Detrained for a year, stalling already on week 4.2 of the Beginner Program

Hey Doctors,

I shut down entirely last year and stopped training altogether. Coming back I didn’t expect to stall so quickly. My old numbers (about 2 years of training):

Squat: 450lb
Bench: 250lb
Dead: 600lb

I’ve stalled on most lifts at this point, nowhere near where I first slowed down as a beginner. For example my day 1 bench for 10 has been stuck at 135 (or below) for two weeks. I’m also feeling kind of beat up, or worn out. The first three weeks I felt amazing.

I’m simultaneously losing weight and that’s going well. I started at 248 and I’m down to 241 in that 5 week span. I’m not hungry and adherence to my new eating habits has been a surprisingly low RPE.

One thing I’m doing that’s not in the template is decently long walks/hikes, 4 to 6 miles every day, at around an 8 RPE. Is it possible these plus the weight loss are leading to the stalled lifts? Should I drop the walks and go with the prescribed steady state cardio? Or should I move on to phase 2 after finishing this week out? Part of me wants to try one more phase 1 week to see if I can push past this.

Thank you for all the amazing work you do,

Gabriel

How long have you been doing the walks? If it’s relatively new, that’s got some potential impact , but it matters so little what you’re lifting right now compared to that you’re lifting. I also think the sets of 10 probably aren’t indicative of your strength right now given the stamina and strength requirements.

I would just move to phase II, as there’s no real benefit at grinding it out from a long-term development or adherence perspective.

-Jordan

Thanks for the reply. I started doing 30 minute walks daily at the start of the template and they quickly progressed to longer hikes since I found I enjoyed doing them. With previous training I rarely did any cardio at all, but that was before I started reading/listening to BBM. These stalls hit my ego a little more than I expected to be honest and made me immediately start looking for something to blame; the walks and weight loss were on that list.

I’ll definitely follow your advice and jump to phase 2. A lot of those lifts will actually be pretty novel for me-- looking forward to that.