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Re: Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up n
I would not try throwing them in on the volume record weeks. The answer really depends upon your tolerances.
The guidelines I give for this program with the pyramiding of certain exercises and squat moving around a bit ensure that if someone is reasonably conditioned and starts conservatively they can handle the loading phase. The 3x per week deloading/intensity/peaking protocol is frequently too much, even if you start conservatively you'll be pushed again at the end. There are two things that cause this -
1) I wrote it out with the idea that people would slash off some volume and take extra days of rest as needed. In general that hasn't happened and mainly because I didn't realize when I wrote it out originally that it would be followed by a lot of people who had never trained like this before and thus didn't know how to guage their own tolerances (kind of expecting people to walk before they crawl).
2) Effort went into the volume phase to make sure it was tolerable to almost anyone - the 2x version is a more appropriate parallel for the 2nd phase.The first post in this thread is a cut/paste from something I scratched down years ago at FI. I never intended it to be comprehensive and didn't take more than a few minutes with it - so no effort went into the second phase write up in the first post.
So anyway - my suggestion would be to complete the program and see how you tolerated the stock volume/intensity phases. At that point consider adding in the powershrugs for next cycle. You might want to spend a few weeks between cycles (assuming you plan to move back to the volume phase for another run through again) working on some weak points and practicing up on these figuring out what kind of weight you can handle.
Then I'd say make a judegement call. If you think you can handle some extra volume throw them in either 1x per week on Wednesday (you could use 5x5 - if the Wed volume gets too high you can rearrange the weekly volume into 4 days) or 2x per week on M/F (don't use 5x5 - just pyramid both days and do 3 sets of 10 from the high position). If you don't believe you can handle more volume but you want to incorporate them anyway, you'll have to substitute and the rows are a logical choice but if you do this you'll want to simulate the clean pull and use the low position (just above the knees) as this is a far better full body exercise than just the abbreviated shrug.
There are a lot of ways you can get this in, maybe 2 working sets twice a week. Essentially, you need to see how much room you have or don't have on the base program given the way you've set the weights this time and then base your decision off of that.
Jim Ouini said:
I would not try throwing them in on the volume record weeks. The answer really depends upon your tolerances.
The guidelines I give for this program with the pyramiding of certain exercises and squat moving around a bit ensure that if someone is reasonably conditioned and starts conservatively they can handle the loading phase. The 3x per week deloading/intensity/peaking protocol is frequently too much, even if you start conservatively you'll be pushed again at the end. There are two things that cause this -
1) I wrote it out with the idea that people would slash off some volume and take extra days of rest as needed. In general that hasn't happened and mainly because I didn't realize when I wrote it out originally that it would be followed by a lot of people who had never trained like this before and thus didn't know how to guage their own tolerances (kind of expecting people to walk before they crawl).
2) Effort went into the volume phase to make sure it was tolerable to almost anyone - the 2x version is a more appropriate parallel for the 2nd phase.The first post in this thread is a cut/paste from something I scratched down years ago at FI. I never intended it to be comprehensive and didn't take more than a few minutes with it - so no effort went into the second phase write up in the first post.
So anyway - my suggestion would be to complete the program and see how you tolerated the stock volume/intensity phases. At that point consider adding in the powershrugs for next cycle. You might want to spend a few weeks between cycles (assuming you plan to move back to the volume phase for another run through again) working on some weak points and practicing up on these figuring out what kind of weight you can handle.
Then I'd say make a judegement call. If you think you can handle some extra volume throw them in either 1x per week on Wednesday (you could use 5x5 - if the Wed volume gets too high you can rearrange the weekly volume into 4 days) or 2x per week on M/F (don't use 5x5 - just pyramid both days and do 3 sets of 10 from the high position). If you don't believe you can handle more volume but you want to incorporate them anyway, you'll have to substitute and the rows are a logical choice but if you do this you'll want to simulate the clean pull and use the low position (just above the knees) as this is a far better full body exercise than just the abbreviated shrug.
There are a lot of ways you can get this in, maybe 2 working sets twice a week. Essentially, you need to see how much room you have or don't have on the base program given the way you've set the weights this time and then base your decision off of that.
