My 1st One Lift a Day

[quote]rook4eva wrote:
Just so I don’t screw it up again, week 3 is 3 sets total, 1st set 5 reps, 2nd set 3 reps, 3rd set 2 reps?
[/quote]

That’s correct. Keep us posted on your gains.

Thursday Feb 14th

Today was pretty rough, long tiring day at work :frowning:

Got to the gym exhausted, but after I got started…everything went a bit better :slight_smile:

Squats
255x5, 285x3, 315x2, 225x8

ab/calf Circuit

Yeah I know, I can count but its REALLY weird doing this low a volume on a lift day, I’ve never tried anything quite like this…I felt like I had more at the end (might mean I was going too light?), so I snuck in a quick light set at then end… …but my strength seems to be coming back, so I’m real happy about that :slight_smile:

MAN its a hard thinking about the fact I’m not going to be lifting next week! At this point I just want to keep going! Of course I will take the break though, let my CNS recover and such, and let the anticipation for week 5 build!

Cal Fat Carb Prot
3801 101 420 299

Good luck, I’m really interested to see your numbers from week 5… I’m predicting a significant rise in strength.

Weasel42

Thanks! You and me both! We shall find out in just over a week I am hoping your prediction is right!!

Sorry man, but so far you are absolutely butchering this program. Not just the fact you were doing 6 x4 and misunderstood the last week, its that even you’re 7 x 5 is totally jacked up.The goal is 7 SETS OF 5. I can understand missing your top set and only getting 4 reps…but in some cases you’re falling 2 or even THREE reps short!

That represents a huge miscalculation of what you think you can lift.Under no circumstances, other than injury obviously, should you only get 2 reps on 7 X 5 week. Thats not OLAD. I suggest you cut the weight back significantly, and find out what you can actually lift by completing all the desired reps, and then get in your groove from there.

Also the whole picture thing im not getting. Not to say you wont gain any muscle with this program, but its not really a size building routine.

Skull_Crusher

You are right on all accounts, I admit to screwing up my 1st 3 week set, yes i messed up the last week and did 6x4 and yes i did make miscalculations on weight in week 1, I even admitted I probably should have done some strength tests beforehand. But, whats done is done Look at it this way, I could have doctored up the numbers to look good and not learned anything. Take my 1st 3 weeks as my learning curve, and I will fix things from there.

I posted the picts cuz when I read someones log i always wonder, what does this guy/girl look like. I stopped after the 2nd set for the very reason you and others mentioned, this isn’t really a size building program.

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate the comments, they are the reason I posted this thing here in the 1st place so that I can learn from others.

Oh, and my apologies to Dan John for butchering his program. Some how I don’t think he will take it personally. Ill try to do it justice in the weeks to come

Friday Feb 14th
cals Fat Carb Prot
2658 55 301 235

Saturday Feb 16th

Left shoulder kinda sore today so I put in some extra efforts to warm up.

Push Press
155x5, 175x3, 185x0* 180x2

    • was feeling good after 175, threw 185 on there, popped the bar up about 3/4s of the way and couldn’t finish the rep, so i dropped back to 180 and managed to get those out.

Left shoulder is real sore now though, been icing. It guess I’m looking forward to this week off after all…

cals Fat Carb Prot
3522 114 379 255

Thats cool, just wanted to make sure you were aware that you’re not supposed to be falling short like that on the 7 x 5’s.

[quote]rook4eva wrote:
Friday Feb 14th
cals Fat Carb Prot
2658 55 301 235

Saturday Feb 16th

Left shoulder kinda sore today so I put in some extra efforts to warm up.

Push Press
155x5, 175x3, 185x0* 180x2

    • was feeling good after 175, threw 185 on there, popped the bar up about 3/4s of the way and couldn’t finish the rep, so i dropped back to 180 and managed to get those out.

Left shoulder is real sore now though, been icing. It guess I’m looking forward to this week off after all…

cals Fat Carb Prot
3522 114 379 255[/quote]

One more thing of note about the 5-3-2 week. The goal of this week is to hit PR’s on your double max. You dont have to go balls to the wall on your 5 and 3 rep sets. They are there to get you ready for the 2 rep one.

I say this because in previous workouts you had push pressed 175 for only 2, now you did it for 3, that was too much weight for that set as i assume you went very near if not to total failure. You dont want to overly tax yourself on the first two sets, you’re going to short change yourself on the double set.

In general, what i used to do was take my top weight for the first two weeks (5 and 3 respectively) and subtract around 5-10 pounds. This way its warming you up for the double, but not to the point where you no gas left in the tank.

For example, if on week 1 my best was 150 for 5, and on week 2 my best was 170 for 3…i’d probably go with this for week 3:

5 - 145
3- 165
2- 180

Its very possible had you gone lighter on that 2nd set, you couldve hit that 185 for 2…

[quote]Skull_Crusher wrote:
In general, what i used to do was take my top weight for the first two weeks (5 and 3 respectively) and subtract around 5-10 pounds. This way its warming you up for the double, but not to the point where you no gas left in the tank. [/quote]

That’s exactly what I did.

Don’t sweat any mistakes you’ve made on the loading on this cycle. It was always going to be a learning curve first time out. Important thing is that you work your ass off and you definitely seem to be doing that.

I ran this program several years ago and got very good results. I’ll confess to butchering it though in that I was doing pullups every training day before my chosen lift, which makes me one of those despicable idiots who contrived to read “One Lift a Day” as “Two Lifts a Day”.

Regardless, my lifts were front squat, standing overhead press, curls, deadlift and bench press. Didn’t need any upper back focused lift because of all the pullups, and the curls were basically a mental and physical release mid week between all the more demanding stuff. I made solid gains on everything but the bench press (as I had no spotter and the bench I was using was on the verge of falling apart) and I got noticeably bigger, although I was so skinny at the time this was almost inevitable.

I’m definitely going to run it again at some stage. My training tends to get gradually more cluttered with extra exercises etc, so the real beauty of this program is that it compels you to strip away all the superfluous volume and get back to basics, and afterwards to analyse how much of the extra stuff you actually need to be doing.

Anyway, good work so far and good luck.

Skull-Crusher

I really appreciate all the feedback, I will try out some of your suggestions particularly on week 7 (the next 5-3-2 week).

I agree that if I had used lower weight for my 2nd set of push press I might have gotten that set @ 185.

I will try your suggestion at how to decide on the weight, thanks!

Gatti

From what I have seen of Dan John’s programs and what he says about them, he seems to be less of an ‘It HAS to be exactly this way’ kinda guy. Seems to me he is more of the, ‘Lift big weights and bust your ass, did it work? Good Job!’ kinda guy :slight_smile: His programs seem to be more loosely defined and don’t focus on EXACT technicalities. Not that is is any excuse for doing 6x4 instead of 6x3 etc, just an observation.

Thanks everyone, I will keep yo posted on how I do in the weeks to come!

Sunday Feb 17th
cals Fat Carb Prot
4033 176 410 229

Weight 181.8lbs 15.3%BF 58% Hydration

Well Today is the last day of my off week. Starting back on OLAD tomorrow!

I didn’t do a whole lot of extra physical activities over the last week, I went to practice once and we had a mini race. Other than that I tired to relax and rest up for the weeks to come.

Pretty excited to see what kind of progress I can make in the next 3 weeks!

For the sake of laziness I’m just posting my average for intake for the past week.

Cal Fat Carb Prot
3361 89 354 289

Sunday Feb 24th
179.2 @ 14.0%BF 59.4% hydration

[b]Monday Feb 25th (week 5 - 7x5)

Deads[/b]
235x5, 235x5, 245x5, 245x5, 255x5, 265x5. 245x5

Cals Fat Carb Prot
3224 82 320 306

Had a good lift day today, Hit all my targets. I feel good, that week off defiantly helped, I really was feeling a little beat up at the end of those 3 weeks. Need to up cal intake again, will work on getting that back up closer to 4k.

Looking forward to the weeks to come!!

Also, on a side note, when I added pork to the diet I started weighing and measuring stuff again since I wasn’t familiar enough with pork servings to eyeball it. Its not too much more effort and helps keep my food intake a bit more accurate.

[b]Tuesday Feb 26th

Bench[/b]
145x5, 155x5, 165x5, 175x5, 185x5, 175x5, 165x5

ab/calf circuit

Another pretty good day, hit all my targets, I did need a little help on the 185 set. Soreness starting to set in already, not sure how I would survive without my foam roller!

I did change my strategy a little bit, I am targeting to hit my “peak” set around the 4th set, then somewhat feel out how im doing at that point. Today I was feeling real good after 175, so decided to shoot for 185.

Personally I think I am seeing some body changes as well as strength increases. Ill think about throwing up some pics next week. Maybe not, but I’ll Def post some at the very end, i think there will be at least some visible gains.

Very happy with the program thus far, and I’m only 1/2 way though it! :slight_smile:

Cal Fat Carb Prot
3510 96 304 351

Seems your bench and overhead press are almost the same, is there any reason for that?

[quote]JamFly wrote:
Seems your bench and overhead press are almost the same, is there any reason for that?[/quote]

Good observation, I didn’t even notice this until you pointed it out. I would have to say that the reason is probably two fold:

1. My bench is painfully weak, probably cause I just don’t do them. Bench and pretty much all forms of Bicep exercises are my nemesis and I just hate doing them, go figure.
2. I am not doing standard military press, I am doing push press, the explosive movement allows for more weight to be used since the power starts from the legs…

Considering that, I am not sure what a “good” weight range for push press really is, you can find people’s bench numbers all over the place, but I don’t have a good reference for push press.

These are the only two things I can think of, mostly the 2nd one I would think. I know that ultimately only I can tell but, if anyone else has any ideas please let me know.

Wednesday Feb 27th

Sorry, I am going to have to vent just a little bit about my less that stellar day. Was too busy at work and missed my 2nd meal, managed to sneak in an apple and a meto bar, not too big a deal. So, I figure I’ll head to the gym and eat, rest up and go do my least favourite of my 5 movements, chins. Not so much, apparently some genius decided it would be a great time to block off a 2nd lane of the 4 lanes of the MAJOR highway in this city, oh… right around rush hour! So my normal 45-60 min commute to the gym turned into a 2 hour crawl… :expressionless:

Oh and I ate a chicken burger and some nuggets from Wendy’s after getting off the highway YAAY, I was frigging starving and running out of time (I did try to eat some of my chicken breast in the car on the drive over but it was so dry I almost choked :S)

Then the weather! its bloody cold today! and no I really dont want to hear it, I live in frigging Florida dammiT! When it gets in to the 40s (F, ~5deg C) its RASS COLD! Im not mentally or physically equipped for this crap. Ok, thats it I’m done venting, thx.

Chins

BWx5, BW+5lbx5, BW+10lbx5,BW+10lbx5, BW+10lbx5, BW+7.5lbx5, BW+5lbx5

Yeah, I felt a little shame putting 5lbs on the belt… good thing it was just me in the gym! But on the plus side I got a nice pump in the forearms which made my veins pop out nicely, which did make me smile a little :smiley: (however silly, gotta take my small positives where I can get them!)

Assessing my chins, I would have to say my weakest link is biceps. I widened my grip a bit (slightly narrower than shoulder) in attempt to recruit more should/back to help out. Tons of work to be done here. When I’m done with this I will defiantly try to sort out some of my strength imbalances.

Cals Fat Carb Prot
3880 96 463 299

I’m Not feeling so red hot right now, sudden change in weather and all the other crap. Last thing I need is to get sick, hope I feel better in the AM.

I’ve been following your log because I find the whole program interesting. Plus I like Dan John.

Might I suggest doing static holds at the top, at the end of your set. I’ve been doing chins for 7 weeks on my program and gained 0.5" on my biceps. Actually that was after 4 weeks. I’m not sure now. Chins do work wonders. They’re my new favorite exercise.

From your pics, your chest and bi’s are lacking. Your legs look massive though.

Do you hate doing them because the results are sub-par? Or do you just not like the movements?

[quote]TheDudeAbides wrote:
Might I suggest doing static holds at the top, at the end of your set. I’ve been doing chins for 7 weeks on my program and gained 0.5" on my biceps. Actually that was after 4 weeks. I’m not sure now. Chins do work wonders. They’re my new favorite exercise.[/quote]

I have been doing this somewhat, a pause negative at the top, middle and near the bottom at the end of my sets. Thanks for the suggestion, maybe I will try to put more focus at the hold at the top. I cant argue with you on the value of chins, they work well, I have been trying hard to get better at them, progress feels slow tho :frowning:

Totally agree, chest and arms are my weakest points. Thanks for the leg comment, I’m pretty happy with their development, think I need some more hammie work tho. Overall not too worried about legs, I have many other things that need much more attention :frowning:

Well let see, why do I hate em? let me count the ways…

  1. I believe in general people tend to dislike things they suck at.
  2. Results have always been sub par, I have always been weak at chest and Bi movements. Both chest and arms in general pretty much never grew no matter how sore I got, my strength gains were equally as pitiful.
  3. The flat bench is prime real estate… power rack was almost always free… (cant use this one too much any more since most of the time I have the gym to myself)
  4. I dislocated my left wrist a long time ago, think I probably tore something as well, and ever since have been prone to wrist pain, couple that with some of the above stuff it ended up being another excuse I threw on the pile.

I don’t really have anything against the movements themselves, just my ability (or lack of ability) to do them well.

Looking at my pictures and lift numbers now, I do wish I spent more time on arms and chest. But, can’t do anything about that now cept fix it from here on out.

Thanks for the comments!