May 17 – 150.8 lbs

2x12 hanging leg raises
70 chin-ups
135 push-ups

20+ mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

Bench – 10x45lbs, 2x5x65, 5x95, 3x115, 2x5x135, 5x135
Curls – 5x45lbs, 14x65, 13x65
Squats – 15xbw, 2x10x45lbs, 2x5x65, 5x95, 5x125, 3x145, 2x5x175, 6x175

1989 cal/166 carb/50 fat/180 protein/32 fibre

I had a late afternoon function that involved beer that knocked my schedule off kilter a bit. Between the beer and a sore back following a bunch of yard work the day before, I spent my entire workout on the verge of quitting or just doing a scaled back version. I eventually dragged myself through the motions and got through all of it but whined the whole way. The 5th rep for each set of benches was a real struggle. Squats started out pretty rough but seemed to get a bit better as the sets went on. Schedule for the rest of the week is up in the air as I have another beer event Thursday and tickets to the Sens-Pens Friday so I'm not sure where I am going to fit in my next session.

May 18 – 150.8 lbs

2x12 hanging leg raises
70 chin-ups
135 push-ups

20+ mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

2070 cal/171 carb/57 fat/154 protein/49 fibre

Beers and pub platters, easy on the platter.

Nice job toughing through it a few days back!

Thanks Monte. WIM meter has been low and my Pansy meter has been high the last couple weeks. Always feels good to get it done though.

May 19 – 151.6 lbs

2x12 hanging leg raises
70 chin-ups
90 push-ups

25 mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

OHP – 5x45lbs, 2x5x75lbs, 9x75
Chin-ups – 6x, 6x +27.5lbs
RDLs – 2x8x45lbs, 8x95, 8x125
DL – 2x5x95lbs, 5x135, 5x165, 4x195

2218 cal/153 carb/75 fat/232 protein/36 fibre

Reset OHP and got some extra reps. Weighted chins felt tougher than normal. DL was okayish but my grip is super weak. Stopped my beer streak at two nights in a row despite being out again. Did most of my frequency stuff in the morning and forgot to go back and finish off push-ups.

May 20 – 151.1 lbs

2x12 hanging leg raises
70 chin-ups
180 push-ups

2000 cal/153 carb/76 fat/174 protein/39 fibre

Did some extra push-ups to make up for the ones I missed the day before. Worked outside around the yard for the better part of 12 hours and skipped my usual core and stretching work. Got the pool opened, cleaned up the deck and outdoor furniture, pulled some weeds, installed a down spout, cleaned some screens, pressure washed random things. I’ll log it as 20 mins of cardio.

May 21 – 151.2 lbs

25 mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

Bench – 10x45lbs, 2x5x65, 5x95, 3x115, 5x137.5, 4x137.5, 3x137.5
Curls – 5x45lbs, 14x65, 13x65
Squats – 15xbw, 2x10x45lbs, 2x5x65, 5x95, 5x125, 3x155, 2x5x180, 6x180

2x12 hanging leg raises
70 chin-ups
135 push-ups

2013 cal/165 carb/72 fat/180 protein/39 fibre

Bench started out well and then went downhill in a hurry. I almost had a 5th rep on the 2nd set but failed it before I could finish it. I failed a 4th rep on the last set also and that one wasn’t close. So while I did a bit better this cycle at 137.5lbs, I still have not cracked it. Benching twice a week would help but WIM bucket is empty. Had another busy day working around the house and yard but nothing approaching the 12 hour stint on Saturday.

May 22 – 150.0 lbs

Rest day

1415 cal/108 carb/53 fat/134 protein/41 fibre

Lazy long weekend Monday. Did a little more work around the yard but it was pretty minimal effort and I got in a decent dose of relaxing.

May 23 – 149.3 lbs

Rest day

10min swim
10min squat lunges around yard picking up twigs

1575 cal/115 carb/59 fat/147 protein/28 fibre

May 24 – 148.4 lbs

2x12 hanging leg raises
75 chin-ups
150 push-ups

25 mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

OHP – 5x45lbs, 2x5x77.5lbs, 7x77.5
Chin-ups – 7x, 6x +30lbs
Squats – 15xbw, 2x10x45lbs, 2x5x65, 5x95, 3x135, 2x155, 2x5x185, 6x185

10min swim

2144 cal/194 carb/59 fat/203 protein/30 fibre

Was looking for an 8th rep on OHP but ran out of steam. Picked up an extra rep on weighted chins over last session. Depth looking suspect on squats. Ice cream and berries for dessert and I blame my weak mind and a bunch of posters here posting about ice cream. Or donuts. Or something.

Adding a rep to ohp in < 1 month while losing a few pounds is great progress.

edit: Maybe unrack the squats from the next peg down. You may be able to get tighter under the bar if you're required to squat it out a little. You could tighten up your unrack routine in general. It looks like you're taking too much time and psyching yourself out. Own the weight, maybe descend a little faster toward the hole so you can get a more robust stretch reflex, and focus more on accelerating through the sticking point. If it's a sufficiently heavy weight, it will still move slowly, but you might be able to recruit more fibers if you focus on moving that bar as fast as possible.

Good to hear, thanks. Funny, my initial take was disappointment seeing as though I had 9 reps last session at 75lbs, so I wanted at least 8 on this one. I just want newbie gains forever.

At that rack height I will eventually fail re-racking at the end of a set and end up with an ugly dump onto the safties, so you may be onto something. Thanks for the tips Renton, I will try to work on those.

If you weren't cutting, I'd say it's pretty slow progress and enough to consider changing programs. Any improvement to ohp during a cut is welcome.

May 25 – 149.5 lbs

25 mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

2x12 hanging leg raises
75 chin-ups
150 push-ups

1707 cal/120 carb/66 fat/160 protein/40 fibre

May 26 – 148.7 lbs

15 mins core stuff

2x12 hanging leg raises
75 chin-ups
150 push-ups

1834 cal/146 carb/62 fat/181 protein/46 fibre

Saturday May 27 – 149.2 lbs

25 mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

Bench – 10x45lbs, 2x5x65, 5x95, 3x115, 2x5x125, 7x125
Curls – 5x45lbs, 14x65, 14x65
RDLs – 2x8x45lbs, 8x95, 8x125
DL – 2x5x95lbs, 5x135, 5x165, 4x195

2x12 hanging leg raises
75 chin-ups
150 push-ups

2368 cal/190 carb/93 fat/161 protein/45 fibre

+/- 500 cal for dinner out. Felt like crap Friday night so pushed the session to Saturday morning but still felt like crap which made for a generally lousy workout. Busy day and night running around so ended up having to squeeze in chins and push-ups after 11pm.

Sunday May 28 – 150.7 lbs

15+ mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

OHP – 5x45lbs, 2x5x80, 6x80
Chin-ups – 7x, 6x +32.5lbs
Squats – 15xbw, 2x10x45lbs, 2x5x65, 5x95, 3x135, 2x165, 2x5x190, 5x190

2x12 hanging leg raises
75 chin-ups
150 push-ups

2613 cal/223 carb/92 fat/216 protein/29 fibre

Another busy day as we were on the go from before 7am until after 6pm. I pulled up a bit short on my core stuff and maybe will make it up over the next couple rest days. Or maybe I won’t. I munched down some extra cals in the form of birthday party pizza and cake.

Monday May 29 – 150.9 lbs

Rest day

1486 cal/104 carb/56 fat/152 protein/37 fibre

Tuesday May 30 – 149.5 lbs

Rest day
25min walk
10min swim

1553 cal/72 carb/59 fat/150 protein/24 fibre

Out for lunch but other than a lone single beer, not much damage done.

Wednesday May 31 – 148.8 lbs

2x13 hanging leg raises
75 chin-ups
150 push-ups

25 mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

Bench – 10x45lbs, 2x5x65, 5x95, 3x115, 2x5x127.5, 7x127.5
Curls – 5x45lbs, 14x65, 14x65
Squats – 15xbw, 2x10x45lbs, 2x5x75, 5x115, 3x145, 2x175, 5x195, 3x195 F, 5x155, 7x155

2087 cal/167 carb/65 fat/210 protein/41 fibre

I was all set to end May with a Squat WR and instead got my first experience with a failed squat. Safety pipes were well positioned and passed the test nicely. I wasn’t happy with my depth on the 3rd rep so made sure to get deeper on the next and then I just folded up like an accordion. Wonder if I would have gutted the rep out if there were no safeties. Bench went reasonably poorly as well.

For the month I managed to knock off 20 out of 21 core/mobility/stretching sessions (2 of which ended up being only partial sessions), 13 lifting sessions with no additional mini sessions this month to work on bench or deadlift, 2,925 push-ups and 1,576 chin-ups. My back is still feeling good despite a minor tweak during DL warmups near the end of the month which ended up righting itself within a couple days. I was casually cutting for the last few weeks of May and trimmed a few more pounds largely due to increased activity around the house and yard and not so much due to diet which has been at not much more than a ~200cal daily deficit. I will probably continue on a similar track through June. A lot more lunch and dinner work and social engagements recently are impacting things combined with a big ole heaping of WIL. My scale claims I am starting to flirt with sub-19% bf and if I squint and use my imagination just right I can see where abs could theoretically exist one day. Strength gains are slowing dramatically but I will settle for stronger than I was and not worry too much about my absolute weakness and just keep chipping away.

How long did you rest after the 195x5?

IMO it might be time to add a bit more volume to the GSLP base program if you want to get more gains. You actually lost reps at 127.5 and 125 on bench compared to the last cycle.

ETA:

In my log, I managed to get an additional couple of months of solid gains out of GSLP after a plateau by adding a backoff set to each main lift, along with a super-set of assistance exercises (to be done after the main work). For example, leg press with dumbbell incline press or chest fly with dumbbell row. I also switched to benching 2 times a week instead of 1.5 (OHP only on deadlift day). Predictably, benching more helped my bench, but my press gains slowed to a crawl.

My target rest periods are 2mins but that has been drifting to closer to 3min and beyond lately on squats. I think I had at least a 3min rest before my 2nd set and after the first 2 reps I *knew* I was getting 5 easy. Hah.

Is it possible all my push-up volume is negatively impacting my bench? I thought it should help but bench has definitely been getting worse.

For backoff sets is there a generally prescribed weight and rep scheme? I'll have to do some digging through logs and elsewhere. Will need to deal with time constraint issues too in order to sneak in some more volume.

Only 2-3 minutes is woefully inadequate to recover from a hard set of squats. I rest between 4 and 6 minutes depending on how hard the last set was, and some guys on this board like kidcolin have been known to rest for 10 minutes.

I think if the pushups were impacting your bench negatively, you'd know. As in, you'd feel crappy all the time like you were never getting to recover. What is your sets/reps scheme for pushups? Certainly I wouldn't do them prior to lifting, and I'd never take the sets near failure.

Do your GSLP sets 5, 5, 5+, leaving just a bit in the tank on the amrap. Then take 10% off the bar, rest amply (3-5 minutes) and do another amrap.

Re: time constraints, assistance work can be done very quickly with not a lot of rest between sets. Do exercise A, do exercise B immediately after, rest for 90-120 sec, repeat for 3-5 sets. Takes 10-15 minutes tops.

Extra rest would certainly be welcome. Appealing concept. I guess it doesn't add too much time as we are only talking about between work sets and not warm-ups.

I had been doing push-ups in sets of 15 which was very easy. Recently switched to sets of 20 with a couple sets of 15 at the end. Some of those sets of 20 are somewhat taxing but still not all that close to failure. There have been times where the push-up and chin-up volume was starting to build up in little niggles and pain but I have been fine lately. Since moving to 150 push-ups/75 chins I generally do most in the morning in the following scheme - start with a couple core exercises followed by a ladder to 6 of chins, a set of hanging leg raises then 20 push-ups. Repeat. Repeat again without leg raises. Then 2 sets of 6 chins and 20 push-ups and finish up the push-ups later in the day with a set of 20 and 2 sets of 15 whenever. This takes about an hour at a relaxed pace between sets including getting breakfast for my kids thrown in there somewhere. If I am working out in the morning, I do all the frequency stuff immediately following the weight lifting or later in the day or some combination.

After a quick look around it looked like removing 10% was about right, so thanks for spelling it out for me. It does sound familiar.

Adding a back-off set will be an easy start that won't add a ton of time so I'll throw that in right away. I will have to think about what sorts of assistance work I can fit in with what I have around.

Thanks much for all the help and suggestions!

Thursday June 1 – 149.9 lbs

15 mins core, mobility and dynamic stretching stuff

2x13 hanging leg raises
75 chin-ups
150 push-ups

1621 cal/146 carb/50 fat/160 protein/49 fibre

I got absorbed in playing with pool chemistry in the evening and forgot all about finishing up my mobility and stretching stuffs.