hey folks I’d like to get some opinions on training when you are just having an off day. I have a 4 month old and have stuck to 4 days per week since he’s been born, full body training in the beginning and now more of a push pull heavier split.
My question is this:
There are days where I get little sleep maybe 3-4 hours and still hit the gym and lift 5x5 albeit maybe 30-40lbs less then normal on the bar. This is still my 5x5 max weight, it’s all I can do at that point in time. Am I doing any good by still hitting it on those days 100% even though physically I may be at 75%?
Right now I’m losing about .5-1lb poer week which is my goal. I eat big around my workout and watch carbs at night. Carbing up before or in the evenings may help but is not in line with my goals at this time.
I know ways to fix it, but that is not the question I posted, I want to know if I’m doing any good lifting around my 5RM for that day even though it is maybe my 8RM on a normal day.
If you are losing the desired weight like you said then I don’t see it being too detrimental. Life(congrats on the new son) tends to get in the way of lifting doesn’t it? haha
could it be detrimental to my strength in anyway? I’m not likely to progress with my sleep schedule and weight loss, I just don’t want to lower the expectations of my CNS and lose too much ground.
I’m not a trainer or anything but I’d have to say that any lifting is better than no lifting. Do what you can do when you can do it.
Congrats on the new young’n!
[quote]pushpulljunkie wrote:
could it be detrimental to my strength in anyway? I’m not likely to progress with my sleep schedule and weight loss, I just don’t want to lower the expectations of my CNS and lose too much ground.[/quote]
PP,
As someone who has also seen gym time and workouts suffer from new little ones, I feel your pain.
In my experience, the main problem with lifting while sleep-deprived is recovery. Like the others said, lifting at 75-80% isn’t going to hurt you, but eventually you’ll just get too run down without sleep.
My personal rule of thumb was I’d do no more than 3 regularly-scheduled workouts while exhausted before I’d add an extra rest day in to try and catch up. I found that if I went longer than that, my strength and workouts suffered when I DID get back in the gym well rested.
I guess I’m not hurting anything. I just didn’t want to spend all these years convincing my self that say 300lbs is light only to start training my self to feel like it is heavy. Think it’ll come down to what is important to me, strength or weighing less. Weighting less for my knees and back, or being strong to keep me motivated. Can’t have it all on little sleep and a scaled back diet.