Struggling - what should I do, in your opinion?

threnjen

My love affair with SL has had many ups and downs as my motivation surges and flags. At last I'm back in full swing and hitting it 3x a week for almost 3 months without screwing up (except for a brief sickness that knocked me out). I had to practically start over on my weights and last week was finally at my old max weights and a few new ones.

I feel lately like I'm hitting a wall on my efforts, and I don't think I'm eating at a deficit. I haven't been tracking like I used to, but I still pay attention to my food. I seem to be comfortably maintaining. Not gaining weight.

A few days ago I tried to squat and I just COULD NOT. It was a repeat weight, too. I went to the elliptical and waited for my group to get over to bench. Squats ever since have been a painful challenge, at the same repeat weight.
On deadlift, I can't lift a weight that I have done NUMEROUS times. By the time I get to DL I am just so exhausted that my body just doesn't respond. I go for the push/pull and... nothing. This has happened twice now.

Lately everything hurts (and not in a good way) - my butt, my thighs, my lower back, my shoulders, my neck. Usually I love lifting but now I dread it. We're supposed to go soon tonight and I can just "feel" that I am off today, again. It sounds excruciating.

What is happening?? Why am I hitting a wall?? What do I do?

Jennloella

if it were me I'd look again at my calories, be sure I'm getting enough rest, hydration - and just deload if that's what I needed. If all else fails, see a doc - so many things can cause general pain and weakness. If most lifts hurt, and not in a good way, you may benefit from just taking the weight off and focusing hard core on form for a while - bad form as you increase weight will mess you up.

SideSteel

I'd either take a deload or modify the programming so that you're mixing in some lower intensity work.

awkwardsoul

Other than checking your eating, I'd take a week off and do a 10% deload. That small of a deload isn't long to work back up to, and that'll give you some rest time.

Be sure that you are doing a good warm up and foam rolling too.

Julieboolieaz

I say a rest week is in order. Make sure you are eating enough, especially protein, and deload if you need to. The rest is what it sounds like you need.

canadianlbs

i'm agreeing with the above two people. especially if you were at square one three months ago and now you're back to wherever your highest weight was before . . . i mean, i don't know what those weights are or how long it took to you make that progress the first time.

but if (for instance) you just regained six months' worth of strength in half the time it took you originally then you've been working your body pretty hard. not sure if i'm getting my point across or just babbling.

tl;dr : burnout is a thing. and three months can be a pretty long time if you're consistently challenging your body to keep up with overload. so a week offis a much better idea than continuing to lift when you don't want to and your body hurts and doesn't want to and your nervous system is too overtaxed to remember how to do things like squat down and stand up.

andylllI

The premise behind SS and SL is that linear increases are for people new to strength training. If your body needs more time to recover between workouts than the 2-3 days you are giving it, maybe you need to move to an intermediate program that allows for more recovery time. If that's the case than CONGRATS! You are no longer a beginner.

And when have I ever disagreed with Sidesteel? Either a big deload or alter your programming to provide more recovery time between big efforts. For example if you wanted to squat 3x a week still, you could have a heavy day, a light day and an intermediate day or a day with a variation like front squats etc. There is some good advice on altering programming for intermediates in "practical programming for strength training" as well as a discussion on when you qualify as an intermediate.

threnjen

Cool everyone, thanks. Everyone had great advice.

One thing that really drove it home was canadianlbs pointing out that if, for example, I regained six month's worth of strength in half the time then I might be pretty tired. Now that I think of it, that is almost my exact timeline. I lifted and progressed from Sep to Apr this last year, and then in the last three months after taking a significant break I'm back to my high weights or slightly above. Although, I didn't have to start back at the very beginning, but I did have to go back quite a lot. So it was a fairly fast build back up.

I've always progressed my weights very conservatively, too, because I err carefully on the side of form over function. But I am realizing that, now I lift with my friends and my husband, their pushes make me want to push harder and faster. Sometimes this motivation can be a good thing, but I think I work myself too hard and progress faster than I otherwise would. I get irrationally hung up on "keeping up" but I really need to drop that and work for myself. This burnout is not doing me any good.

I need to:
* Deload. We ended up not going tonight, because I told my hubby I just could.not.do.it. So we'll be back Friday, I'll have had a couple of days off, and I will 10% deload.
* Warm up. We tend to have limited gym time and the cage/rack are SO hard to get, we just run in and claim them ASAP. But I need to get my legs warmed up and just 5 min on the elliptical and some stretching will help this. When I used to work out alone I ALWAYS warmed up sufficiently, but I realize that working out with others, we just get right to it.
* Track my protein. I no longer really need to track my calories for weight loss/maintenance, but I bet that now that I've dropped doing it, my protein is WAY off. I used to hit my protein macro every day.

If I still end up with trouble I'll look into mixing up my intensity and altering my programming for more intermediate work (assuming that, when I check the post, it seems I might qualify as intermediate). I checked out the female weightlifting performance standards charts and for my body weight I 5x5 between novice and intermediate strength standards, and I know the chart is for a 1RM, so maybe I need to alter my program instead of pushing harder for linear gains. I'll check out the post on practical programming, thank you.

TL;DR: Thanks everyone for the advice, I feel you've set me back on the right track!

indianarose2

This was very helpful for me also as I feel like I'm hitting a wall also. Thanks for the good discussion!