I’ve been doing the Greyskull LP for a little over 3 months. Made decent progress on presses. Deadlift is slow-going but it’s moving. Squats have been at a stand still because of a series of issues but hopefully moving again soon. This has led to my presses nearing the end of my ability to progress linearly but lots of room for my deadlift and squat.
I’ve reset BP and OHP once and am at the point i got stuck previously. I can feel that it’s still very hard and expect to fail again in the next few workouts.
My basic understanding of intermediate programming is increasing work capacity by adding volume or switching to a variation of the original lift. Ideally I’d like to keep squatting twice a week and deadlifting once a week on an LP… but what is the best approach for my presses at this point?
Sign up for the BBM newsletter! Lot’s of great content, like the recent “novice press/bench plugin,” which is exactly what I’d suggest you do. I’ve probably added 15 lbs to my Press and Bench 5rms doing it for the last 3-4 weeks.
Upper Body Lifts Stalled on Novice Linear Progression? Do This!
The Starting Strength Novice Linear Progression (SSLP) is set up on an A/B schedule where workouts “A” and “B” are alternated on non-consecutive days, e.g. M/W/F or T/R/Sat. A common issue people have is that their upper body lifts plateau prior to their squat and deadlift, which creates a programming problem. We have a solution. We’d recommend doing the following as a direct plug-and-play for workouts A and B: Workout A Squats per SSLP Bench x 1@ +5% from last 5 x 3 sets on LP, then take 15% off the bar for 5 reps x 5 sets Deadlift per SSLP Press x 8 reps x 4 sets @ -12% from previous press 5 x 3 sets on LP
Workout B
Squats per SSLP
Press 1 @ +5% from last 5 x 3 sets, then take 15% off the bar for 4 reps x 6 sets
Power Cleans or Rows per SSLP
Close grip bench x 8 reps x 4 sets @ -15% from previous bench press 5 x 3 sets on LP
Progression/Notes
-Attempt to add 2.5-5lbs per week on all sets without going above RPE (rate or perceived exertion) 8, which denotes having approximately 2 reps left in reserve, i.e. you could’ve done another 2 reps before failing.
-Bench presses are touch and go. You can use a belt if you like.
Presses are done from a dead stop. You can also use a belt if you like.
-Rest 4-5 minutes between work sets
Alternate A and B workouts as you were on Starting Strength LP (SSLP)
-When your squat and deadlift stop increasing on SSLP, start The Bridge.
That is definitely interesting. I’d imagine I could plug in something similar to the GSLP. I’m still rehabilitating my squat… I’d rather not squat every workout.
Yeah, I was actually on an SSOC assigned upper body program that wasn’t LP anymore, but I still plugged this in and immediately saw better results. FWIW my upper body workouts looked like:
So I wasn’t exactly following the program because I didn’t want to totally change what I was doing, but I knew I needed the extra volume so I tried my best to get about the same prescribed volume. As I said it’s worked really really well for me. I got stuck on Presses 3 times on resets on LP at 122-127.5 and thanks to adding in CGBS, then the extra volume a couple weeks later I’m probably strong enough to do 142.5x5 (and have tested 135x5 @RPE 9 a couple weeks ago). And I was stuck at 127.5 just over a month ago. Oh and also I’ve been cutting for the last 3 weeks It works!
And yes, the x1 is a top single @ RPE 8 or lower before the 5x5s.
I’d also recommend starting the 5x5s lower than BBM calculates. At least from my experience their calculation is pretty aggressive. Possibly because my 5x3s were actually 2 backoff sets, so my “ended LP” numbers were inflated.
Lol. I am not smart.
I started doing the newsletter plugin last week. Skimmed the instructions at the gym on my phone every day to remember what the backoff sets look like.
Had so much trouble pressing sets of 8 and figured I just needed to subtract a little more for those sets until I got used to doing 8’s.
Looked at the instructions again yesterday and thought “Hrm, has that 1 always been there?” as in singles?? not 3 sets of 5 followed by 4 sets of 8 or 5 sets of 5.
Oh yeah, I totally agree with you guys. Those sets of 8 at the percentage suggested for OHP was for too very aggressive. I ended up at 20%. The same thing for CGB. I guess you have to use the RPE thing then…
It works!