Strength / Weight Training

If you can’t squat you can use leg press machines or hack squat machines.

Ouch! Sounds painful! Htfu*

*heal

Don’t have any at the small gym at the climbing wall unfortunately. Happy to do the daft cross arm front squats tho.
Good enough for Arnie after all!

Thanks bro. This is deffo one I’ll have to gently heal rather than just HTFU my way out of (I guess knowing the difference is one of the joys of getting older, even if age is probably a contributor in the first place).

Dude, I'm with you... I was cleaning house and bumped my finger... Thought I was going to die. Old age is a bitch.

Really sorry to hear about your hand.

Check out Paul de Gelders workout, he’s very creative out of necessity. I’m sure there are exercises you can still do even with a bad hand. And if your climbing gym doesn’t suffice, maybe join a bigger gym for a little while while your hand gets better?

Paul de Gelders workout

Will check it out.

Gonna give it a week and see how it feels and book a physio appointment.
I’ve paid this month for the climbing gym, and it’s on my drive home so will probably stick with it for now. But if it turns out it’ll be fucked for ages I might have to change gyms to better suit my needs.

So I re-joined the gym as soon as I had my second dose in August and I have been on the Stronglifts app four days a week until now. I have reached a plateau and I don't see myself advancing much more between now and Xmas.

So I am thinking I could shift over to Juggernaut which I have used before. I like the variation with Juggernaut – how you do both high reps/hypertrophy at one end and low reps/strength at the other end. But there is a big difference in terms of SL making you squat every session, but Juggernaut requiring squats only once a week.

I've had no issues recuperating from the (near) daily squats so I could maybe tweak the Juggernaut program to include the 5 x 5 squat with every session? As a kind of warm up exercise? But then again, that will just keep me at the plateau I am at now.
Your thoughts please.

I’d do a variation that targets your weaknesses. And I’d do it on deadlift day for an upper/lower type split.

For example, if you find yourself tipping forward with your squats, do front squats for a medium heavy 5x3. If you lose tightness at the bottom, pause squats. If you don’t accelerate fast out of the bottom, pin squats.

Alternatively, use it as an opportunity to hammer hypertrophy using machines. Going HAM on a leg press isn’t going to hurt progress. Again, choose something that will attack your weaknesses.

Edit: worth noting that Juggernaut looks simple enough when you just look at main exercise but there should be the majority of volume coming from the ‘assistance’ exercises afterwards (something that doesn’t exist within the Stronglifts cinematic universe). They shouldn’t be treated like an afterthought, they’re an integral part of your success.

How long have you been at the plateau? I’m interested as when I last did SL I sustained an injury (not related to SL) and the only plateaus I got to was on the OHP which I find the hardest. Plateauing on all the exercises was something I has not reached albeit there were the usual drops in weights for squat when I had a couple of bad days etc.

Physio booked for my hand at a climbing/hand injury specialist. They’ve got an ultrasound to scan it which sounds promising. They couldn’t fit me in for a couple weeks but figure it’s worth waiting for, to get a decent assessment and rehab plan.

It may be worth checking out the Candito 6 week strength program. It's freely available and there's a free app called Bootcamp which has it there for logging. I've been using it for a while now and haven't hit any plateaus.

It's an upper/lower split but each week has a different focus, building up to testing your 1rm on the last week.

... August and I have been on the Stronglifts app four days a week until now. I have reached a plateau...

So about 10 weeks? I'd say time for a deload and start again from your new % of xrep max. If it is your first cycle of 5x5 you should see a decent increase above where you are now in 10 weeks time and can do this basic cycle for maybe a year (your body/training may vary) seeing each end of cycle at a higher peak.

If you've been around a handful of cycles already then start specialising in your weakness. Need more muscle = a cycle of hypertrophy, or more power? more strength? etc... Keeping in mind food and rest, too.

Then you can program your cycles specific to what you need to work on, tapering between them so you're not overworking yourself and not losing significantly in an area you're not focusing on. At this point you might want to look at organising your tapers for any events you're training for, too.

If you feel like you can squeeze more out of an LP program then I highly recommend GZCLP - it has what you mention of working at higher and lower rep ranges (which works well for me as well). Due to starting and stopping barbell strength training a few times I've run starting strength, stronglifts, and GZCLP and the latter is definitely my favourite.

As the weight gets heavier, squatting every day, especially close to your max in a low-ish rep range will become hard to recover from. I squat once a week and see good progress. From looking at Juggernaut it seems like a decent program and you could just run it straight up.

I hesitate to make too many modifications to programming, unless they're made to be moved around a bit. If you run Juggernaut just run it as is for a couple months, if you feel like you need more volume (particularly on the squat) then look for another program.

Good luck. I've suffered from a few pulley injuries before and they are no fun, sounds like what you've got going on is a lot worse though. Has it eased up at all since the day you did it?

How do you find the DOMS from only squatting once a week? I find if I'm squatting regularly my legs get used to it quite quickly, but only once a week that doesn't happen so much

No significant DOMS for me with once a week. Only time recently I've had any non-insignificant soreness after squats was when I pushed up for a heavy set of 5 after my AMRAP set, and then continued with my 3 sets of 8 back off sets as well, but that feels deserved.

Been back in the gym a few weeks now - making decent progress, sets are starting to feel heavy, not dropped anything yet (nor have i almost shit myself) but it's not far off...

I'm going before work Mon-Thur & time is of the essence, started with the basic stronglifts sets but in reality I only have time for 2 exercises with proper rest etc.- plus going every day i'm trying to keep it manageable as the weights increase.

So - right now it's squats / bench Mon & Wed, then press / row Tue & Thur - have been adding in random max sets of pull ups to add a little variation but it's pretty basic stuff, any tips to mix it up a bit? Was thinking about swapping the row for deadlifts (3x5 at a manageable weight) but that might be too much legs if i'm doing squats the day before & after...

Any thoughts? Should I drop the weights a bit & increase reps or mix up the exercises a bit?

When i plateau'd on starting strength, I jumped on 4 day a week texas method and that kept me moving up — you get to keep a lot of squat volume, but more structured so you don't burn yourself out on it

General pain is less but still painful to put my hand in certain positions. Not ideal when you work with your hands, I’ll say that.

I'd say main thing you're missing is a hip hinge movement, so definitely worth adding that deadlift in. If you're doing full body exercises 4 days in a row fatigue is always going to compromise your performance in those sets a bit so don't worry too much about your deadlift impacting your squat.

I would mix this up by varying rep range, on squat/bench day 1 do heavier, lower volume on one exercise, and lighter, higher volume on the other, then swap them the next time you have squat/bench. apply same concept to other days. so then you can do your deadlifts the day before your volume squat day.

Other benefit of this is higher volume / lighter weight sets require less rest, could even superset them with a different movements.

This thread's been on fire lately. Thanks guys!

I'm taking this week off, might call in tomorrow with that said but probably not - just wanted to see if my right arm (lower bicep, both sides of forearm) would recover somewhat. Which hasn't happened, but works chosen these weeks to go mental so I'm happy enough.

Also in a cut phase and I'm struggling with energy levels in a way that I didn't last time.

That sounds like a plan, cheers - i'll start to blend it in next week, this week i've felt i'm getting to a stage where further progress will only be made by scouring the racks for the wee .5kg coasters... happy enough with where I am right now as a base so i'm all for a bit of a switcheroo

Last time I was visiting the gym with any conviction (pre covid) I was doing a kettlebell class on the "off" days which helped with flexibility & a bit of core strength - enjoyed that & it seemed to compliment the barbell stuff well, I don't have the luxury of leisurely lunchbreaks anymore so i'm trying to squeeze as much as possible into 45 mins before work, half asleep.

Just done another go at that men's health amrap posted upthread
5x:
10x
Squat
Reverse lunge
Bent over row
Shoulder press
Hammer curl
Devil press

With 4kg dumbbells

Honestly fuck devils presses. Horrendous things. It's a solid fullbody workout though for 20 minutes investment. Now to find the motivation to do it again soon