Hey guys, I’ve recently got back into the gym, been training consistently for about 10 weeks and I’ve sorta run into a wall. My goals are primarily increasing strength on the big lifts and secondary mass gain. (I’m convinced that stronger= bigger after reading all the articles on T-Nation anyway)
Would really appreciate if you guys could give me some input and advice! Before I go any further, here are some of my stats:
Body weight: 70kg (~155lbs)
Bench: 75kg (~165lbs) 3RM
Squat: 105kg (~235lbs) 3RM
Deadlift: 140kg (~315lbs)
Press: 55kg (~120lbs)
So my workout goes like this-
WORKOUT A
Back squat - 3-4 warmup sets working up to 5 sets of triples, sometimes 7 if I feel I’m up to it
Bench press - same as squat
Incline dumbbell press - 5x10
Power cleans - same as squat
WORKOUT B
Deadlift- 4-5 warmup sets working to 1 set of triples
Barbell rows- 5x5
One arm dumbbell rows- 5x10
Press- 5x5
Arnold press- 5x10
For the big lifts, I use a linear basic progression, adding 2.5kg on upper body and 5kg on lower body lifts every workout.
I perform workout A on Saturdays, and workout B on Sundays. As you can see it’s pretty much similar to Mark Rippetoe’s starting strength, but I adapted it as I can’t squat 3x a week. I’ve been wanting to start on the 5/3/1 BBB program, but I believe that I still have room to exploit the basic linear progression for awhile.
Now before my ass gets busted for being lazy and only working out during the weekends, I’m currently 20 and enlisted into the military. I have to stay in base throughout the weekdays, so training is kinda impossible for me.
Right now, I’ve stalled on every single lift, have tried a deload week but just can’t seem to increase on any of these lifts anymore. Here are some of the problems I’ve identified so far.
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Heavy squatting and benching on Saturday really puts a lot of strain on my lower back and delts, thus I feel like my deadlift and press on Sunday are compromised.
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Nutrition wise, I have to eat anything the army throws me, but according to the nutritional information they display (if it’s even any fuckin accurate) I’d say I’m getting about 3500-4200 cals a day which is sufficient…ish?
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Rest. This is the biggest problem which I feel hindered my progress. 7 hours of sleep is a luxury, on good days I get roughly 5 hours.
So as you guys can see, these problems are largely out of my control and I know my lifestyle is really not ideal for lifting at all. Rather than giving it up totally, I’d really like for some advice to mitigate these problems, and to continue progressing in terms of my strength gains. Sorry for the extremely long post, would appreciate any kind of feedback