Re: Bill Starr's 5 x 5 program... Variation per Madcow2 (thanx) So here it is! K up n
slyder190 said:
Madcow, I'm still stuck on 3 things. Can this program be repeated a few times to keep yielding results?
Sure, it's periodized and people have no problem running it back to back. That said, what you really want to be doing at some point is figuring out where your weak links are and striving to improve upon them. Maybe this is a customized 9 week program with 2 phases. Maybe it's 4 weeks. You might find this topic from the table of contents a good read on how to organize your training over longer periods.
http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4643459&postcount=186
All that said, if you are getting consistently good results and don't seem to be stagnating anywhere - maybe it's best to continue plain vanila for a while rather than monkey with things too much.
slyder190 said:
And, I guessed some of my maxes a bit (mostly 5x5 maxes). I have was going up 5% each week in the weights being used and in the lasty week (week 5), I jumped the weights a bit more than this as at week 4 at 95% of my 1rm and 5x5rm I was getting the weights rather easily so I made a bigger weight increase.
Guessing and getting stronger within the volume phase is fairly typical for lifters who are new to this style of program and the really beneficial stimulus of concentrating on improving in a limited amount of very effective lifts and not using a 1x per week frequency. It makes your target weights move and it can be tough to bogey on the fly. That said, it "ain't rocket science" so just do what you did, pay attention and adjust accordingly. It would be a shitty program if you had to nail everything perfectly to see results. This is also why I haven't provided a % guide. The population of people using it is too broad, people need to learn for themselves and they won't pay as much attention and just follow the "plan" week to week thus not learning 1/2 as much about tailoring programs for their own tolerances.
Also, as you get used to programs like this, you won't be seeing intra-loading period progress like this. It will show up more and more in the intensity period as your body recovers from the loading.
slyder190 said:
And finally, you say we should be breaking records in weeks 3 and 4 (if doing 4 weeks volume), does this imply that in week 3 we should be hittinf weights above our original maxes and that in week 4, we should be beating the pr from week 3?
Thanks.
Ideally, yes but there has to be some flexability. If you are very experienced and have current relevant maxes setting it up this way will work fine. You could also take your previous records, put them at week 3 and exceed at week 4. Some people might also require more time to build up to a few weeks of heavy loading, some less. People new to this generally start light getting pretty close to their records on week 3 and then exceeding on week 4. More experience lets you equal or exceed on week 3 with little issue of weights moving around. Some people might also find they can load heavy for 3 weeks - most can't but there are certainly some that do in the world although they tend to be very experienced.
So for your purposes and running a second cycle back-to-back, take your previous records in each lift and put them at the first week of loading (week 3). Obviously, if the 3x3 phase made you a lot stronger this might need to be adjusted.