observations after 20 month barbell layoff

so most of you know...i have been without my home gym since march of 2020 when i sold my house and started a new build. I finally got new gym built this month.

in the mean time i had kettlebells (pairs @ 26,36,53,70) and rings to do work. I wasnt as consistant without the home gym and prolly should have made more progress, but a couple things i noticed

- after on and off 2+ decades of lifting....i was able to maintain most of my barbell strength just using the lighter weight

- i was less successful maintaining most of the muscle i had built. I think this hardly had anything to do with not having the home gym though and much more to do with overall consistency and total volume. So more my fault.

- squats feel easy on my legs, but my traps and middle back were not ready at all lol.

- deadlifts seem to be the one lift where i did not maintain as much strength. I think this is mostly from the lack of patterning the hip hinge other than some KB SLDL and kb swings. I expect this will prolly be the lift i make the most progress in

- now that the home gym is set back up....i feel a little overloaded with option


- strength endurance seems where i kept the most. i.e. rep records


- squating...i need to work on shoulder mobility more. going to be a big focus in my warm up

- lessons learned from the layoff

-weighted ring pushups are the bomb
-thick handled chins will light you up
-KOT split squats will help you maintain tons of squat strength
-specialty bars like the neutral grip bars, the safety squat bar are your joints friends. also the bamboo bar or rings are great for the joints when adding volume due to the instability.

-overall.....mike boyle is right in that we need to focus more on unilateral training fo the lower body, both for performance and in every day life.

anyways thought i would point a couple things out. plan is to hit the GSLP until squatober and then figure out from there. WIll decide between cycles of madcow, 531, defranco programming or ppsa.

leaning to 9 months of gslp --> squatober, brovember, deadcember--> 2-3 cycles of madcow--> 531 for a year--->a year of defranco--->ppsa for life :lol: :lol:



for those that missed my pics of new gym, see below