Hi everyone. I’m a long-time lurker who’s decided to come ask for help after a month or two of frustration.
Basically, I’ve began lifting sometime last Dec. after getting prodded into it by my brother. I then decided that it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I initially started on SS. After three months (From Dec. to March), I’ve made decent gains in two departments- deadlift, where I went from starting on 125ish to doing 265 as my max, and pull-ups, where I went from doing 3-4 consecutives to doing 10. But after a failed bulk (far too much calories and not enough actual intense lifting is my guess), poor gains in everything else (my bench-press went from an 80 or so to 120 and stayed there/Squat went up to 155 from a starting point of 100ish/overhead press went from the bar to 75 and stayed there/ barbell rows never improved after getting to 90), a trip oversees for family business and then moving to a new home in the States, I found myself close to my starting point at the beginning of June.
Learning a bit from my previous mistakes, I decided to modify things a bit by lifting daily while eating a very good amount and also walking 3-5 miles/day at a brisk pace. My goal was, and still is, primarily to gain strength. Fat loss can come later after I’m done prepping for grad school tests and can devote most of my day to exercise.
Within the last two months, I’ve made what I consider what amazing gains.
-My squat went from a 125 to 205 after I was able to actually get the bar at the right place. Turns out that my back wasn’t big enough to hold it at the position Mr. Rippletoe advocates. But after weeks of lifting and tinkering around, I managed and immediately saw a jump from a 155 to 185 within three days.
-My dead-lift went from a working set of 225 and a max of 245 to a PR of 315 two weeks ago. Granted, the 315 deadlift damn near broke me, but I did manage it. As of now, my grip is a major hindrance at improvement and I’m going to start using chalk soon. As of now, I’m currently on a working weight of 295, but only cause of the grip. Back can deal with the weight but my grip gives out on me without fail 2-3 reps after 300lb. I’m fairly confident that I can manage a 305+ once I get chalk.
-I gave up on barbell rows because they felt very awkward and did DB rows instead. I went from doing 40lb to 80lb.
-My pull-ups went from a restart of 5 to consistently doing 12/set for a total of 40 reps. I’m currently doing weighted pull-ups with 25lb for 5 reps of 4 sets.
But in spite of all these gains, I’m still stuck on the overhead press and the bench press. My overhead press is currently at 80lb, and it’s quite difficult for me to finish it. As for my bench press, I changed to db presses after I determined that there could a psychological fear of the bar falling on me after something similar happened way back in February. I went from doing using 40lb db to 60lb, but have since stalled.
My question, after all this then, is what can I do to improve my presses? Virtually everything else except my overhead and bench/db press are improving at a fairly predictable rate now(5lb/week on the barbell exercises, 5lb jump every other week or so on the db row), so I’m at a loss on how to explain the lack of improvement on just two lifts. Perhaps my upper body doesn’t like getting stronger?