Build your core muscles. It won’t make said love handles go away unless you actually get leaner bf %-wise, but you’ll see more muscles in the general area.
Ab-wheel and leg raises seem to be good.
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Maybe gaining more mass in the whole upper body may be a benefit? Larger/wider shoulders and lats give the illusion of a smaller waist. I’d still concentrate most your efforts on getting the mains up, you have a decent press for time spent lifting (IMO, mine is terrible) so it would seem your shoulders are pretty strong.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the love handles man. Cutting now would undo the weight you just gained, and the goal was getting stronger right? Maybe maintain 200# for a while and get your lifts up at this weight and those love handles may start to shrink.
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People argue semantics, but practically speaking you can’t chose where you lose fat, not to any meaningful degree, outside of surgery.
Your body will burn fat where it has fat. Some areas will lose fat earlier than others. For me lower back fat is the last to go, to get it to go, I just have to get leaner.
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give me your deadlift
This. Gaining mass will make you look better at a higher body fat percentage. Just gain it by eating healthy as much as possible and you’ll notice a difference. Patience is still the key man, it took me a long time to be happy with what I look like. Still not content with it, but it’s a world away from where I started.
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When was your last deadlift day? From what you’ve logged the last time you deadlifted was 10 days ago and it was for a max… you’re on the cusp of being able to deadlift 405 but you gotta put in the time and work man. That 335 looked pretty easy, you prob had another 20lbs in you- take that as it is and move on to the next program.
I just looked at the one dagill mentioned, and it looks pretty awesome. Or just do a double progression scheme. Take your current fsl weight at do it 5x5, after 2 weeks getting 5x5, bump up the weight 10lbs… almost anything you do will work, just gotta do it and stop being transfixed on the numbers.
I still haven’t hit 405, but I’m going to wait for it to come up in my training before I hit it… When I hit 405 it’s going to be for 5.
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Well I did 5x5 at 75% but that was on andy baker program. Now I’m doing kroc program like dagill said. When I’m doing 405 I’m hitting it for 1. Deadlift and reps don’t correlate at all.
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For the record, I’ve personally got no issues with doing max singles on deadlifts when planned and spaced appropriately. It’s nice to have the big numbers to chase for.
For a period of time about 6 years back, I did max or near-max singles like a crazy person. Every week, and often with many singles at 90% or greater in any given session. And then even different variations on the same day (conventionals, sumo, deficit, rack pulls all on the same day). You can certainly get somewhere with it, but man, it can also do a number on your nervous system.
I ultimately stopped doing this as a result of a pretty awful back injury. A direct result of a PR attempt where I tried to use too much speed.
There is no moral to the above story.
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Have you been doing conditioning/cardio 3-4 days a week this whole time like pretty much every single 5/3/1 program says should be done?
Oops. Well better start doing that now. Recommendations?
There is a treadmill at home.
This is another of those give a fish/teach to fish moments. There’s tons of info out there, especially with regard to 5/3/1 (if that’s still something you’re doing. I honestly lost track.)
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Squat
185x5 210x5 240x5 185x20
Bench
145x5 165x5 185x5
70 dips + 30 pushups at home
100 chest supported rows (machine)
40 V ups
Gets abdominal cramp rushes to bathroom faucet to drink water falls down rolling in pain whining like a baby.
10 V ups
No more lackadaisical bench setup. It felt easy lol.
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Im not alluding to the opinion that maxes aren’t a good thing. I’m still pretty new to lifting and never claim to know the answers- just my personal views/limited experiences.
What I’ve found is similar to what @Cyrrex was saying… testing a max/near max literally sucks the life out of me and it takes me (personally, not a blanket statement) a couple weeks to get back to feeling at least halfway decent.
I was more in the line of thought that it had been 10 days since his last DL Max session, and another 10ish? Days before that since his last work set session on DLs.
He tagged me saying he “wants my deadlift” so i, while beating around the bush, said “well, then deadlift”.
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I wasn’t disagreeing with anything you said, at all. Apologies if it seemed that way.
My thoughts are that max testing should be done infrequently as a way to judge the effectiveness of a program and with adequate time after to recover for exactly the reasons you and @Cyrrex have said. In between max testing it’s best to follow a submaximal program of some description so you don’t best yourself up too much. For me, I prefer lower rep, lower volume and more assistance for the deadlift, although some intensity techniques for a short period can work well if recovery is on point and the rest of your training is fairly low intensity.
I will also add the caveat that I am not very strong, so people should take my advice and opinions for what they’re worth.
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I also was not trying to be difficult with my response- never meant any disrespect whatsoever.
In my two years of lifting I have tested once, and I was trying to pass it off as a high intensity “deload week”. It messed me up, man.
I’ve been finding that I’ve come to terms with not really caring what my maxes are and aside from testing for TMs, which I also haven’t done, seem sort of pointless to me. I’m not strong enough for it to matter, again, in my personal opinion. I just add 10lb lower 5lb upper every cycle, if I feel like shit I deload, and if I can’t get the weight up a couple weeks in a row I drop it back and continue working up from there.
Sorry for the derail Tim. Keep plugging away man.
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Deadlift
250 5x3
Press
110x5 95x7 85x12 45 x idk lol
110x2 95x2 85x2 Bar x idk lol
3x8 rdls 165 lbs
50 lat pulldowns
No V ups afraid of getting cramp, idk could be an excuse and could get flamed. I do train consecutive days tho, but idk if that matters. Also Idk if did the extended drop sets right. I did 110 cold without warmup.
@boilerman I only care about my deadlift one rm so I can do kroc program. The 5/3/1 max calc is so inaccurate for deadlift. I don’t care about my one rm for any other lift. It’s most likely not gonna be useful info for my next training cycles.
@dagill2 Idk if I did the extended drop set right.
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Not bagging on you man, just stating my opinion on high intensity stuff, understandable for getting your weights for the program. Maybe I just misunderstood /didn’t comprehend what the maxing was for. Like I said- I don’t really do TM tests or anything.
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Looks fine from this distance. Where you pushing to failure on the bar only sets? Probably give yourself slightly longer between drop sets 1 and 2 next time.
Am I supposed to do the first set of pressing cold. I wasn’t counting when doing it with the bar I will next time.