ExRx.net

I'm really curious if anybody experienced what I did early in their lifting career.

While doing stronglifts, there came a point where I absolutely dreaded squats, and it lasted about a month. It started at about 145# and lasted until my first stall at 195#.

My training buddy is just hitting the 145# mark, and he says he's hitting the same point of absolute dread, which we figured came to this:

1) Squats hurt when you are new to them and the weight is rising, and 5 across is rough

2) As long as you are progressing, you know today is going to be worse than last time

3) If progressing, you also know next time will be worse still. We shouldn't think about it, but we do.

Then came the first stall and deload, and it was back to 160# and the dread completely vanished. And has never come back. Heavy sets now are like an assigned task, work, which must be completed to meet a goal. The entire concept of dread vanished.

I had the same feeling on deads, which I never stalled on with Stronglifts, so they just got harder and harder. When I switched to an intermediate with ramped sets which has a deload built in, the deadlift dread also completely vanished.

If this is common for new lifters, then being aware of it would make a person better able to spot it in others and reassure them to keep going.

Just wondering.

I never did 5x5 across for any extended time, that may contribute.
But, to the extent dread comes, its more realted to the heat in the garage
I missed squats wth bad ankle far more than I ever dreaded them. TGUs do cause some dread, but more from just being uncomfortable in a bit unaccomadating location

For Squats, the thrill of the after high always pulls me thru.

When I get closer to my actual max, maybe the dread will come. Deads at 290 + while a challenge are, are still somethig I look forward to

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Mind you I was in a 10 yr malaise prior to starting. While I was no longer “down in the dumps” the last year, I was bascially coasting thru life not doing anything accept showing up at work and laundry. Training is the one thing I do on a regular basis which
1. Not required
2. Not easy
3. Not helping me pay the bills.
And that has done more to boost my self image and attitude than all the Oprah shows ever taped

"and 5 across is rough"
it really is, in the end I dropped my program because five across three times a week beat me, but apparently it beats everyone (so they move over to periodized intermediate program)

The one I still wince at is widegrip pullups, I detest them because I never get into the groove with them - and dont think I ever will. I've been re-assured they can be worked around and I have zero issues with repping out as many standard pullups as I need to (aim for 100 a week but with back work being pretty high already, my accessory list being quite busy, it usually ends up being more like 75.

But didn't get it with squats as much really - I got very frustrated with bench stall, but ive past that now. As with most things... just soldier through, "look on the bright side" - my press (I promise Ill stop going on about it soon ;) ) has always progressed nicely and I like the feel of it, so that was a motivating exercise to contrast my stalled bench.

For me dread comes from, 1) fear of failure, 2) fear of pain, 3) fear of injury, and 4) fear that I won't be able to do the dreaded but loved lift for the rest of my life. I love squats and deadlifts, but I have had the feelings you describe. For squats, I got over a lot of it when I decided one day to just take what was for me a relatively heavy weight and squat it to failure, since I had always been afraid to go very close to that point. I didn't actually fail a lift, but I got to the point that I was pretty sure I would on the next rep. The surprise for me is that I did about twice the number of reps that I had thought I was capable of.

I'm currently on a reset for both squat and DL, and I don't have those feelings at all any more, I think mostly because I know I've been on this part of the road before, and it didn't kill me last time. For me in the past, a new PR had become a crisis. I felt so beat-up afterward that I'd deload a little longer than I needed to, or I'd be hurt enough that I wouldn't approach that weight again for a while, and then I'd find myself behind and unable to keep up the momentum I'd had before. This time I intend to keep the 5/3/1 progressions going through my old PRs. I'm not going to test a PR, or try for something beyond the loads dictated by the program. Just steadily adding 5 pounds to my upper and 10 to my lower training maxes, getting extra reps if I can, but not worrying about it if I only get the prescribed reps. For me that's lifting without fear.

I do, however like Proper Knob's signature line, "If it doesn't scare you, it's not heavy enough." Maybe not strictly true, but there is some truth in it.

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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

This touches heavily on my own intentions for after my 2-week hybrid 5/3/1-Texas system stops working. Having now read PP through pretty well, I'm sure that when it stops working for me:

1) I will still be far from my genetic potential
2) My body will have adapted to the stress patterns so that they no longer trigger supercompensation.

Therefore it is possible I might be able to get more gains on the 2-week cycle (before giving up on it and going monthly) by altering the stress patterns, which means sets and reps.

Now, as I understand, you've been on 5/3/1 for awhile, but you mention deloading -- which I take to mean setting 1RM numbers lower to "run up the hill" again. But if I understand my PP, this may not be the way to go (hey, it's you guys' fault for telling me to read Rippetoe, you've created a monster).

Your log says you're on cycle 17, is that 17 straight cycles of as-written 5/5/5+, 3/3/3+, 5/3/1+ and deload? Because if so, conventional wisdom says your body would have adapted to the stress pattern, so that it no longer disrupts homeostasis and triggers and adaptation. The thing to do would be to change the stress to force an adaptation.

The options for changing the stress pattern are endless, and again conventional wisdom says any kind of change would likely work. But what kind of change?

In 5/3/1, we tend to focus on the ascending intensity as the only pattern, but for any given lift, if you look at the tonnage you see something fascinating:

Week 1: Tonnage = 11.25 x 1RM
Week 2: Tonnage = 7.2 x 1RM
Week 3: Tonnage = 7.25 x 1RM
Week 4: Tonnage = 7.5 x 1RM

Wendler is keeping tonnage constant after week 1 while varying intensity quite a bit. So the options for changing the stress pattern are not just limited to sets/reps/intensity, but also to tonnage. We have two options:

1) Assume Wendler is omniscient and a new set/rep/intensity pattern has to respect his tonnages, or

2) Assume Ken found a coincidence and we are free to mess with tonnage as well.

Anyway, to get to the point, have you ever changed the sets/reps? Since Wendler is basically providing three "heavy" days, you can mess with it considerably to do heavy-medium-heavy-light, or anything else. You can mess with tonnage so it goes 11.25 -> 7.2 -> 15 -> 5, really anything.




Yeah, I love that line, but it is impossible to explain to an "outsider."

Well, this is a bit of a change of subject, but since it's your thread, I guess you won't be offended!

No, that's not what I mean. "Deload" is a planned period of reduced inetnsity, volume or both, to allow for recovery while continuing to train motor patterns, learn new lifts, etc. 5/3/1 has a designed-in deload, as you mention in the next paragraph. "Reset" means to lower the planned intensity to allow increased volume and achieve increased training results with the same basic work-out scheme.

No, those cycles haven't been straight, but when I do 5/3/1 I do it as written. Hey, I don't want Wendler cussing at me! I took a month to do an auto-regulated high-rep scheme, which, while I didn't really like it (12 reps is boring), helped me to improve all of my lifts. I also had a time when I had increased to a 4 workout per week routine (standard Wendler) and got kind of beat up and had a lot of back pain, and stopped improving on my lifts. I took a couple of weeks off, did some light deload kind of stuff for a week or two, then reset all my training maxes and got back into pretty much what I had been doing before.

You don't adapt to something like 5/3/1 the same way you adapt to a linear program. The whole idea of periodization is that it is varying the training stimulus and avoiding adaptation. If you only do the basic reps then you're doing 3x5 one week, 3x3 the next, and then working up to a heavy single the next. But it's even more varied than that, cause in reality I'm doing higher volume on the third set most of the time. By resetting, I was actually changing to a lower weight, higher rep lifting scheme, then varying it gradually as the weight went back up.

Besides, I change my assistance lifts every 5 weeks, doing most of them fairly light, but varying them quite a bit.

I'm still going to interrupt 5/3/1 occasionally for a month or two of doing things differently. High volume is one thing that I'll probably do sometimes. Also, I'm interested in experimenting with some of Steve Justa's ideas, like doing daily multiple singles.

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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

Ken, might find this handy -

http://asp.elitefts.net/qa/training-log ... 083&tid=63

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What if the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about?

If it doesn't scare you, it's not heavy enough.

great qoute and the only weight that has ever scared me was 400 lbs on my shoulders for a set of 8....very scarey but rewarding :)

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"Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door"

Kyle Chandler