Old Guy Doing 5/3/1

I’m going to try, but it’s not looking good. We have a plant outage that starts September 1st, and it’s scheduled to go for 37 days, which means 12 hour days, 6 days a week, and vacation is hard to come by especially if you’re in management. I’m going to talk to my boss about it, and see if I can get a couple of days off.

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Awesome. I hope it works out! I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the outage runs smooth and safe.

Morning weigh-in 196.6#. Didn’t sleep well.

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 scoop protein powder. 1 mandarin orange.

Lunch: Large salad = baby spinach, cucumber, carrot, yellow bell pepper, broccoli, radish, onion, mushroom, tomato, olive oil and vinegar. 1 can tuna in olive oil. 12 oz glass of whole milk.

Dinner: Other 1/2 of a medium rare ribeye steak (~8 oz). Brussels sprouts. 12 oz glass of whole milk. Still good, but not as good as it was fresh off the grill.

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Morning weigh-in 195.6#. Woke up feeling a little dehydrated. Definitely didn’t lose a pound in 24 hours.

1/29/19 5/3/1 full body giant sets cycle 1 day 4 Bench primary/Deadlift secondary - Weight 199#

Warmup: Barbell complex x3 with chinups 1/1/1

Main giant set:

Bench:
5x45#
5x65#
5x95#
5x115#
5X135#
5x155#
9x185#

Chinups: 2/3/4/5/6/7/8

Deadlift:
5x45# +2 power cleans
5x95# + 2 power cleans
5x135# + 2 power cleans
5x185#
5x225#
Switched to mixed grip
5x275#
5x315#

Accessory giant set:

Front squat: 5x135#, 5x155#, 5x175#

Dips: 15/15/15

Barbell rows 135#: 10/10/10

Quick workout at work, didn’t have time for conditioning. 45 minutes total. Bench was wonky on last set, because nobody else was in the gym to spot me, so my choices for setting up the safety bar were ‘to low to do me any good’ and ‘so high I hit them on every descent’, so I went with the safer option. I tried to stop the bar high, and it threw me off. I did learn that I’m uneven on my descent though, since the right side hit before the left side every time it hit.

I went way heavier on front squat today (for me, anyway), since it felt fairly easy last time, now that I’ve moved it to the front of the rotation in the accessory giant set. I think I’m actually front squatting better now than when I laid off back in October.

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Food for today -

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 scoop protein powder. Forgot to get a fruit.

Lunch: Large salad = baby spinach, cucumber, carrot, yellow bell pepper, broccoli, radish, onion, mushroom, tomato, olive oil and vinegar. 1 large tin of smoked salmon. 12 oz glass of whole milk.

Snack post-workout: Pretzel flats with hummus. 8 oz glass of whole milk.

Dinner: Leftover blackened pork chop, with brown gravy because it’s gotten a little dry. 1/2 ear corn on the cob. Blackened roasted vegetables = sweet potato, yellow bell pepper, onion. 12 oz glass of whole milk.

Digestif: 1 Old-fashioned = bourbon, angostura bitters, orange zest, 1 tsp simple syrup, cherry, over ice.

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Morning weigh-in 196.0. Feel good.

Food for today -

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 scoop protein powder. 1 mandarin orange.

Lunch: Large salad = baby spinach, cucumber, carrot, yellow bell pepper, broccoli, radish, onion, mushroom, olive oil and vinegar. 1 can of tuna with olive oil. 12 oz glass of whole milk.

Dinner: Small miso salad = spinach, red chard, carrot, onion, almond flakes, rice chips, miso dressing. Small piece of Johnny Mosetti. 12 oz glass of whole milk.

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1/31/19 Morning weigh-in 196.0. Same # 2 days in a row.

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Out of curiosity do you track macros?

Not at the moment, just eating clean and controlling portions so far. If I don’t see the progress I want, I’m prepared to make adjustments and control things more closely. If I were to guess, I’m probably getting ~150g of protein, ~150-200g of carbs and 75-100g of fat per day, or slightly more on workout days when I’m trying to get a snack in within a few hours of my workout. Of course, if I start measuring things I may find out I’m way off on my estimates, but think it’s a fair approximation.

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1/31/18 5/3/1 full body giant sets cycle 1 day 5 press primary/squat secondary - Weight 197#

Warmup: barbell complex x3 with chin-ups 1/1/1

Giant set 1:
Press:
5x45#
3x65#
3x95#
working sets:
3x125#
3x135#
3x145#
joker:
3x155#

Chin-ups 2/3/4/5/6/7/8

Squat:
5x45#
3x95#
3x135#
3x195#
3x225#
3x255#
3x255#

Accessory giant set:

1 arm DB press:
10x60#
10x60#
10x60#

Krok rows:
10x70#
10x70#
10x70#

Zercher squats:
5x135#
5x155#
5x185#

Conditioning: 20 minutes elliptical, aerobic program at lvl 5, 211 calories burned, and max heart rate of 166 during the high speed parts of the program. More calories, better heart rate again, conditioning is improving steadily.

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First, some quick notes on today’s workout because I just logged it real quick before I headed out from work to meet the wife.

I’m sticking with the ‘joker sets on the 3’s week instead of max reps’ that I was doing before. Only did one joker set today because I was in a hurry, and I didn’t want to miss out on conditioning 2 workouts in a row. On the secondary exercise of the day, I’ll just keep doing sets of 3 with the top weight to round out the giant set.

I went up in weight on all 3 exercises for the accessory giant set. I’ll keep playing these by ear, it was hard but it felt good.

1/31/19 food for today -

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 scoop protein powder. Forgot my fruit again.

Lunch: Large salad = baby spinach, cucumber, carrot, yellow bell pepper, broccoli, radish, onion, mushroom, olive oil and vinegar. 1 can of tuna with olive oil. 12 oz glass of whole milk.

Post workout: 8 oz glass of whole milk.

Dinner: 1/2 of an IHOP spicy serrano and shredded beef omelette, with a fruit side (600 calories total).

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Your pretty spot on. I entered your food the day you had the old fashioned and you had 159 protein, 200 carbs, and 84 fat. If progress slows consider upping the protein some to 200-225 and lowering the fat a bit to less than 50. Keep after it man!

2/1/19 Morning weigh-in 195.4#. A new low, and the trend seems to be going the right direction at the right rate, right now. First 6 days weighing at the same time with the same scale are:
196.2#
196.6#
195.6#
196.0#
196.0#
195.4#
Less than a week isn’t enough of a sample size to really validate a trend, but I’m pretty happy with the way things are going right now, and I still have plenty of energy in the gym.

Thanks for checking in, and taking the time to run a day’s food through your tracker. It’s good to see that my estimates are in the right ballpark. Of course, I’m not just guessing, I have a pretty good idea what the macronutrient numbers are on everything I’m eating, but it’s good to have some confirmation. I think your suggestion is a good one, and you obviously know a thing or two about cutting. I think I’m going to do that as soon as it looks like my weight loss is stagnating.

I think the easiest change to flip my protein and fat numbers is to drop the 12 oz glasses of whole milk at lunch and dinner and stop putting olive oil in my lunch tuna (I’ll still do olive oil and vinegar for my salad dressing), and add a bedtime protein shake to make up the protein. I’m going to give it another 2 weeks before I make any changes, though.

I say 2 weeks because next week my scale numbers will probably be wonky because I’m on night shift, so my sleep schedule and eating schedule are going to be jacked.

Also, to recap my progress for the month of January:

  • Went from 2 1/2 months of complete layoff to working out, and eating healthy.
  • Weight went from 204# on the 1st to 195.4 this morning, although at least a few pounds of that is from difference in weigh-in times and weight of clothing.
  • 13 whole body workouts, consisting of 4 relatively light press/squat/bench/deadlift workouts to get the body used to moving weight, 4 work-up whole body giant set workouts to establish a baseline for 1RM’s for 5/3/1 calculations, and 5 days of 5/3/1 whole body giant set workouts.
  • 11 conditioning workouts, fairly even mix between different track intervals, and elliptical aerobic workouts, depending on which gym I use.

All in all, I’m happy with my first month of 2019, I just need to keep doing what I’m doing, and be ready to make adjustments to my diet if things start to plateau. No feeling of overtraining at all with the 3 days/week schedule, but I also need to be self-aware as the weights get heavier, and deload if I need to.

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Hell yeah man! Any way you slice it almost 10lbs in a month is awesome! Funny, I don’t think I could choke down Theee glasses of whole milk a day if I tried :joy:. Looks like you’re doing awesome… keep after it!

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I love me some milk! It’s got a great macro profile for if you’re eating for gains, but I guess I should be a little more sparing with it while I’m trying to l’m trying to lose weight.

2/1/19 food for today -

Breakfast: Shake = 1 cup whole milk, 1 large egg, 1 scoop quick oats, 1 scoop protein powder. 1 grapefruit.

Lunch: Other 1/2 of an IHOP spicy serrano and shredded beef omelette, 12 oz glass of whole milk.

Snack: small handful of mixed nuts. some pickled garlic and peppers.

Dinner: Mojito lime chicken and shrimp. Lime cilantro rice with sausage, onions and peppers. Green beans almondine. 12 oz glass of whole milk. small bowl of mixed fruit.

Digestif: 1 Old-fashioned = bourbon, angostura bitters, orange zest, 1 tsp simple syrup, cherry, over ice.

I had friends and family over for dinner tonight, so the wife made a lot of really good food, and I may have gone a little overboard on the dinner. I definitely got plenty of protein, but I made a few concessions, since I went light on the rice dish, skipped seconds on everything but the chicken and green beans, and skipped the ice cream that the mixed fruit was supposed to go over. I probably had 500 more calories than normal today.

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2/1/19 Morning weigh-in 196.2#. Up a little, but not really surprising considering what I ate yesterday.

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2/2/19 5/3/1 full body giant sets cycle 1 day 6 Bench primary/Deadlift secondary - Weight 196.8# edited so I’m not saying I weigh as much as a small dog…

Warmup: Barbell complex x3 with chinups 1/1/1

Main giant set:

Bench:
10x45#
5x65#
3x95#
3x115#
3X135#
Work sets:
3x155#
3x175#
3x195#
Joker:
3x205#

Chinups: 2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10

Deadlift:
5x45# +2 power cleans
3x95# + 2 power cleans
3x135# + 2 power cleans
5x185#
5x225#
Work sets:
3x265#
Switched to mixed grip
3x295#
3x335#
3x335#

Accessory giant set:

Front squat: 5x135#, 5x155#, 5x185#

Dips: 15/15/20

Barbell rows 135#: 10/10/10

Conditioning: 3x400m run, 2:00 rest between sets.
2:34
2:15
2:07

Total time from start to finish 1:10, about the same as Thursday. Adding in a joker set is stretching out the workout, so I may want to rethink using them while I’m in this phase. It looks like it adds about 3:00 per additional set, and I’m also doing more warm-up sets as I progress to heavier weights.

Also, I messed up the sequence. Today was supposed to be deadlift primary/bench secondary. Oh well, it doesn’t make that much difference.

This was my first day doing 400m runs in a while, so I just took it really easy to start, and tried to improve my time a little each set. I’m still going ploddingly slow right now, but running is feeling okay. Heck, I may even decide to do some 5K runs this spring.

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