Squat strength decreasing?

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hi. I am having a dilemma with 1RMs & heavy singles and would appreciate the good advace of the docs on this.
I’m 44years young I weigh 88-89 kg(on a light cut at present down from 93kg) I am 5ft 10. My PR s are lowbar squat 195kg x1 deadlift 210kg press 87.5kg bench 145kg. I started with SS LP 3 yrs ago then moved on (same as alot of us i guess) i’ve been following the bbm programmes a while now with good results. however I have plateaued somewhat scince January on my squat 195kg and press 87.5kg and infact have started regressing on both. Also my last deadlift pr was 210kg in april and i could barely pull 200kg over summer im feelling very fatigued in my legs hips and lowback. My work sets on squats are ok and on deadlifts but my 1@8s are very hard and going steadily backwards on squat. My bench on the other hand has gone up steadily. Since january i have been through the 12 week strength, ggp hypertrophy, bridge 3.0 and now gpp hypertrophy again.

Any thoughts/advice on this are most welcome?
Many thanks
John.

2

Hey John,

Thanks for the post and the business- they are both much appreciated.

As far as the 1RM stagnation- even regression- I think roughly half of the year you’ve been running programming that is not well-suited for improving your 1RMs (e.g. the hypertrophy work). That said, there’s probably some decent strength development going on, but to translate it into heavy singles you’ll likely need more specific work given your level of training. I’d run the 12WS again and see how you do with that.
If you don’t respond well to that, I’d look at changing up some of the programming variables.

-Jordan

3

I have a follow up question.

You’re training sets of squats in the 6 - 10 range. What is the direction weights are moving on the movements and rep ranges that you are training?