Geez… I’ve been doing Wendler 5/3/1 for 12 cycles now… well, about to start my 12th.
I actually will have been doing Wendler for a year come August, and I’ll look back on that year then. But right now I wanted to look at some current things.
My shoulder/upper back/neck feels better since whatever I did to it on Monday. It’s been a lot of stretching, getting Wife to walk on my back, twisting, Aleve, and every so often getting a pop and crack in my upper back or neck and that makes things a little better.
As I start this 12th cycle, I’m going to bump up the assistance volume a bit, adding a 4th set. I am taking a bit more of a bodybuilder type of approach here, dropping weight down but picking reps up and reducing rest. Yes, work for the pump. I feel like 3 sets just gets me started and stopping after the 3rd set isn’t giving me enough, so let’s try adding a 4th and see what happens. And I think dips are doing wonders for my upper body as I’ve seen an increase in upper body mass from the past few weeks. Sweet.
Because… while I enjoy my strength going up and still wish to primarily focus on that, I think for me to go much further I need to do two things: decrease my fat mass and increase my muscle mass. Increase of muscle mass is primary.
I have been thinking about some sort of increased conditioning, especially since I’m only hitting the gym twice a week. I’d love a Prowler, but 1. the cost, 2. I think running it up and down my street will annoy my neighbors a little too much. So a sled would be cheaper, but I think still have the noise. So I’m wondering about getting a used tire and making my own sled from it, which should be less expensive and while making noise I reckon rubber on pavement will be less noise than a steel plate on pavement. I reckon if I could drag a sled a couple of times a week, keep my diet the same, that should be sufficient.
Just need to see where I can get a good tire on the cheap or free.
I have also been thinking longer term, about switching up the program entirely and trying to have a solid focus on things like purely fat loss or purely muscle mass gain. But, I don’t know. I want to get my strength numbers up higher than they are. I would love to join the 1000# club within the next year — I’m close. And I think I need to stay on that course, and just tweak my program to get me there. So fat loss really isn’t in the cards, just managing it so I don’t pack on the fat and if I perhaps shed a couple of pounds of fat a month, awesome, but that’s more residual than direct goal. But I do think adding some muscle mass will help me get there. There’s been some mass gain of course, but no question the strength-oriented program is making me stronger and not much bigger. I’ve been seeing some mass growth since I changed up to the 2x/week program, and it’s hard to say exactly what of that helped me. But… let’s just keep on the course and see where we can go with minor changes and experimentations to get me where I want to go.
