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The more I read the more I have this burning question

From what I have read HIIT and complex workouts don't require huge amounts of time. So why are most classes at gyms that offer these classes hour long workouts? Does working out for one hour as opposed to 1/2 hour make more sense?

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Diana
Goals
squat 150
bench 100
DL 175

No, it doesn't make more sense from a fitness point of view. The hour is to make people feel like they have their money's worth. It also reduces the intensity and effectiveness. Some classes include and extended warmup and cooldown period so that they can get more intense in the actual workout phase. It's not nessesary though. Remember that this is not about fitness, it's about marketting. The actual military bootcamp workouts that these were modeled after were usually quite short, although more frequent. Sometimes they would be interspersed in a long run, for example, run for a while, stop and do some activity, run some more, etc. Other times they might be short intense workouts several times a day.

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Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
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Thanks TimD

I get it but for me if I know I am faced with an hour workout I go into conserve mode so I can make it through. I do much better with the shorter workouts where I seen light at the end of the tunnel. This for me goes back to setting up for success.

I suspected this was the case but one difficult thing is sorting out fact from fiction from marketing

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Diana
Goals
squat 150
bench 100
DL 175

Diana, when i started saying things like this Pete D started suggesting I might be ready to move off of Stronglifts. You haven't exactly said so, but has the progression of stronglifts gotten to the "brutal" stage yet? If you are thinking about changing your program, are you still trying to stick with the major lifts and just fit something like HIIT into it? If so, maybe you are ready to graduate from Stronglifts and move to something that shortens the workouts by no longer doing 3 major lifts on every workout.

Well if we aren't related you sure can read my mind.
I don't know is the honest answer.

I don't know if I am lifting heavy enough weight to come off SL. My numbers seem pretty stuck but also lower than perhaps they should be. This is what appears to be my max and I don't know why the are so low. Is it my size, my age???

100 # on squat (still can't go parallel no matter what weight) and yes I do stretching and all of the suggestions so I have given up on parallel and do what I can (about an inch above)
135 on DL
67 on BP
55 OHP
60 Row

My plan was to try and add the complexes and to still do the major lifts but increase reps to see if I can get some improvement on the numbers. Then go from there. I walk out pretty discouraged most days because I just don't seem to have it like I used to and I am looking for a way to get it back.

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Diana
Goals
squat 150
bench 100
DL 175

Well, regarding mind reading, credit goes to Mark Rippetoe who said something like this in an article, "If a person begins asking questions that indicate a change of goals, they may have hit a hard plateau and become discouraged." His words were very different, but that's what I took away from it.

But we miss the "I love deadlift day!" Diana, so moving on:



As Jungledoc told me, "never apologize for your numbers." It is absolutely not about where the numbers are, but whether they are moving. If you have plateaued and deloaded more than once and hit a hard wall then that pretty much is the definition of finishing a beginner program. If you keep pounding it you just end up discouraged.

I remember when you posted a 95# deadlift, so you've gone up by 40%, not bad! Progress is still possible, but it won't be the 5# every session anymore.



At this point everybody told me to try 5/3/1. I did. If you follow my threads you know I questioned every single aspect to the point of driving a few people crazy, but in the end it left me confident and comfortable with the program, and I highly recommend it.

5/3/1 makes it fun again!

Here is what might happen if you do 5/3/1, for example on deadlifts. We pick a "training max" and use it to calculate what weights to use. Let's say yours would be 140#, this means you would do this:

Week 1 you do 90# for 5 reps. then 105# for 5 reps. Then 120# for 5+, meaning at least 5 but as many more as you can do. This is the fun part. We know you can do 120# for 5 (you're doing 135 now after all), but how many more can you do? If you pull 7 reps, you have a new baseline 7RM of 120#. More on this in a minute.

Week 2 you do 100 for 3 reps, then 110 for 3 reps, then 125 for 3+. Same idea as 5+.

Week 3 you do 105 for 5 reps, then 120 for 3 reps, then 135 for 1+. Same idea as 5+ and 3+. If you are just really dead that day you "give yourself permission" to do maybe 3 reps. If you're feeling the fire, you say, "Hey I know I've done 135 for 5, can I do it for 6?"

Then you do an easy week, set the training max up by 10# and go around again.

Now a bit more about those "all-out" sets. Let's say in week 1 you pulled 120# for 7 reps. In the next cycle that will be 125# on that day. If you can make 7 again you've set a new PR! Your new 7RM. Same goes on the 3+ and 1+ days. This is where the magic comes in, because the program provides positive reinforcement on every single session.

Each day you do only one of the major lifts: press, dead, bench, squat (in that order). That takes me about 15 minutes and then it's "play time."

I do the four day/week variety, so I hit each major lift once/week, and Jungledoc (I'm pretty sure) is doing the 3 day/week variety, so his cycle lasts 5 weeks instead of 4. Both are perfectly valid.

So like I said, I've become an evangelist for 5/3/1 after doing it for only 1 cycle, it really is a great program, and works well after Stronglifts.

I still love DL day! It gets a bit hard when one day I can do 135 the next day I can barely do 115. I have had lots of stress and lack of sleep lately. Dog hurt his back and had surgery and he keeps me up at night because he hurts. I was attributing the lack of performance to that as well as I never no how I am going to preform so I don't have as much confidence when I walk in the door. No worries not even close to giving up!

The 5/3/1 sounds interesting and fun. I wanted to switch my goals to a bit of fat loss and I wonder if that program will work with complexes and HIIT?

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Diana
Goals
squat 150
bench 100
DL 175

Yeah, like I said after the one main lift of the day, which for me runs 15 minutes, you've got another 45 minutes to do whatever you like.

Dogmom (Diana?),

I don't mean to deviate from the opinions of the other lifters, just to add another perspective, but my gf did boot camp and she loved it. She originally signed up for a two week class but reenrolled twice and ended up going for close to two months.
Granted she doesn't do any weight training aside from whats used in xtrain and other classes she takes at the local Y.

And for what its worth, I play a lot of soccer-on two different teams as well as indoor-which is alot of running, obviously, and I do 5/3/1. I'm obviously not going to get huge (not really my goal anyhow) with all the cardio I do. But I only play on weekends and once during the week. It's important to recover from your main lifts adequately, and if I remember correctly about bootcamp is that its everyday. It might be nice to use as cardio twice a week or so, but more than that and you probably won't recover well from your heavy lifts.

Diana:-)

I used to do a bootcamp workout. Enjoyable-yes, works-yes. The one issue I have is I don't like to waste time. So if I workout one hour and essentially get the same benefit from working out 1/2 hour I don't see the point in doing the hour class. I also think that I work harder in 1/2 hour knowing that's all I have to work out. I also get pretty weak by the end of the hour and wonder about the efficacy of the workout. I wish there were a complex class or something like that.

I will read more about 5/3/1 and give it a try. I feel like I have failed at SL, I expected much more from myself.

My goals were 150# Squat, 175 DL,100 BP, 75# OHP, and 75# Row. I will get there it just may take a bit more fortitude.

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Diana
Goals
squat 150
bench 100
DL 175

Diana:

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_art ... e_strength

This article covers what Ken summarised brilliantly - take a look at the percentage tables at the bottom.

I've been running 531 for two weeks now and can see myself making good progress with all my lifts. I have set a goal to rip a 170kg deadlift and 200kg squat by Christmas. Fingers crossed!

Diana--You haven't failed anything!!!

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

Ok I retract the fail. Perhaps not done as well as I had hoped..... but when I look at the total picture then vs now I have come a LONG way in terms of strength. When I focus only on goals it skews the big picture.

Plus I just figured out how to get the name with the quote something that has been bugging me!

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Diana
Goals
squat 150
bench 100
DL 175

yeah
SL expectations of significant linear porgression are based on young boys bodies.
You are neither

on another note, I remember when you'd put a dog down instead of paying for a surgery. Not "you" specifically

. I am sure there are times when my dog wishes this were the case. This is #5 in his short life of 5 years. Llet's just say we call him or BOAT (break out another thousand)

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Diana
Goals
squat 150
bench 100
DL 175