i was doing 5x5 SL for a couple of months didnt really workout for me. I decided to go onto SS on december 2013 which i made good progress on until 7 weeks in when i deloaded. I’m a uni student and it was getting intense so i took time to focus on my studies. i was still lifting but i didnt strictly follow the program i was lifting like twice a week sometimes once or missing reps/sets.
starting BW 70kg Now 78kg (some fat)im 6ft (183cm)
squat 60kg - Now 90kg
OH 30kg - Now 37.5kg
bench 45 - Now 60kg
DL 90kg - Now 130kg
Chins 2 reps - Now 5-7
Cleans 40kg - Now 55kg
should I start everything all over again? or just lift more consistently?
[quote]Natesobate wrote:
i was still lifting but i didnt strictly follow the program i was lifting like twice a week sometimes once or missing reps/sets.
[/quote]
Some iteration of this post pops up every day:
“I think I need to change programs…except that I didn’t really do the program I was ‘following’ in the first place because XYZ…”
The problem isn’t the program. It’s the missed days and inconsistency. Life happens and yes, occasionally you will miss a workout - that’s okay. It’s life. But don’t ask yourself why you aren’t making progress, because the answer is right in front of you.
There is no way you can progress with SL or SS if you are inconsistent. There are no deloads scheduled in SS you push until you can not add weight to the bar. I hope you have read the book there are resets but not deloads. If you restart SS you should only do it if you can seriously not miss workouts for months on end if you cant then do something else.
[quote]Natesobate wrote:
should I start everything all over again? or just lift more consistently? [/quote]
Jut to reiterate what everyone’s already said, you need to lift (and eat) more consistently. It’s simple, but maybe not easy.
Training-wise, in your thread from December you had kinda the same approach. “I’ve been training 10 weeks and hit a wall, should I start over?” No. You don’t start over when lifting gets hard. You barrel through.
If you think a certain lift stalls or plateaus or whatever, you find a workaround, you don’t call a mulligan on the entire program (especially if, like AG said, you weren’t truly doing the program in the first place).
If life gets crazy and you know you can only lift twice a week, that’s fine. There are a good handful of programs designed specifically for that. But trying to shoehorn a particular plan into a shortened training week seriously compromises on the potential results, as you’ve seen.
Food-wise, as far back as October you weighed 70kg. So that’s almost seven months where you gained a whole 8kg. Even with sporadic training, a guy your age, height, and weight should be able to “accidentally” gain more than that with just a little effort. I’m guessing you haven’t been eating three big meals a day, seven days a week.
I’d say look into Greyskull LP. It seems to lend itself a little more to inconsistencies in training and diet than starting strength or stronglifts do.
In all honesty, it was developed based off SS to deal with the kinds of things a lot of people ran into… stuff like… not wanting to eat their way through gains… wanting to look good not just be stronger… getting bored with deloads because they were “too easy”… not being completely consistent in the gym and kitchen… etc.
Based on that methodology, what to do in your case is pretty simple.
Deload everything by 10%. Still do 3 sets of 5, but on the last set, do as many reps as you can. Push yourself. (Still do only one set for deadlifts, but do as many reps as possible. Make sure you do some lighter warmup sets.)
Add no more than 5 lbs each squat/deadlift session, 2.5 lbs each press/bench session. When you eventually stall and can’t get at least 3x5 on a lift, drop 10% on that lift only and work back up.
Lots of people seem to have had success with that approach. I don’t have personal experience with it. Just something to consider.