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Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up now!

Madcow2 said:
Well, high pulls can be done heavier and low clean pulls heavier than that. Generally 100-110% of your best clean. The power clean is going to be more difficult to learn and you won't be using as heavy a weight. Technique should be the same though and to be honest, doing a lot of heavy high pulls and training bad technique makes it harder to fix down the road.
I failed to mention that I am VERY comfortable w/ power cleans. I did 'em for four years in HS for football. The highlight of my power cleaning "career" (wow this may be the biggest overstatement I've ever made online) was during a Northwestern University football camp when their strength/conditioning coach used me as the example of how to do them right. I had an AWESOME HS football coach who taught us all to power clean correctly. He was big on that book "Bigger, faster, stronger".
EDIT:
That said, do you think I should do PC's for explosion? When I did the single w/ 275 it REALLY took a strong initial pull to get the weight moving fast enough to clean. Going by feel it seems that this would help my dl sticking point perfectly (basically I'm going to do cleans and I just want you to say "go for it" :) )
 
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Well - generally the first pull isn't fast and the idea is to set it up properly for a perfect 2nd pull (as it clears the knees) because this is where you get all the power and acceleration. That kind of makes me a little bit leary about your clean unless I'm reading it wrong. In either case, you are familiar with the movement and it can't be all that bad. I'd try to get those OLs to watch you - football coaches are notoriously bad and even a session or so can probably pick out a few technical issues that will greatly facilitate your training.

Anyway, a few other ways to do stuff.

Use power cleans and power snatches to warm up for the other pulls. WHen deadlifting, begin with cleans and then switch over as the weight gets heavier.
 
Madcow, what do you think of a two week de-loading phase following the first four or five weeks? I've run this type of triaining before, just wondering what your thoughts are on it. I needed to implement more boxing training, and this is leaving me too drained to hit the bag, and the road work is leaving me too sore to do squats at full strength. So, I just wanted to see your opinion on cutting back 2 weeks. Sorry if this has been covered already, but it's at 41 pages. I read the first 20 or so.
 
Re: Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up n

What is Overtraining?


This is a useful thing for the TOC so I'll just slap it here and preface it with something reasonable:

If I do 12 sets for chest, 10 from legs, 8 for back, and 9 for arms - is this overtraining?

Madcow2 said:
So it's impossible to tell not knowing your training history, not knowing what exercises you'll be performing, not knowing how heavy you'll be lifting, and not knowing how long you plan on doing it (i.e. overtraining doesn't happen in a day, it is cummulative fatigue so doing a program for 4 weeks might be quite stimulative yet 10 weeks would kill someone). Also, overtraining is systemic - symptoms include increased reaction time, sustained decrease in performance by 10-15% or greater, sleep disruption, depression, and a bunch of other stuff. You don't get that from a few too many sets one day, that's the body's nervous system breaking down due to high levels of accumulated fatigue.

So now you know that fatigue can be accumulated as a result of training. Obviously the other result of training is what you are driving for strength, speed, hypertrophy - whatever. This is basically refered to as fitness. Interestingly fitness and fatigue accrue and disipate at very different rates....what is the implication? Well obviously fatigue limits your ability to accrue fitness so maybe it's worth looking at their respective rates of accrual and disipation to see if we can plan a workout program around it. This is not a new or novel concept - this is basically the way training is done for elite athletes all over the world in every sport except BBing which although massively affected by it due to the application of weight training stimulus has managed to keep itself ignorant.

Anyway, this is called fitness fatigue theory or dual factor theory. The overwhelming majority of BBing still look at the world in a single factor framework where you train and recover workout to workout making the timing critical, this model as been shot to living dogshit by science and has been totally supplanted by the dual factor model as single factor falls appart reliably and repeatedly under different circumstances while the dual can account for and explain the whole lot. This is what is done with theories - get a better one and junk the old one, although in the case of beginners, novices, and lower intermediate lifters the single factor style programming is considered most appropriate.

This article delves into it more deeply and will enhance your understanding of overtraining because obviously at this point you are realizing that just about every person you've ever heard use the word to rationalize something in their workout doesn't have a freaking clue about what it really is or what is involved in fatigue management. I should also point out that a periodized program built around these concepts only really becomes valuable once you have some decent experience. Even the people who train the best never use this for novices or lower intermediate atheltes/lifters as they make the same progress or even better better at times using a linear pattern and pushing more consistently at lower volumes. http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/PlannedOvertraining.html

Other helpful links in understanding programing and factors (i.e. Intensity, Volume, Frequency): http://www.qwa.org/articles/tmethod.asp

Also see the Frequency and Load Links in the TOC on this page: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showthread.php?t=375215&page=1&pp=20
 
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Re: Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up n

White Sox said:
Madcow, what do you think of a two week de-loading phase following the first four or five weeks? I've run this type of triaining before, just wondering what your thoughts are on it. I needed to implement more boxing training, and this is leaving me too drained to hit the bag, and the road work is leaving me too sore to do squats at full strength. So, I just wanted to see your opinion on cutting back 2 weeks. Sorry if this has been covered already, but it's at 41 pages. I read the first 20 or so.

It all depends on how fatigued you are. The volume really only loads heavy for 2 weeks (the first few are generally seen as accomodation) and most people set the weights the first time so that maybe they get a single solid loading week in. This is a really good description that might give you some ideas on programming and experimentation down towards the bottom. http://forum.mesomorphosis.com/showpost.php?p=48&postcount=3
 
Re: Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up n

Madcow2 said:
It all depends on how fatigued you are. The volume really only loads heavy for 2 weeks (the first few are generally seen as accomodation) and most people set the weights the first time so that maybe they get a single solid loading week in. This is a really good description that might give you some ideas on programming and experimentation down towards the bottom. http://forum.mesomorphosis.com/showpost.php?p=48&postcount=3

Thanks. Main reason I'm asking is to implement more running and boxing into my routine. I think i'll try to do it next week, de-load for one week and see how I feel. My lifts are going up in bench and military, stable in squats and moving up in deadlift. I just need to accept that my squat may stagnate for a few weeks, but i'll be getting the other benefts I want for boxing. Maybe having 3 days of active recovery (heavy bag, running, stretchin, etc) will help. Thanks for the help.
 
Re: Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up n

MADCOW I NEED HELP


okay i finished 5x5, all 9 weeks of it.

but i think i sort of broke down this week, and basically fell apart, (maybe overtrained, maybe mental, who knows)

so anyway, i want to run 5x5 again, but im going out of town soon, so i probably wont be starting it again for 4 more weeks (because im not sure how frequently ill be getting into a gym while out of town -or how regularly)

i really like this setup, so if im not doing an official 5x5 yet, but i wanna keep the same exersises/days, informally, how would u suggest i do it?(in other words i dont wanna go back to a conventional bb routine)

could i just do whatever the hell i wanted (while keeping moderation) in terms of reps, but keeping exersises the same, untill i start 5x5 again? like higher reps jsut to give my mind and body a break from going so heavy before i go back to 5x5?

i
 
Yeah - most importantly you want to know the parameters around being burned out (probably you did the 3x deloading I'm guessing). I'm interested in the gains and strength results. Also, most people are pretty loaded up after finishing the 3x so you are going to need a break.

Overall, I think it's a great time to be doing higher reps (let some of that neural efficiency from triplies build into a nice high rep range like 8-12 or some such that you haven't trained in ages and is mainly all hypertrophy - lots of benefits to varying reps ranges and workloads) . Set aside a nice 4 week block and set up the exercises etc... Start with some lower volume (and maybe frequency the first week) and low weight to recover from the previous phase and then scale upward when you feel ready (probably 2 weeks I imagine generally 10-14 days and you should be solid, you might actually be ripping strong and feel great by that point).
 
Re: Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up n

Madcow2 said:
Yeah - most importantly you want to know the parameters around being burned out (probably you did the 3x deloading I'm guessing). I'm interested in the gains and strength results. Also, most people are pretty loaded up after finishing the 3x so you are going to need a break.

Overall, I think it's a great time to be doing higher reps (let some of that neural efficiency from triplies build into a nice high rep range like 8-12 or some such that you haven't trained in ages and is mainly all hypertrophy - lots of benefits to varying reps ranges and workloads) . Set aside a nice 4 week block and set up the exercises etc... Start with some lower volume (and maybe frequency the first week) and low weight to recover from the previous phase and then scale upward when you feel ready (probably 2 weeks I imagine generally 10-14 days and you should be solid, you might actually be ripping strong and feel great by that point).
awsome. thats what ill do then. but lower freqnecy the first week? so you mean dont do what i was doing (benching, squatting, rowing monday and friday, and shoulder pressing, pullups, deads wednesday?

what would you suggest as far as a split is concerned while im doing this.


-in the next post ill type out how things went
 
Re: Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up n

heres my progress, i went from 166ish, to 175ish in weight,

the stars mean i failed- of all the failing, they all happened after the last rep...

and heres the 5x5 portion
http://tinypic.com/98y42o.gif

heres the 3x3 portion
http://tinypic.com/98y41y.gif
also the military was standing

i made a mistake on the week 2 of the 1x3 bench portion, i failed at 250 (not 255 like it says), on the 2nd rep, and bumped it up to 255 the following week because i was progressing so well on the 3x3, i was having alot of trouble, and all of the failures was on the 3rd rep (meaning i got 2 of the reps fine, EACH time). most likely mental, because i dont see how i can be doing 245 3x3, but not 255 even 1x3? but who knows...
 
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