Weightroom

I'll start. I'm coming back from a 6-month maintenance "pause" on my powerlifting. I had hit my 2025 goal (1100 lbs or 500 kg on my 3-lift total), but my joints, tendons, ligaments all just felt like I needed a break. I'm in my 40's, so I wanted to give the non-muscle tissue some time to catch up.

For the last 6 months, for each of squat, bench, deadlift, overhead press, I've just been warming up and then doing 2 sets of 5 of my previous 8-rep max, as some kind of easy maintenance program (2 days per week, 30-45 minute per session), as a holding pattern. I think I've lost a small amount of strength, but haven't tried to go to failure on any set.

But I'm ready to get back to it. Going to do 5/3/1 again, on a 21-week cycle (two 3-week cycles, then a deload week) that should add 60 lbs to my training max on squat and deadlift, and 30 lbs to my training max on bench and OHP. I'm setting my starting training maxes at what I estimate my current 5 rep maxes to actually be: 350 lbs on squat, 210 on bench, and 420 lbs on deadlift. Let's see if I can get it to 410, 240, and 480 on my training maxes, and then see what that actually happens to translate into for true 1RMs.