A Real Human

After a frustrating second year of consistent lifting, 2023 brought much better progress, though mostly along some different directions than I’d been focused on the first 2 years. My goals were more focused on health/consistency/functional strength and less on pure powerlifting strength and I read/ran a lot of stuff from Dan Johnand Pavel and it took my training in a different direction.

What I did

I ran 5 programs at various points this year

• 5/3/1 FSL
• Easy Strength
• General Gainz
• Mass Made Simple
• Deadlifts & Kettlebells - with a heavy KB Press focus added on

In the spring I saw good progress on shoulder health running an easy FSL program and doing a lot of direct shoulder rehab work. I then ran easy strength for a few weeks with an intent to focus on fat loss. The weight loss didn’t happen and this time was probably a net loss for my powerlift numbers, but I was able to make significant progress on chinups for the first time in my life, and that additional pulling work seemed to do wonders for my shoulder health.

Over the summer I ran a few weeks of GZCL 5x a week, which worked great for a few weeks and let me set a few PRs on the big lifts until I could no longer recover from it. I then transitioned to easy strength for the rest of the summer and finally saw some progress on fat loss, my first pain free bench pressing in 2 years, as well as continued pullup gains.

In the fall I did another month of easy FSL work and saw continued body comp improvements, before trying out Mass Made Simple, which I enjoyed but did not quite finish as craziness in life and work did not allow for the amount of sleep and recovery I needed to finish it out. I did manage a 20x Bodyweight Squat during this period and set a new Bench Press PR without any pain.

To end the year I started running a version of Deadlifts & Kettlebells with my life while also putting a heavy focus on the KB press, and am running that program into the new years. I didn’t do a ton of deadlifting the second half of this year and had lost some strength, and saw it quickly start coming back with more focus.

What I learned

In general 5/3/1, Easy Strength and DL&KB were run as “park bench”¹ programs where I made some steady progress (especially on fat loss) and General Gainz and Mass Made Simple were run more short term as muscle building “sprints” for 4-6 weeks.

I found this breakdown (around 42 weeks of the year going at an “easy” pace and 10 weeks going more intensely on a specific objective) worked well for me and I will be copying that again this year. Consistency works, and doing things in a way that I can maintain allows for greater progress and fun over time.

I also saw that my shoulder pain issues seemed to be helped a lot by focusing on doing more pulling than pressing. The focus on pullups throughout the year seemed to make a major difference here once some direct PT exercises got me to a more stable foundation.

Progress Made

I made moderate overall progress on the powerlift numbers this year, but my new maxes were mostly set at 10-15 pounds lighter body weight than the original numbers. Those are also all numbers I hit in training, as I did not do any serious 1RM testing this year. At the same time I put more focus on pulling exercises and kettlebells, and am happy with my progress there.

The two biggest wins though are getting down to a weight where I feel much more energetic, and getting my shoulders healthy to the point where I can do bench, pushup and overhead press exercises without pain or limitations.

Looking Ahead to 2025

For 2025 I want to continue “reasonable” training, and put most of my focus on the Deadlift, KB Press and pullups. I’m hoping to achieve a 2x bodyweight DL this year and would like to be able to do 10 strict pullups with a 25lb weight and be able to press the beast (48kg KB) for 1 rep by the end of the year.

I’m starting off the year by continuing the DL & KB program I began at the end of last year.