to 295, got two sets of 5, one set of 4 and one set of 3, it just didnt feel good at all. So since I failed at that weeks 5x5 attempt, I was going to do 295 again the following week. That was this week when I attemted 295 again for 5x5, everything felt so heavy warming up, it was really worrying me, when I took off 295 it felt more like I was holding 350 in my hands, I did 1 rep of 295 and it wasnt that easy, and I knew right away that I was overtrained so I just racked it and called it a day.

Squats I started off my 5x5 weight at 355 off a box 1-2 inches below parallel. This was kind of tough to complete, probably started too heavy here. The next week I was sick and I did 4x5 of 365. The following week I bumped to 375 and only got one set of 4 reps, no spotter so I wasnt going to try for a 5th rep as the 4th was extremely hard. This week I didnt squat due to a really bad sunburn I got as there was no way a bar was going on my back, so I just deadlifted up to a heavy single instead of squatting this week.

So this is the summary of my lifting in the past 5-6 months and what I have been doing. Now when my training started going to shit 2 weeks ago, was right when I moved home. For some reason my lifting never goes that great when I am at home. There are several factors that I think could be playing into this lately.

1) Whenever I start lifting at a new location, it seems to take me a week or two to get back into the groove of things, I guess I just have to get used to my new environment.

2) I came home for the summer to work, and I work on a farm, and these past few weeks I have been doing lots of hard work out in the sun and getting pretty wore out. When I get home from work I am just wore out, I eat and rest for 30-60min, then head out to go lift, and all my body feels like doing is just going to sleep, I have been quite tired lately. So that doesnt help with mental focus/clarity either.

3) Last week I got a really bad sunburn, which I had happen last summer too when I was roofing all day, and after that sunburn last summer my training went to total crap. I dont know what exactly is going on in the body when a bad sunburn occurs, but I think it hurt me this time around too. I think most of the protein that is consumed when sunburned goes more towards repairing the skin that the muscles since that would seem to be more of a priority, just my opinion.

4) Two weeks ago I got sick for about 5 days, mild fever, I still forced myself to eat alot and kept the cals high, so I only lost around 2-3lbs, but I feel that hurt me too. Couple that with a sunburn and things probably arent too good for making progress with training.

5) My diet isnt quite as good as it was at school, I am still getting in at least 1.25g/lb of protein, and around 2g/lb of carbs, but usually in the afternoon it is up to 6-7 hours between meals, but I am still managing 5 meals a day.

I have been talking with a very knowledgeable powerlifter and he thinks that I fried my CNS, and that is the main cause to my rapid loss of strength currently. I just tried to keep lifting as heavy as possible for so long, even when it didnt feel good, I think that I have really overtrained my CNS. Also, all of the sudden in the past few weeks I have been having a fair amount of shoulder pain appear, and I usually never have problems with my shoulders. I dont know if this is just due to the overtraining or what. Here is what my routine has been for the past 4 weeks:

Monday: Flat Bench 5x5, was doing flyes, but quit b/c of shoulder pain

Tuesday: Box squat 5x5, leg curls 3x10, weighted abs

Thursday: Supposed to do shoulders, but b/c of shoulder pain quit. Just triceps, Skull crushers- build up to heavy 6-8, Tri ext.- build up to heavy 6-8 reps.

Friday: Pullups- 3 sets stopping 1 rep shy of failure, JS Rows 5x5, EZ Bar curls 3x10 at set weight, Hammer curls 3x10

So what I am wondering is what should I do to get my strength back? Is my CNS just totally fried from all the heavy lifting? I am planning on taking this week off of lifting totally to try and get recovered and I guess start back into lifting not as heavy, probably doing a 3 day a week program only working on bench, squat, rows, and pull ups with some accessory tri and bi exercises in there. Really I am just totally lost on what I need to do, if you guys could give me some insight on what I should do to get back this strength that just freakin dissappeared I would really appreciate it alot!!! Im going insane!!

 

[bg65]

You might be surprised how good a week off can be for you, when I start making good gains I am prone to overtraining just because I get so into it, and usually if I take several days off I come back actually stronger.

What's more important, Your training or the farm work? Maybe try training in the morning before the day starts (probably pretty early)

is it your folks house? ask them if three days a week you could start two hours later so that you could go down to the gym and do your training

 

[johnsmith182]

so...

let me see if i have this right... you have recently done the following:

peaked for a meet, where you evidently made good gains and trained hard.

then you came off gear.

at roughly the same time, you have gotten sick, and...

you have started working on a farm, hard work, and...

you have been staying out in the sun all day, and gotten sunburned, and...

your diet hasnt been as good.

now, any one of these things would be enough to destroy the training of most people for a week or two. but you put them all together and you would have to be superman if you didnt have your training go to shit.

dont worry about whether its your CNS or whatever. the fact is that you got off gear, got sick, started doing a lot of manual labor and staying out in the sun and also not eating as well. that, my friend, does not add up to setting a bunch of PR's in the gym.

a long time ago when i was young and still full of piss and vinegar, i started a job on the pipeline in the summer, earning money for the next year at school. now this job was just too good to pass up. i was a 17 year old kid, and was taking home around $600 dollars a week, and since this was back in the late 80's that was real money, especially for the part of the country that i lived in. the bad part was that it really, really interfered with my training! i was working 10-12 hour days, out in the sun all freaking day long, much of the day with a shovel in my hands, for 6 and occasionally 7 days a week. so the first week it really screwed my workouts up, i simply couldnt do ANYTHING like the weights i had done before. but, being an analytical sort, i figured that pushing myself too hard would kill me, and that i would eventually adapt to whatever i was doing all day, since in my relatively short life before that i had always made do. so i stuck to my workouts, but cut the weight way back, way way back on some things, and stuck it out. sure enough, in a few weeks, i wasnt as tired as i had been at first at the end of the day, and the weights were slowly climbing back up... in a month or so i was doing about the same weights as i had before the job from hell, and by the end of the summer i was lifting more than ever before. when i quit the job, and went back to a more normal daily activity level, my strength soared quickly. i made huge gains in the first month after quitting the job and going to college.

so i think that overall, if you look at the total time from the beginning of the summer to a month after quitting the job, i was pretty much where i would have been had i never had the job... it s just that my progress took a big hit when i started doing all the unusuall work, then made up for it when all the sudden i didnt have to do all the shit that i had adapted to all summer.

so, this is what i would advise you to do. first of all, take care of yourself. eat, eat, eat. if your doing all that extra stuff, you need more, not less, food. second is to realize that this change in your lifestyle WILL effect your abilities in the weightroom, there is nothing you can do about it. so lower your weights, dont bash your head against a wall. do what you can. third, keep in mind that you will adapt, your weights will come back up when you get used to what you are doing, and when you quit all this extra activity and out in ;the sun time and such, you will probably see a big jump in progress that will make up for lost time.

 

[Nate Dawg]

Thanks for your replies john smith and bg65, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to sort through my long ass post! I think I am going to take it easy this week, no big lifts at all, just some really light accessory stuff.

I totally understand what you are saying about adapting over time to both working hard and lifting weights. I have been working on the farm since I was around 8 yrs old, but only these past few years have I been really serious about hitting the weights in the summer. Every summer when it begins my lifting does go down, its just this time it was way more than it ever had before, and it was totally screwing with my mind. For diet I have been packing meals to eat such as tuna, bagels, bananas, protein etc.. and I do feel better.

I am considering dropping my training down to 3 days a week, possibly two for the next week or two just to help aid in recovery, I think this would help alot. There is just no way that I can train balls to the wall 4 days a week at this point in time. Here is what I am thinking for a 3 day split:

Monday:
Flat bench: 1 hard set of ~5 reps
Incline bench:light
DB side raises: 3x10
Skull crushers: 1-2 hard sets of 6-8 reps

Wednesday:
Squat: 1 hard set of ~5 reps
SLDL: 3x6-8
Weighted Back Ext: 2x10-12
Weighted Abs

Friday:
Pullups: 3 sets
JS Rows: 5x5
2 bi exercises

I dont know if those rep schemes are ok, I am kind of considering going back to a pyramid such as 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, as it has been over a year since I have used that, but if I remember correctly I think I have heard many people say that pyramids are just for beginners mainly, please correct me if I am wrong. Let me know what you think of the workout I have set up, I really appreciate all the help you guys have given me, take care.

 

[J DUB]

3 days a week is certainly enough frequency to maintain your strength levels until you adapt to these new stressors, and may even be enough post-adaptation. Personally, 3 days a week is great for me.

In your program, however, you are basically doing 1 set of squats and 1 set of bench once each a week. For an experienced lifter like yourself, I do not see this being enough volume for even maintenance.

My suggestion would be to do something like the 5x5, but cut it down to 2-3 sets of each exercise until you feel like you can increase the volume. This way, you can hit bench and squat twice a week, and also get some good supplemental work.

Take a look at the 5x5 and if you like it, perhaps we can be of assistance in helping you modify the program to suit your situation.

 

[Nate Dawg]

I was actually considering modifying the original 5x5 program, I'm just not really for sure on how I would want to modify it. Im not going to squat 3 times a week though lol, I did that over christmas break when I was at home working and it really helped out my squat, but it seemed since so much of my energy went to squatting, all my other lifts went down, just my experience. Also I dont think there would be anyway right now that I would be able to bench and squat in the same day with enough intensity, after I am done with a core exercise that I hit as hard as possible, there is no way the other exercise will get the amount of intensity it needs, I dont think.

I was also considering making an A and B workout, like workout A would be chest/shoulders/tris, and workout B would be legs/back/bis, and just alternate them through M/W/F, so the first week you would do workout A twice, on monday and friday, workout B on wednesday, and the following week workout B would be done on both Monday and Friday, with workout A being on wednesday, kind of based this idea off of doggcrap training, I've never tried it and really dont know what to think of it, I doubt you guys are big fans of it lol.

If you could help me set up a modified 5x5 program to suit my needs that would be great, I just dont know how to adjust it because I really dont know how squatting and benching in the same day would be for me, I mean hell, right now I am tired when I get to the gym before I even start warming up, so Im not real sure on how I would make it through 2 core exercises in one day plus accessories.

 

[brang]

oh and to top it all off this post is from 2004! HAH! I'm an idiot.

 

[Thickneck]

Most likely over training. Need more rest , can't push all out all of the time . You need light weight rep days also. Listen to your body ......