Progression - Regression

Troy Archie · 02-23-2009, 06:48 PM

I've been struggling with periods of progression and regression lately in my lifts. I've been following SS for the last +3 months with good results but I've been finding lately that I make great head way in one lift, while one falls back and regressing even.
Example;
I was having a bitch of a time with Should Presses so I dropped the weight down and started to work heavily on form. In the mean time my bench press was flying up and I was adding 1kg per session. I worked hard on my shoulder press in the meantime and managed to make some considerable gains but then out of the blue my bench took a nose dive and I've regressed quite considerably. Shoulder press is still moving up quite well but bench is just sucking. Is this a cue that rotation of SP & BP every workout is done? What spurs on regression like this? Shouldn't I just be stagnating?

Steven Low · 02-23-2009, 07:16 PM

Would be nice to see your weight, height and stats as they progressed... but that might be difficult.

How's the recovery between sessions?

That's the main thing I think because if your bench weight is going up (higher intensity) then if you don't recover between sessions to the press it's going to be tougher on that and vice versa. When one gets easier, the other one tends to get harder, especially with a program like SS as the weight increases.

Brian Stone · 02-24-2009, 04:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Low

Would be nice to see your weight, height and stats as they progressed... but that might be difficult.

How's the recovery between sessions?

That's the main thing I think because if your bench weight is going up (higher intensity) then if you don't recover between sessions to the press it's going to be tougher on that and vice versa. When one gets easier, the other one tends to get harder, especially with a program like SS as the weight increases.

I agree. There's a lot of translation between the BP and SP movements in terms of muscle recruitment. All other things constant (order of exercises etc.) I have to wonder if recovery / workout density of the respective exercises is a factor.

When you see a regression, have you taken a few days off of either exercise and gone into the gym "fresh" to see if your regression was truly a loss of strength in that lift?

Gavin Harrison · 02-24-2009, 11:59 AM

Maybe it's time to switch your bench/press to an 5x5 intermediate cycle?

Troy Archie · 02-24-2009, 05:39 PM

5' 11" / 1.8m
175lbs / 79kg
I deem recovery to be good; 7.5-8h sleep during the week and +8h on the weekends. Paleo food choices in a low-carb-PWO cyclic fashion. +1g protein/lbs on training days and probably around 0.9-1g for off days. Eating enough to maintain a 1.2kg per month weight gain. I don't drink my milk and have no problem gaining weight.

I've never been strong and my bench has always lagged behind. I've pretty long arms. My bench started moving up from 67.5 to 72.5 really fast. I was increasing in 1kg increments just about every session. I'd miss the odd last rep on the last set and would stay at that weight for the next session but always got it the second time around. This kept going until I hit 72.5 where I went 5/5/4. The next session I didn't have anything in me and could barely manage 72.5 for sets of 3. Since then I've regressed down to failing at 70kg x5x3 and now I'm going to drop even lower to 67.5 and take it from there.

Meanwhile my Should Press has been moving steadily up. I was having problems on form so I dropped down to 42.5kg for a couple sessions before moving up to 45kg and started increasing in 0.5kg increments per session. I tried 48.5kg yesterday and got 5/4/5 (lost my balance).

This has also sort of happened with me in the squats. I'd go hard for a couple weeks and then feel like I had nothing in the tank and have to scale back a bit.
I was thinking about going:
Day 1: Shoulder Press 5x3
Day 2: Push Press 3x5
Day 3 Bench Press 5x3

Steven Low · 02-24-2009, 06:13 PM

What weights did you reset to after you stalled on bench & press?

If you didn't reset correctly, I am betting you stalled pretty fast.

That bench/press/pushpress could work. It's a simple form of undulating periodization, but from your numbers you could probably milk linear progression more to be honest.

Troy Archie · 02-24-2009, 06:59 PM

Have I stalled though? I was managing 72.5 x5x3 and now I'm failing at 70 x5x3.
So you suggest I should treat this like a stall and drop down 10%, increasing in 2.5kg increments per session?

Steven Low · 02-24-2009, 07:06 PM

Stalling with SS means you couldn't increase the weight in the next session with linear progression... if you DROPPED weight that's waaaay past stalling.

Reset low enough so that it takes you about 4-5 sessions to build back up to max. ~2.5kg increments are fine... so go back down to 60kg or so.