That's a weird disparity in your squat and deadlift. I maxed out on 5RM on deadlifts at 195 before I tweaked my back, but my squat was 182.5kg x5. I'm sure if you focused on squat you could get it much higher without too much trouble.

I've been doing 3x5 squats @ 140kg three days a week, followed by bench variations, curls, shoulder press, flys, skullcrushers on different days. I might add in bent over rows and deadlifts again once I'm confident my back is doing fine. I also do steady-state cardio on those days. Then, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I do pulldowns and rows, followed by a bunch of HIIT cardio. I've been trying to keep the diet in check but it's been rough with how often my friends want to eat out or go out for drinks. I'm still down about 5kg bodyweight since about 6 weeks ago, so progress is being made.

I think the one flaw with macro tracking is that it doesn't really take into account body type. If I were to follow my macros exactly, I should be eating around 300g of carbs a day. I have the body type that just explodes whenever I eat carbs, so I limit mine significantly and replace them with more protein and fat.

Back pain is killing me, i hurt myself during a training session 2 years ago. Glad to see a topic like this here anyway.

A fairly large deadlify/squat disparity seems to be pretty common from what I've seen. I can deadlift almost a plate over what I can squat and it's been that way for a long time. Going on madcow (and squating 3 times per week) definitely helped but the gap is still pretty big. Squats in general are a weak point for me, get much passed 350 or so and I just feel like I'm dying. We've been doing more work on front squats and good mornings lately so hopefully that helps.

Overall, 5/3/1 is going pretty well so far (made basically no progress on the last round of madcow and it was a big waste of time). I'm basically where I was before my last big injury with the exception of bench press (which is still coming along steadily). While strength is my primary goal, it seems where I'm making the most goal is muscle size. Slowly losing weight too, and I'm hoping that doesn't have too much of an effect on my strength progress.

Hmm, yeah, I'm sure it really comes down to training volume. I've never deadlifted anywhere near as often as I've squatted so that might have a lot to do with it.

If you're ever looking for positive reinforcement for training, weight loss, etc., I strongly recommend never, ever living in Korea. Conversation at dinner with coworkers, after I declined to eat some more empty fried carbs put in front of me: "Sorry, I'm trying to watch what I eat." "Oh, you're dieting?" "Yep. I've lost 8kg so far." "Oh...really? We didn't notice at all. Maybe you're fake dieting where you just say it but you're not actually doing anything." Cool. Thanks.

Also, I was wondering what supplements you guys take. I had just been taking protein powder for the longest time but recently started taking creatine. Thinking of maybe adding leucine next.

Only protein powder for now. I was also taking creatine while I was making gainz, but it did cause my bodyweight to shoot up a noticeable amount, so I've just recently tapered off it during this cut.

I'm sure you've figured it out in the two months since you posted that, but weight gain due to creatine ingestion is not really weight gain; It's just excess water weight due to creatine causing your muscles to fill with water. Once you go off it, that water weight goes away.

Now that I'm done school and Derigin's business trips are over, we've been going back to the gym a lot more consistently and it feels great. The lack of consistency was slowing me down, but now 5/3/1 seems to be going quite well again. I've made some changes in my lifestyle that I'm hoping will help me slowly lose weight and get better gains. I've stopped drinking beer everyday (which was harder than I'd like to admit), as it was probably the biggest single thing giving me a gut. I've also really cut down on fast food and have been doing a lot more home cooking, as well as doing a bit more cardio. Here's a progress pic I took today:

I started going to the gym with my roommates about 2 weeks ago, and now I'm pretty much all in. I'm 5'10 and 145 lbs, so right now my goal is to hit 160, and then see if I can push it to 180. I've started taking pre-workouts before going to the gym, making smoothies with fruit and protein powder, and totally replacing Dr Pepper with Whole Milk.

So I've recently started going to the gym with a friend of mine. So far I'm not enjoying it too much, although at the same time I don't really mind going there, either. What do you folks enjoy about going to the gym and how do you keep it fun for yourself? My guess would be setting personal goals for yourself could be a lot more motivating than just going for the sake of it.

Setting strength goals and progressing with various lifts is, to me, a much better motivation than looking at the mirror and trying to follow your progress from there. It helps that I don't really care for bodybuilding at all - the whole aesthetic is just off-putting. It's much nicer to train yourself in lifts like squat, bench press, and deadlift, and follow your own progress with the numbers. Better physique comes as a side product, if you take care of what you eat. But that's just my take on it - for many people following the progress of their physique and weight is very motivating.

As a general tip to maintain motivation, it's best not to overthink things too much. You will see progress, as long as you maintain consistency. It's worthwhile to train yourself in the multi-joint, compound lifts, like squat, from the beginning. It might feel difficult to start with, but it will pay off. At first it's better to not have too many different exercises, because as a beginner you'll progress quickly without needing any specialised programming. When in doubt, squat!

I used two scoops of pre-workout today, and suddenly I had no idea what my limits were! Crazy.

Having something to train for helps, or just personal achievements you want to reach. I have to keep training because I have to keep ready for Fire Academy within the next 2 months.

When I was training purely for strength, I had certain numbers I set out to hit when I started. And when I started making more progress it made me want to train more. The success you experience in the gym kind of feeds your motivation to keep going.