Old Guy Doing 5/3/1

Training Training Logs
1002

I plan to continue to eat at a deficit, but I’m still going to eat a little more on my training days. Also, since I’m supposed to be making weight loss my priority, I may back off a little on the weights for the next 2 months, or at least not push the + sets or joker sets as much. I only did 1 joker set yesterday, and I may do this whole week that way. I may even decide to do the minimum reps for the week on the top sets. We’ll see how I continue to feel.

4/5/19 Training for today: Ran 2.31 miles in 23:03. 10:08 pace on the first mile, 9:59 pace on the second. Not fast by any means, but I ran the second mile faster than the first one, which was my goal. I found a nice route for my run, but I need to figure out a direction to stretch it a little to get it up to a solid 5K. I’m bounded on the north and east by the river, so I’ll have to go further west and south to make up the difference. I should be able to run a 30 minute 5K, not fast by any means but considering how little I’ve run in the last couple years, I’ll be happy if I hit that.

4/5/19 food for today

Breakfast: Shake = 1/2 cup whole milk, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 1/2 scoop protein powder. 1 mandarin orange.

Skipped lunch

Snack: 30g deluxe mixed nuts. 1 Cappuccino.

Dinner: Cheeseburger at Buddy’s Bar and Grill = 1/3# burger with bacon, jalapenos, and fried egg. 1/2 order of fried okra.

Bedtime: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine.

Totals for today 1838 calories, 146g protein, 120g carbs, 89g fat. A little light on the protein and carbs, heavy on the fat because of the nuts and the bacon cheeseburger.

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1003

Since I started counting again I find it pretty easy to blow out my fat macros. A good steak, burger or nuggets and I gotta take calories out from another macro to fit it in

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1004

Honestly, I like fat better than carbs in general, and as long as I get some carbs around my training it doesn’t affect my performance that I can tell. If I was eating at more of a deficit I could see the benefit of eating less fat and more carbs just to put more total food in me, though.

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1005

It’s tastier. Nuff said lol

1006

I feel more worn out and tired after a day of low carbs. Two days in a row really get me but I usually fix it in the second day because it’s no fun. I also get really hungry and have lots of cravings. My body knows what it wants.

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1007

I’m with you. I can do low fat all day long but my body hates me on anything less than 200 grams of carbs. Currently not an issue with my 3500 calories a day. Still not tired of eating

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1008

You could choose to do the 5’s pro approach.

But it looks as if you’ve dialed in your training really well and pushing the +sets is what feeds me, getting one set where you push hard could be good.

1009

@Frank_C and @jackolee I wonder if there’s some truth to the theory that your genetics partially determines what your body’s fuel of choice is? Like, population groups whose ancestors spent millennia longer as agricultural people rather than as hunter/gatherers or in areas where agriculture was less of a contributor than things like hunting and fishing, are better adapted to higher carb diets vs. higher protein and fat diets. Eating 100g of carbs in a day doesn’t slow me down, but I do notice a difference if I don’t have some carbs right before training.

The jury is still out on this. Things have been going really well so far, but I am working around an injury now (hopefully minor and quickly recovered from), and I have been eating at a substantial deficit for 3 months now, so we’ll see how hard I can keep pushing. Like I’ve said, weight loss/body recomp is my primary goal right now, so if getting stronger has to take a pause, I’ll have plenty of opportunity to jump back on that train after June 1st.

4/6/19 morning weigh-in 185.0 2 days in a row of new lows, so it looks like I’ve finally taken another step change in the right direction! Average for the week isn’t going to totally reflect this because I trended high for most of the week:

3/31 - 188.0#
4/1 - 188.4#
4/2 - 188.0#
4/3 - 186.8#
4/4 - 186.8#
4/5 - 185.6#
4/6 - 185.0#

Average = 186.9#, down 0.5# from 187.4# last week. Not a big drop in average weight, but very substantial the last few days, so hopefully my body finally agreed to let go of a little more weight. I’m already sitting at 10xBW for my daily caloric intake, so I’m not going to drop any lower than that.

Training later this morning, so we’ll see if I can safely bench or if my shoulder is going to continue to be an issue. My bench is almost always narrow grip by default because I like to keep most of my load on the triceps rather than the pecs anyway because of my problematic pec, but I think I may have been gradually letting my grip move out to get more weight, and I need to rein my ego in and stick with ultra close grip.

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1010

I could see some logic in the whole ancestry thing. I honestly don’t know enough about genetics to give a very educated response.

If your shoulder/pec is bothering you why don’t you just get under a machine and play it safe until the issue resolved itself. No sense in making it worse. With how much weight you’ve lost your going to start to notice that recovery isn’t as easy anymore. It’s gonna take a while for your body to get accustomed to it’s new “normal”

1011

I’m not sure. I don’t think I know anyone who has forced themselves to change their food choices from high carb to low carb except for people who think they’re doing keto, and that’s only a short term crash diet. I don’t really want to go through the suffering phase to try to change the way my body burns fuel. The Anabolic Diet or any other low carb diet tries to force you to eat more fat so you burn more fat for fuel. Well, guess what - science has repeatedly found that carbs are the easiest and best source of fuel. Why fight nature?

And I mean that for guys like me. I know there are several people around the forum who feel good on higher fat and lower carb diets. I say if it works for you then stick with it. If it stops working then maybe it’s time to consider a change.

For example, if you find yourself constantly sluggish then I’d suggest increasing your carb intake. If someone like me hit a wall on weight loss then I’d suggest that he drop carbs. Trial and error. Trial and error, my friend. And if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it.

1012

I don’t have a machine available that would give me a close grip, which is what I need.

Well, they’re the quickest from ingestion to getting into your muscle, which definitely makes them the workout fuel of choice, but I don’t know about ‘best’.

4/6/19 5/3/1 cycle 3 day 6 Deadlift primary/bench secondary

Warmup: Barbell complex x3 with chinups 1/1/1

Main:

Deadlift:
5x45# +2 power cleans
3x95# + 2 power cleans
3x135# + 2 power cleans
3x185#
3x225#
Work sets:
3x275#
3x315#
Switched to mixed grip
3x355#
Joker:
3x385#

Secondary:
Bench:
10x45#
3x65#
3x95#
3x115#
3X135#
Work sets:
3x165#
stopped here

Chinups: 2/3/4/5/6/7

Accessory giant set:

Front squat: 5x155#, 5x155#, 5x155#

Dips: 10/10/10

Barbell rows 185#: 10/10/10

Conditioning: 115m warmup run in :35. 3x400m run with 2:00 rest in between. 1:56, 1:49, 1:43.

Couldn’t do my main lifts as a giant set, only had one bar to work with. I kept DOH grip up to 3x315, and was okay with that. at 3x385# my grip was what limited me, even with mixed grip. This is the first time I’ve had that problem with grip. Heck, with the knurled axle at the gym in Topeka I was doing the 475# wagon wheel deadlift last year without straps, my grip has definitely taken a hit.

I kept my bench really narrow with elbows tucked, and 165# was the highest weight I felt safe with. Just going to take it easy with bench, and maybe even reset my training max way down. I also went back to unweighted dips until my shoulder is doing better. Didn’t go up in weight on the front squat, kept it at 155# straight across.

Running felt the best out of anything. I felt comfortable and wasn’t struggling even on my last 400 when I got 1:43 which is a current PR.

4 Likes
1013

lol I can’t even pull 300 double overhand (I think)

1014

Seems like you and @steigs both have shoulder issues, maybe you could start a club!

1015

I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member!

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1016

Cmon mate I’m sure you’ve been called worse that a member before !!

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1017

I agree, this is not a fun club to be a member of!

Our problems seem to be opposite of each other though. I can still overhead press just fine, it’s flat bench that I can’t do safely. The trick here is going to be continuing to train what we can train without aggravating the injury, giving it a chance to heal. I have a bad history of doing something to hurt myself in the gym, then tapering off to doing nothing and laying off for a few months, and having to start from scratch. Not gonna happen this time!

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1018

I’ve been applying the medically sound practice of gritting my teeth and pushing through the pain. Admittedly, this morning I did reduce the weight so I made some sort on concession to the niggle. I’m seeing someone tomorrow about it and hopefully will have a better idea of how to fix it this time tomorrow.

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1019

4/6/19 food for yesterday

Breakfast: breakfast shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop (1 oz.) quick oats, 1.5 scoops protein powder. 1 mandarin orange.

Post workout: 1 scoop protein powder with creatine.

Skipped lunch.

Dinner: Longhorn steakhouse. 1 piece of bread with butter. 1/4 order of fried pickles. Grilled lamb chops with mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach and grilled asparagus.

Snack: Starbucks cappuccino = 6 oz. 2% milk.

Bedtime: 1 grapefruit with salt. 1 scoop protein powder with 1/2 scoop quick oats.

Totals for today 2499 calories, 193g protein, 192g carbs, 105g fat. A lot of calories today, mostly at dinner. The lamb chops were excellent, and I’m a little skeptical of the nutrition information in the app, to be honest, but I stuck with it and called like they said. They were relatively lean, but the app says the plate had 61g fat vs. 49g protein. Still, I had a decent training session today so I still finished 389 calories under target, adjusted for the training, and even not adjusting for training I’m under maintenance.

4/7/19 morning weigh-in 186.2# Had a slight jump back up this morning, but mostly water retention I suspect, I had a lot of salt between the lamb chops and the grapefruit at bedtime. It’s nice that a spike upward today is still lower than all but the last 2 of my weigh-ins so far.

edited to fix portion size.

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1020

(Un?)Fortunately I know exactly what the source of my issue is. I get periodic aggravation at the surgery site for my pectoral reattachment, and I’ll get a feeling like something is trying to slip out of the groove. I think it’s a combination of imperfect surgical repair and connective tissue rubbing up against scar tissue. What I need to do is accept that I’m not going to have a big bench, stick to close grip, and be happy that I have a decent overhead press. I need to just treat close grip bench as the accessory for overhead that it can be, and do something else to work my pecs.

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1021

Is this actually 100 grams? How big is your scoop? My 1 Minute Oats don’t come with a scoop but one 150 calorie serving is 40 grams. If you’re actually using 100 grams of oatmeal then your morning shake has 375 calories of oatmeal. Add in the egg, protein powder, and milk and it’s at least 700 calories. Is that right?

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