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

[Madcow2]

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

Fatigue, Failure, Nervous System​

Actually knowing that workload is a proxy for microtrauma or stimulus, now learn about fatigue or the nervous system. The nervous system is what overtraining is about, it's not about tissue repair so much. You don't get exhausted, unable to concentrate, interupted sleep patters, decreased performance and reaction times from doing too many sets of bis one day. This is your nervous system getting hammered. The nervous system is what recuits your muscles and to do heavy work it fires hard (rate coding). So knowing that workload is a proxy for stimulus to the muscles and hypertrophy, getting those extra reps by going to failure becomes particularly expensive. Not that failure is bad but simply that rate coding skyrockets and that impacts fatigue and accumulated fatigue is overtraining - it is not an accident that failure or HIT type protocols default to low volume and stress recovery (they just didn't realize it wasn't the muscles that were failing, it was their nervous system redlining i.e. failure is not a stimulus unless you are trying to get better at the neural level and that is a viable way to load the muscles progressively with more weight but it isn't as direct as Mr. Mentzer seemed to think).

So that's failure in a nutshell, and reaching failure is not necessarily a bad thing. But it's important to understand it because fatigue is the limited resource so fatigue limits workload which limits microtrauma which limits hypertrophy. So there is a balance and limited resources.

This is a great read on recruitment and how exactly this works, pay particular attention to nwlifter's posts, he actually just started posting here the other day. Really sharp guy and knows this area unbelievably: http://www.drdarden.com/readTopic.do?id=394848

Also the difference between the nervous system and performance/strength/muscular system in training can be seen in the two factor model where fitness and fatigue are separate factors. Interestingly and what makes this really important to separate those factors is that the nervous system recovers much faster than performance is lost. Basically, the rate of decay in fatigue is much higher and basically 3:1. Why is this important - higher workloads. A program that might kill someone over 10 weeks without break might be very stimulative for 3-4 weeks. Knowing that fatigue can be disipated quickly, you wind up with periodization or an undulating set of blocks to where workload can be very high for a period, lowered for a brief period to allow recovery and then raised again. This allows a lot more work and microtrauma. Now this isn't necessary for most teens getting into this or anything, the name of the game there is to keep fatigue low enough to be tolerable and then scale the weights, but this relationship is very useful for elite lifters and athletes. This type of model is basically the standard at that level. Both of these are great links - you'll get a great contrast between single and dual factor models in the first (don't worry about the specific programs - one is the dual factor 5x5 on my site anyway - and I actually wrote the description on the link) and in the 2nd you'll see how this is used and put to work at high levels.
http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/PlannedOvertraining.html
http://forum.mesomorphosis.com/48-post3.html

So that's a lot of info with everything above and those links. But once if you understand everything in my previous piece or at least most of it and read through the 3 links here. That's basically a big big portion of everything you need. Arguably, there isn't much else you need to know except how to put it all together and what changes to make and when - but training is art as well as science.

 

[Madcow2]

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

TUT, HYPERTROPHY, WORKLOAD, HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON HIT, ETC​

First TUT - don't get caught up in this. TUT is not the stimulus or causality - it just sort of falls out correlated under normal conditions. If it was causality, it would matter in all conditions. Case in point, you need to get a decent amount of mechanical work in for hypertrophy (i.e. the microtrauma thing) or perform a given number of reps with a weight heavy enough (intensity) to do the job. There's an inherent balance in there. Flat out, the more you do, the more microtrauma you get (pretty much, I guess it could get rediculous at some point but the relationship is fairly linear for all practical purposes). So stimulus for a given training session = workload (sets X reps X weight). It just might not be the best idea for consistent progress to arrange your training with a single massive day and then curl up in a ball for a week paying for it. So thinking about this - how does TUT fit in? Real simple, it flat out takes more time to do more work. This is why TUT is correlated. If TUT was the causality though (not workload), super slow reps would be great all the time, or less reps but same amount of total time. Well once you get extreme like that TUT falls appart because you break it away from workload (basically you aren't doing more mechanical work for microtrauma, you are doing less work more slowly). It's not all that simple but that's the big chunk. Also, if you are interested in getting strong using maximal force results in maximal concentric contraction and bar speed - this is not a negative aspect, it is very positive even though the affect on the TUT calculation is negative (workload is still equal though). So workload is king, don't distort TUT. TUT looks good largely because it's correlated with workload and a lot of the big TUT guys are low volume guys so the last thing they want to hear is about workload of which volume (total number of reps or sets x reps) is the major component as intensity/weight on the bar has to stay in fairly fixed bounds for resistance training.

For 5x5 - thinking about workload, it's not your top set in a ramped group that is the only important one. All of those other sets contribute also to workload and TUT. You don't need to be working close to failure. The advantage of the ramped sets is it serves as a warm up, provides additional mechanical work, and saves some resources for a big final set. That's the whole deal. And that's not the only way to do it 5x5 with straight weight is used also plenty of times (weight is slightly lower) but workload is much higher especially when you figure relevant workload might only really include sets at 60% or greater so in ramped you maybe count the top 3 sets whereas in straight accross 5x5 you basically have 5x5 at 80% or so and they all count and are significant. But it's not volume for volume's sake, the goal is still to push up your best lifts whether it's best set of 5 or 5x5 or whatever. The volume is a means to an end (as you noted volume and intensity are inversely related but for hypertrophy and strength development intensity is within some pretty narrow bounds so to really move and manipulate the workload equation you have to add sets which has a double multiplicative effect vs. a fairly constant weight). Think of it from proficient to efficient which mirrors deloading and loading. You have a max set of 5 at 300 so you start to hammer your 5x5 starting at 250 and then raising it up to around 290 for a PR (this is efficient and mirrors loading - you get good at doing a lot of work), then you deload and push up your best single set of 5 and generally you might get it to 320 range (this is proficient where you leverage that efficiency into getting good a less work). That's kind of the idea anyway.

As far as the two types of hypertrophy - I don't know. I wouldn't really concern myself with sacro (and by the way, that doesn't mean an increase in the number of muscle fibers, it's fluid - there's really no evidence that fibers split as far as I know, maybe in rats). I don't really have it in my head that it makes much difference in the end all. Sure, maybe after pushing really hard on on core lifts for a while and getting big and strong you can drop the intensity and do a bunch of pump stuff and get nice and swollen up a tad. Okay, whatever. It probably does help marginally with strength just as much as leverage/water weight/more volume in the muscle helps. Basically, I wouldn't make this a long-term goal or priority in your training unless you just like to train that way.

Also - historically you have to think back to the origins of HIT and low volume. The period from the very 1970s was the golden age of volume (way way way way higher than what people consider volume or HVT today). First, every one of those guys got big and strong before that in an era of olympic weightlifting where physique contests were basically spun out from OL competition. Powerlifting had started. But all those 1970's guys built their foundation the old fashioned way. Squats, pulls, presses etc... Now at that point they started doing these outrageously long pump marathons with hours in the gym doing isolation work. And to do all those reps you need very low weight (intensity/%1RM), so to get the microtrauma from very low weight, you need to do a ton of reps. Also, they already had their base, they still kept up their lifts and basically just refined. I think Arnold's weight used to increase for a competition from 220ish to 240s (very different steroid use than todays pros who cut down from 300+ to 260-270). Anyway those workouts were outrageous and all the isolation volume (sarco) didn't do a whole lot for the normal man looking to build his foundation (myo). But I guess I helped them with weak points and to a degree probaby resulted in some myo hypertrophy too. Anyway, this is where the "efficiency" in low volume came from, focusing on the weight lifting and improvement rather than just doing a bunch of aimless shit. The problem is that HIT came from Bodybuilding so it really had no idea about what else was going on in the world and it and bodybuilding became very sheltered which is why everything non-HIT is "HVT" but in reality no one with a brain is using volume for volume's sake, if they increase workload it's to get a lift up not to just do a bunch of work and most programming outside of BBing is organized quite well. Hopefully that's some perspective.

As far as where bodybuilders would be without drugs. Years ago I spoke with and met several Pros, watched them train (plus a bunch of amateurs and recreational). I can honestly say that every single one that I spoke with knew no more about training than the rest of the stalled pencil necks in the gym, didn't train any harder than most, and in my mind, drugs and genetics to respond favorably to drugs were the sole factor that allowed them to progress past where you average dedicated gym rat was. This was back in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Most of them had never done a deadlift in their lives. None of them squatted or used it as a mass movement to develop their physiques. None ever did a barbell row. I think the closest one guy got to free weights was inclines in the smith machine. Now that's changed some since that time but the bottom line is that in all honesty, the only thing that separated them from the frustrated guys beating their heads in was the drugs. It had nothing to do with their training. It's been a dirty little secret for decades now and this is why kids and people get so frustrated and don't gain well on the advice of the Pro's. Because it's drugs - they are night and day for a shitty program and even for a great program when it comes to hypertrophy (they control the mechanism basically - it's a much bigger deal is BBing than it is in strength performance holding bodyweight constant). Maybe take a look at cows heavily drugged. No resistance program whatsoever but they put on a ton of muscle. Well, give them a program and manage their diet, now you have BBer cattle.

 

[Madcow2]

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

Experience Level and Training​

The whole "newbie" and fullbody thing aren't mutually exclusive, it probably helps to frame things a different way. I'll use the word beginner for newbie. This is kind of arbitrary delineation but it will serve for the purposes below and it's geared mainly to what goes on in BBing and commercial gyms. We will leave the spectrum of the above advanced to elite to world level lifters out of it but make no mistake it is lifting which makes you bigger along with food, if you still think there is voodoo after reading all my posts from page 4 and on, you need to reread.

EXPERIENCE LEVEL AND TRAINING

Beginner
Typically a beginner will have a very simple program and can progress workout to workout for a decent stretch. This might be adding 5lbs to the back squat 2 to even 3 times per week or maybe it's 2.5lbs to the bench on the same frequency. Essentially every time or most times he goes into the gym, he's a different lifter. Simply the rate of adaptation is high, the time between personal records is low, and the necessary complexity of the programming to elicit these progressions is low.

Intermediate
An intermediate may ramp up to his records over a few weeks and then get decent stretches where he'll set new records on lifts on a weekly basis. At first he might get 12 week runs, later on only 3-4 weeks, but nevertheless he is making fast progress and adding weight to his lifter weekly or or almost weekly. Within a week lifts and stress on the body will generally undulate. If 3 full body workouts are used it's typically Heavy, Light, Medium with the work geared to getting that next record the following week. Rate of adaptation is still medium, time between records is medium, and complexity of the program is medium.

Advanced
An advanced lifter gets to the point where weekly progress isn't really viable. He may ramp up and get 1 record or he might not be able to go anywhere with that structure and to get that kind of progression he has to train so far from his core competency that the training fails to carryover well and even cause regression in ignored core. For example dropping the backsquat and training the butt blaster machine or working in the 25 rep range on lifts or some other oddball thing. Sort of like a 100m sprinter working on his 3000m times because easy progress is available to him there (unfortunately his 100m doesn't really move much if at all). I have a post on properly using benchmarks to evaluate progress here: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showpost.php?p=5427025&postcount=941. Programming here is characterized over larger blocks of weeks in a micro, meso, macro cycle format for planning. He may work very hard and only make a single increment of progress at the 4 or 8 week point. This type of training is indicative of periodization and what goes on in advanced athletics and it gets longer and longer. One could almost say for a top world lifter, he may be training an entire year for a single increment of progression at the world championships and he might have a 4 year plan setup to hit his best at the olympic games. Obviously adaptability is low, time between records is long, and complexity of the program is high (and for the world level lifter add "very very" before each of those but it doesn't have to be that way for everyone at the simple advanced classification I'm talking about).

So those are the 3 easiest ways to look at it and on the line between beginner and world level lifter there are obviously infinitely many sub-points but I think it's easiest to look at it like this and more relevant to the discussion. Obviously, irregardless of where you are or where you think you ought to be, you want to be in the fastest lane possible. Complexity for complexity's sake is dumb. Slow progress when fast is available is very poor decision making. Training indirectly with elaborate assistance exercises to raise your back squat is foolish if you can walk in the gym and add weight to your back squat. These are all done out of necessity not because they are desirable.

GOALS AND ORGANIZATION OF TRAINING

Now for the split vs. full body or large part of body and how it related to experience level. Drum roll - - it doesn't. No one outside of bodybuilding is operating off some elaborate bodypart split. No one at the highest level of lifting is not doing full body or close to full body. The training volumes and frequency at the highest levels are staggering to most bodybuilders even during a deloading period before competition. Bottom line, experience level is not about splitting the body into parts. Your goal at a point in time determines the objectives you are going to use during the training period then the objectives determine how you are going to organize your work. A split simply falls out as the organization.

Full Body or Most of Body - Training Lifts
If at any stage of experience your goal is to add as much muscle as quickly as possible, the objectives you will stress will be raising your best compound lifts in some viable range - best set of 5, 8, or 10 maybe best 5x5, or 3x8 or whatever. That and the eating is the best way to add muscle and generate the adaptation you are seeking. And the organization for that? Well doing those lifts 1x per week and throwing in a bunch of garbage is a pretty crapy way to get better at them. If you have any clue, you would not select some outrageous 5 day bodypart split with tons of exercises and train the lifts 1x per week. In this kind of training you focus on lifts, not bodyparts and generally it doesn't get more complicated than upper/lower. For the record, I don't believe in push/pull/legs because that's basically chest/back/legs and you are right at the cusp of a bodypart split - not that it may not be a good organization for a hybrid goal where pure muscle gain and refinement are equal, but merely that no one would really consider this optimal organization to get big lifts up fast.

Elaborate Splits - Training Bodyparts
Now what about if one is prioritizing refinement of one's physique over a period? Well, all compound lifts trained frequently are not going to leave much room for other work. You might get one or two things done but largely there's just no room and you won't accomplish your goal. So here the objectives determine that you need a lot of isolation exercise or different varriants while maybe maintaining your core lifts or even just preventing serious detraining. This might be a lifter who preceives some imbalances or wants to work on this for a period after adding some muscle - or this might be a bodybuilder preparing for a contest. Obviously a more elaborate bodypart style breakdown falls logically out from the goal and objectives. This is the time to make such a choice and layout. It makes sense. It's a good choice.

CONCLUSION

So that's the jist and how I think it's best looked at. Your goal determines your objectives which determin your organization (split or full body or whatever). Your experience level determines how you go about achieving all of this and how you program it. They are separate. They are not mutually exclusive. This is a good way to think about it and use this logic to arrive at what you should be doing. It is very clear and will not steer you wrong

 

[Island Son]

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

MC2, always advancing the knowledge.
Thank you! The model in my head keeps getting clearer.

 

[Madcow2]

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

MC2, always advancing the knowledge.
Thank you! The model in my head keeps getting clearer.

Funny isn't it. Generally the more knowledge one has the more complicated things become, but the reality in training is that people are already way overcomplicating things. They put voodoo out about 1x per week frequency, that 3 rep sets can't be good for hypertrophy (but don't have a clue as to the assumptions that make this hold up), going to failure, perfect programs etc...

But really, when you start getting the nitty gritty, you realize that it is all pretty simple. There is no grand uber science PhD scheme of perfect variables. Certainly breaking it down to the molecular level can be ugly but that's simply not necessary and doesn't really lend all that much in practice. The pure practice and fundamental understanding - it's pretty damn basic and easy to grasp. Learning more makes all that fuzzy crap a lot more clear.

And then of course, you think, well if this is actually pretty basic and clear, how is it that things got so darn fuzzy and weird to begin with. Frankly, this is something that never ceases to amaze me. I'm hesitant to throw conspiracy theory but man...I have wondered at times.

 

[Yips]

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

Madcow,

You are the man!

Your posts are always insightful, and appreciated by all on here and at your geocities site!

Thanks again.

 

[Svetislav_aka_Waczlaff]

of course - also very lucky that I found this articel on his site....

nevertheless the attitude towards the bodybuilding their methods ect ect-

few years ago also think in a different way - but this attitude I can definitely support - only logical and it's not so complicated all these bodybuilders make it...

with strong greets

 

[confusedperson]

I've been wanting to start to 5x5 for so long- I'm talking months ago, but I've never done it because I've been so discouraged from trying it because it seems so complicated.

I've read Madcow's explanation about everything- the impossibility of linear progress when it comes to split training and 1x a week training, his explanation of better progress through gradual distribution of the load through higher frequency (3x a week) rather than pounding hard once a week, eating for hypertrophy which will accompany strength gains only if workload is sufficient (which can explain why I shouldn't just max out every session because workload isn't enough), the reason for a very small selection of exercises because they are proven to work, not the myriad of isolation exercises, dual-factory theory vs. single-factor, etc. etc.

I've read so much on his 5x5 geocities site, everything but why 5x5 is so effective.

I don't understand the reasoning behind it.

I do understand this: it's not about falling within the 6-12 rep range for hypertrophy. I already understand that you can drop the reps and up the sets and still attain a high-enough workload to elicit hypertrophy. This is why 5x5 works, even though it falls 1 rep shy of 6 reps (supposedly the scientifically optimal rep range for hypertrophy is 6-12 reps, but that's just for the sake of doing enough workload, but Madcow has thought outside of the box by decreasing reps and increasing sets, and also consequently using heavier weight since you're not training anywhere close to the lactate threshold, or muscular endurance, which is when you train with higher reps).

But my issue is with sufficient "workload." Take 3x6 with 240 lbs. Then the 5x5 with 250 lbs, but only on the very last set. I'll train with the 3x6 twice a week. Then someone else trains 5x5 three times a week. Wouldn't the workload from the 3x6 still be higher overall than the 5x5? This isn't even counting the warm-up sets I would do on the 3x6.

For example:

3x6 (18 reps) x 240 lbs x twice a week = 8640 lbs
1x5 (the last heaviest set) x 250 lbs x three times a week = 3750 lbs

Unless the first 4 ramp-up sets do contribute to workload, I don't see how you are putting more overall stress on the muscles in the long-run. I find that including the warm-up sets is odd because if I had counted my warm-up sets, my workload for the 3x6 would be even higher. How is the 5x5 supposed to account for greater stress due to higher frequency of training if the workload seems so low?

 

[Guinness5.0]

Unless the first 4 ramp-up sets do contribute to workload, I don't see how you are putting more overall stress on the muscles in the long-run. I find that including the warm-up sets is odd because if I had counted my warm-up sets, my workload for the 3x6 would be even higher. How is the 5x5 supposed to account for greater stress due to higher frequency of training if the workload seems so low?

The question is: what is appropriate at a given time for a given person.

It's nut just "do more work and therefore get bigger/stronger", though you'd want to progress over time. That's the key, as I see it - you keep that top set of 5 moving upward slowly but surely. You'll stall and change and in time your training will look little like 'the 5x5' but you will know that in order to progress, you need to focus on the important things: improving lifts as you go (whether that's 1rm or 10rm or whatever), not getting caught up in voodoo (like the *12 reps is the scietifically perfect rep rage* comment), and eating for your goals (don't eat 1200 cals/day and expect to get a big deadlift PR).

It's big picture thinking. The 5x5 as described is a great 'foolproof' way to start training in a non-retarded way. You don't do it forever because like eveything else it won;t work forever. It will work beautifully where appropriate and less so as one progresses. But hopefully by then one realizes that progress from a physique standpoint has a lot to do with the basic lifts and the fundamentlas of nutrition, not the goofball exercises that hit 'angles' or the supps that cause pumps.

To be succinct, it's just cutting out the fluff and focusing on the big stuff. Get stronger+eat more= get bigger. Sweat the details when they become relevant and not preemptively. SImple stuff. Don't make it complicated until it has to be complicated

EDIT: I'm not quite sure that I answered the question, so I'll add that it's not as simple as workload, but that's certainly a part of it. An increase in workload over time constitutes progressive resistance even if the weights stay the same, so it's certainly a variable to be tracked. You can overdo it with ligth weights too if you do too much. The key is balancing the heavy weight along with the 'right' amount of work. Determining this relationship will only come from trial and error.

 

[Jim Ouini]

I think you actually have to lift more than once a month before you can give advice like this, G-dawg