So, I haven't been posting, but I've been keeping a journal for myself and taking videos of my sets every day. I was away from July 26 - August 3, and ate very poorly, slept very little, and was very stressed while traveling (work trip w/ the kids along). I tried getting back into things with a 225 DL and 110 OHP on August 5, but found myself feeling so weak and slow to recover that I didn't try again until August 8 with the same weights. Felt equally crappy, and started getting really discouraged.
Started fresh at a lower weight (200 DL and 100 OHP) on August 12, and tried the 5,3,2 rep scheme with 4:3 waves and 10lb jumps. Here's what that looked like for 3 weeks of training:
8/12: 200 DL / 100 OHP, FPP 3,2,1,1
8/13: 210 DL / 105 OHP, FPP 3,2,1,1
8/14: 220 DL / 110 OHP, FPP 3,2,2,1
8/15: 230 DL / 115 OHP, FPP 3,3,2,2
8/16: 210 DL / 105 OHP, FPP 4,3,2,1
8/19: 220 DL / 110 OHP, FPP 4,3,2,1,1
8/20: 230 DL / 115 OHP, FPP 4,3,2,2,1
8/21: 240 DL / 120 OHP, FPP 4,3,3,2,1
8/22: 220 DL / 110 OHP, FPP 4,4,3,2,1
8/23: 230 DL / 115 OHP, FPP, 5,4,3,2,1
8/26: 240 DL / 120 OHP, PU 5,3,2
8/27: 250 DL / 125 OHP, PU+5, 5,3,2
8/28: 230 DL / 115 OHP, PU+10, 5,3,2
8/29: 240 DL / 120 OHP, PU+15, 5,3,2
8/30: 250 DL / 125 OHP, PU+5, 5,3,2
My deadlift never felt nearly as strong as it did in July, even though I was taking smaller jumps and doing smaller waves, and I found my lower back feeling extremely overtrained (was having a hard time bending over to put my daughter in her crib, difficulty rotating my trunk, etc.). PTTP is supposed to be a program that leaves you feeling fresh and ready for other activities, not like a sack of crap every day. I started supplementing whey protein to try and help recover, but the result of that just seems to be that I've put on ~10lbs. When this Monday rolled around, I didn't feel like I was in any condition to deadlift at all.
So, I'm super discouraged. I've been doing PTTP for 6 solid months, and to be sitting at under a 300lb working weight on my deadlift is not what I had envisioned. I don't know why I'm so weak to begin with. It seems a lot of other 6' 200lb adult men start working in the 200s and get over 300 pretty easily. Even for where I started, I feel like I've been trying to eek out PRs, instead of progressively getting much stronger and the weights staying at somewhat the same RPE.
For example, starting this past cycle in August at 200lbs was about 65-70% of my previous 5RM. 250lbs was about 80%. I don't think I should've burned out so fast at those intensities. I'm coming to the conclusion that my body just can't deadlift 5 days a week, unless it's like 40-60% intensity. And as I say that, I wonder why I've been doing PTTP this whole time. Most barbell training programs don't recommend deadlifting very frequently, and apparently for good reason. I wonder if I would've been better of squatting as my primary lower body movement. I wonder, in general, if I can do any program that has you do the same movements 5x/wk no matter the intensity. My body has always seemed slow to recover. Even as a high schooler, I felt like a "hard gainer."
I'm also discouraged because it doesn't feel like there's much room in life for taking care of my body. It always upsets my wife when I work out because she feels like she doesn't have any time for herself, and she's not wrong and I don't know how to create time for her in our schedule, so it really doesn't feel fair. We're also trying to cut back our budget, so she really gets on my case about drinking extra milk, eating extra chicken / beef, etc. I just feel like stopping trying at all.
Or maybe I'm just doing the wrong things. When I think about what would make me feel good about myself, it'd be more like being 175lbs on my frame, not 205, which I've gotten up to over these past 6 months of barbell training (I started out around 190). I've been eating more and more frequently to try to help recover from daily deadlift workouts, but that doesn't seem to help, and I've definitely gotten fluffier than I would like (although I have really put some muscle on my lats, shoulders, triceps, and biceps). But maybe barbell training isn't what I should be doing if I want to be 175lbs and a lot leaner than I currently am. Maybe kettlebells would be more the thing, and something more like the Warrior Diet.
I don't know. I'm obviously rambling. I do well when I have a plan and a structure, which is what I liked about PTTP - every week day had the same routine to it. But I feel like that's failed quite a few times. I overtrained in May, June and July only worked because I had 3 weeks to train and then was away, but I was quickly overtraining in those stints as well, and I just flared out again in August. I think I clearly need something different. I had been considering the Tactical Barbell Operator template with back squats, bench press, and pullups, but I don't know if I want to be eating to fuel that type of training. I'd like to focus on dropping a bunch of weight and being happier with myself in my clothes first, I think.