5/3/1 and lifting as an old(er) lifter

I’m an ex-fighter and ex-club level weightlifter. I was utterly awful at both; literally almost as bad as you can be. I was NSCA CSCS but will let it lapse (recertification in the UK needs expensive CPD or re-exam and I wasn’t using it in any meaningful way). I’ve been lifting 30+ years and — limited by arthritis — I live in high-intermediate strength levels for my age.

I’m not a professional coach, I’m not super-strong (rn sq 160kgx3, dl 200×3 (2025 edit : 210 DL now!), editlog is down, on a bigger log: log clean and press 80×1).

But today at 51 I did my first PL comp in decades and I enjoyed it, and I still get joy, health and very little pain from lifting week-in, week-out. 5/3/1 has been a big part of that.

If you’re near 50 I hope there’s some nugget here you find useful, and I hope you leave nuggets of wisdom in the comments.

I’m 52 this year. I’ve lifted since I was 16. More as a primary activity since my 20s. I started thinking about this stuff in my 40s, but since I turned 50 I’ve really had to concentrate on how and why to adapt to age. I think you get mileage from thinking about the effect of age on your lifting from the moment you feel that age is having an effect.

I used to lift with an 82 year old. He’d thought about this stuff early, and could still clean and press a bar with training plates on it. That was my sign to think ahead.

This is the stuff we’re fighting by lifting. Yours will vary. Mine are a mix of the universal and the specific. Universal: sarcapenia, decreased tissue elasticity especially tendon, increased fat both visceral and inter-muscular, decreased fine balance and power production. For me: I have an arthritis that wants to fuse my spine and S.I joints, and it has recently made changes to my right S.I joint. I can no longer quickly get under a clean or snatch.

Getting older is a lot like getting to be an advanced then elite lifter (sadly without the huge PBs). Recovery matters more and is harder to achieve. Work versus recovery is a ever-finer balance; it gets harder to do enough work to disrupt homeostasis and still recover. You don’t have time to cover as many domains of strength and conditioning, so you have to sacrifice some to excel (or in our case maintain) others. Diet matters more and more. Hormonally, the response to training relies increasingly on sleep.