Another Single Factor 5x5 Journal

Good point G5.0.

I'm getting all excited about trying different ways of training abs now

30 minutes sounds like an eternity! I did an '8 minute abs' routine a while back that I picked up from somewhere. There were about 10 different exercises you'd do non-stop and it was an absolute killer. I could never remember which exercise to do next and had to keep referring to my notes though.

WOW, can't believe i read all that!

congrats on all the progress you've made.

i'm going to be starting this program in a week or so after getting my body/heart back into the groove, and just wanted to say i hope to do as well as you've been doing!

i haven't lifted seriously for the past year so we'll see how that goes.

either way, i just wanted you to know that this journal has been a motivation for me! thanks!

Thanks!

I can't believe I wrote all that - I've made over 300 posts now and most of them are probably in here. I'm glad to have been of motivational assistance! Any q's, just ask.

Week 13, Wednesday

Bodyweight: 80kg/176lb

1. Light freeweight back squats (kg)
bar x 18 ....... warmup
40 x 9 .......... warmup
60 x 5
70 x 5
80 x 5
80 x 5 ........... no change .......... (176lb)
(only did 4 sets)

2. Deads (kg)
50 x 9 .......... warmup
75 x 5
85 x 5
100 x 5 ........................... overhand
112.5 x 5 ..... down 5 ........ 4 overhand, 1 mixed
125 x 5 ........ down 10 ...... mixed, no straps ... (275lb) .... not a PR attempt

3. Military Press (kg)
bar x 9 ......... warmup
31 x 5
33.5 x 5
36 x 5
41 x 5
47.5 x 4 ........ up 1.5 ................ (105lb) ......... FAIL

4. Pullups
BW x 3 x 8 (only 2 reps on 5th set)


Comments

I upped the pace a little today because I think I've been slacking a bit. I started most of the sets 2 minutes after the previous one (so about 90 seconds rest), apart from the heavy sets and some of the pullups. I ditched one set of squats, but did three more sets of pullups, yet knocked off about 10 minutes from the workout. Down to 70 mins, which I'm happy about.

Squats - knocked a set off, down to four sets, mainly to help with deadlifts.

Deads - I noticed when I switched from straight to mixed grip, the bar rotated and pulled the skin on the left hand fingers. That's been happening the past few weeks, but I only realised why today. It didn't do it on the final set though. Hmm...

Following your collective advice last week, I decided to drop down to 125kg today. I'll do 130 next week, then attempt the 135 PR after that. 125 still felt close to my limit, but I knew I could get it.

Military was hard last week and I only just got the final rep. Today's increase was quite big at 3.3%, but I just couldn't get the final rep. I'm happy I got four reps to be honest, given how close it was last week.

I liked pullups today. The thing that's really cool about keeping a journal on here is that people you've never spoken to can just pop in any say "hey buddy, have you tried this...?" and give you advice. numani - thanks again bro. I tried your suggestion of 8x3 and got them all, bar one in the middle. After the first set, I thought is that it? Then it clicked - if I stick to 3 reps, I won't be going to failure on every set like I have been doing, and I can get the volume in. Cool!

There have been quite a few failures recently so I'm going to draw up another little progress chart in a minute in another post. Then we can see where I am and try to figure out whether it's time to change things. And it'll bring Glenn up to speed quickly

Summary so far...


Squats - these are still going up because I switched to freeweights in week 5, so I'm new to them.

Bench - I barely got the PR this week, so you could say these have stalled.

Deads - I've found these really hard from 127.5kg, after which I started hitching without understanding what hitching was (since stopped). The 132.5 dead sounded like a good solid 5 reps from my written notes, and I followed it with a very-nearly-but-failed single for 140kg (which I later realised was 145kg).

Military - failed for the first time in 13 weeks today.

Rows - looking back at my notes, my form seemed to start getting worse around 60kg. Most of my 62.5kg reps have been pretty lousy.

Pullups - I haven't been able to do bodyweight pullups for long, but I don't 'seem' to be getting stronger now I can do them. It's difficult to say. The number of reps I can do seems to be staying constant even though my bodyweight's going up, so is that progress?


So, what should I do next? With deads, I've decided to drop back to 125kg this week and ramp up to another 135 attempt. I don't know what to do with the other lifts. I could go back to 60kg on the rows, but I don't know if that's the best approach to take with everything.

Or should I lower the weight on all the lifts and start doing a flat 5x5 on each of them and ramp those up, aka loading? Then switch back to ramping when I plateau again?

I read somewhere (I think written by Glenn/Ripp) that I could try adding another day's workout, so I'd do four days, but I'm not sure how to go about that or whether it's appropriate.

So, a number of options. Each of them might work ok, but I don't know if there's a better one. Comments?

You can add dropping volume on your lesser sets to that list of options. Lose volume on the lesser sets to be able to do a shade more on the top set and then try to bring things up as time passes.

Before dropping the weight and increasing to a 5x5, I'd suggest lowering volume for a while and increasing weight. A kind of mini periodizing but without the over-reaching.

Yup, option 4 - lower warmup reps. Forgot about that one, thanks.

When you say lowering volume, did you mean the above, or dropping to triples or somesuch? Because I'm sure I remember Glenn/Ripp mention dropping down to triples, doubles or even singles somewhere too. There are so many ways of going about this.

I had triples in mind but you could nicely lead into doubles and even some singles. Spend a little time working on neural efficiency before bumping the volume back to 5s. The single factor approach is as valid for the lower reps as for the higher. It's just unlikely that you can run it for long but then you drop the weight and go back to volume and work up again. That's why my votes were going towards keeping the weight up: you've yet to explore pushing for some heavy low-rep work.

I don't want to extrapolate too much from your chart but I couldn't help but notice one thing: you've failed the least on military and it's improved the most percentage-wise.

Not conclusive by any means but interesting nonetheless.

I really like the idea of doing triples for a while actually. I'm just wondering how I'd set it up and whether to include back off sets. I could just do it like a DF intensity phase. Combinations of 3x3 and 1x3 like this:

Mon: squat 3x3, bench and row 1x3
Wed: light squats, dead and mil press 3x3, pullups 3x8
Fri: squat 1x3, bench and row 3x3

and try to increase the weight each week on each (1x3 and 3x3 independently).