I’m a guy in his thirties, who has been lifting for some years already. I trained first years with different variants of 5/3/1 and got in pretty good shape. I did gain some strength, but nothing amazing. Mainly because I did not gain as much weight as needed, and I had too many contradicting goals. I’m still logging also to other forum, but feel that I’m going to stop relatively soon (pretty passive place overall), so I decided to try this one out.
I started PL little over a year ago, changed my programming and started eating calorie surplus (actually tracking kcals and macros, not just “eat a lot” as I used to do).
I’ve done now 2 meets, and my current personal bests are:
In a meet:
Squat 205kg/452 lbs
Bench 115kg/254 lbs
Deadlift 235kg/518 lbs
In gym:
Squat 195kg/430 lbs
(TnG)Bench 125kg/275,5 lbs
Deadlift 240kg/529 lbs
I’m 6.4 feet and I weight around 108kg/238 lbs now.
Current programming:
Full time office and two daughters keeps me relatively busy, but I compete at local level PL to have some goal oriented lifting. I don’t have time/energy/focus for long workouts, so I have done simple and fast ones for 4 days/week:
a) Main lift
b) 1. variation/assistance lift
c) GPP (if time)
This allow me to train lift in twice a week. The total volume is of course different. With pressing I’ll do around 15 work sets per week, with squat around 10 and with deadlift only 5 work sets every week. I also hit some GPP 2 times a week whenever I’ll have the time (upper back, midsection and light cardio). Progression is simple as it gets - just increase the workloads is the current point. Either more sets with same weight or same sets/reps with higher weights. I try to learn to measure RPE, and I log that in too, even though my auto regulation is based on a “5% -rule”.
I have had good experiences with waving the training weeks:
W1 Medium intensity and volume, close variations
W2 Lower intensity, higher volume, easier variations
W3 Higher intensity and volume, close variations
W4 Medium to high intensity and low volume, no variations
Anyway, that’s the mandatory base info. Lets get into it.