Newbie to hst

[stergulc]

I'm 57 years old and have been lifting for years. Like most guys my age I've read and tried almost everything out there looking for the magic bullet. And like most others all it led to was overtraining and burnout. I just completed 3 cycles of Wendler's 531 method with good results and minimal damage. I came across this system and found it interesting and decided to give it a try. Below is a list of my exercises. Hope to hear from a few of you with your opinions (good and bad) so I can give it a try. Thanks for your help in advance.

Routine done Mon Wed Fri ( 2 weeks of 15, 2 weeks of 10, 2 weeks of 5 followed by......2 weeks of I don't know yet).

Leg press x 2

Bench x 2
Incline Bench x 1
Dips bw x1

Pull ups x 2
Smith rows x 2

Smith military press x 2

Preacher curl x 2

Skull crusher x2​

 

[whistledixie]

Welcome! Your chosen workout is really a personal thing, I think. It kind of depends on what you prefer/what you want to work on.

Everything here looks really good. I don't know if I personally would work tris with dips and skulls, but it's totally up to you how much you focus on any particular muscle group.

I prefer squats and deadlifts for legs, but that is also up to the individual.

I think that its probably best for us newcomers to read as much as they can, ask many questions, and start the 1st cycle with the perspective that the 1st is just a trial run. Maybe you'll get it right the 1st time and won't want to make any adjustments for future cycles - but for me, it took going through it and figuring out as I went along what I liked best.

And I guess it is always an ongoing experiment. I've gotten great results with just 1 cycle, but I will defintely do a few things differently next time around.

 

[stergulc]

Thanx for the comments/suggesstions. I guess I'll learn as I go like you say. Nothing better than trial and error. Good luck with your workouts!

 

[grunt11]

I’m only 50 years old and just started the 5s part of my first cycle so I’m new to this but will share what I’ve found out in my case at least.

I started with a list of about 9 exercises and found that during the 15s I could do them all in a reasonable time but that was only doing one set of each slowing the rep speed down to get the most out of each set.

When adding a second set and doing the 10s I found out dong that many exercises was starting to take to much time as the 10s got heavier and I need more rest between the sets.

Learning from that when I moved into the 5s I paired it down even more so that I’m doing only 6 exercises split between two days but I also upped the sets to 5 instead of just 3 which seems more common.

Also not that I’m working out 5-6 days a week rather than just 3 so for me the lower volume each workout is better.

In general I would say that it looked like it would be way to easy at first so I loaded things up. However, I quickly realized that less is more in that by doing less each workout I can focus more on getting the most out of every rep and set which has keep the fatigue level from catching up and holding me back.

Good luck

 

[stergulc]

Thanks for the advice. I think you're right. I'll cut down on the volume during my first cycle and take it from there. Better less than more in this case. Good luck to you also,.