Do you have some guidance for recovery or changing my workout? I am a 54 year old male. In decent shape. My goal is to add muscle or at least not lose it. I read your Best Damn Workout for Natural Lifters. Great article (like all your stuff) It makes sense. I have been on it for 4 weeks. In that time I seem to have gained half a pound of weight without any increase in my waist circumference. My thighs circumference has increased by 1/2 inch. I am thrilled, but while I am not exhausted I still feel too subjectively tired the next day. I get 8 hours of sleep and eat healthy–2100 to 2400 cal per day. I follow your rules on diet from your post in February. My body wgt 175. I can DL and Squat 195 x 8 at present. Am I too old for the Best Damn WO Plan for NL workout? Should I try something else? I traditionally did a 3 day a week workout: squat, deadlift overhead press, pullup, dips. Linear progression. 3 working sets. Try for 8. Add wgt if I can do 12. If I took those 5 exercises to technical failure on 3 sets, I was exhausted the next day. So, your WO is a great improvement. I am a big fan.
Sounds like this is better than what you were doing. You can try scaling back to 4-5 days per week.
I don’t think you’re too old. What about your nutrition, stress? This program is one of the easiest to recover.
Also what about your technique on the big lifts? And do you go to failure with deadlifts and squats? You shouldn’t
Thanks for your reply. I go to technical failure (inability to complete the lift in good form) on the big lifts. Not mechanical failure. Stress is low. I am using CT’s nutrition post for natural lifters as my guide for nutrition.
A am 45 and have tried Best Damn. It is certainly an excellent program and approach. Personally, I do better with sub-maximal lifting as my staple. For example a 531 program (one without the PRs each workout) or Dan John programs work really well for me. I start to get burned out if I do a program that takes lifts to failure after about 3 weeks. That said, I also have a fairly stressful job and busy home life.
One more thing - CT does a great job of matching workout approaches to neurotypes. I think this may have more to do with how well someone responds to frequency/intensity than age (at least up to a point).