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

well, i look bigger, so i had to gain something, as i said before, i look wider in the shoulder, leg and back area. i ate alot, but i also ran alot for work. this time im gonna concentrate on eating much more. seeing im starting an apprentice school, ill have much more time to eat, and less physical work.

Yeah, activity level can be huge. Tom T. had a similar issue. He started with a new company and would up doing 20 hours of warehouse box moving the same time he started the program. He was eating north of 4000 cals daily apparently and put on neither fat nor muscle. It's a factor of activity level and unusually high workloads coming from two areas at once. It sounds like you got something out of it though - so I'm guessing if weight stayed the same and you look bigger you must have added some muscle and dropped a bit of fat to offset it. As you progress it gets harder and harder to add muscle but lower physical activity and more cals should do you nicely the next time around.

week 10, i did a few 20 rep sets, week 11, i tested i max with sets of 3 to warm up, working up to a max single. i did test the maxes to make the first week of my next program.

i was feeling burnt out by week 11, so i think the maxes are off by 5-10 pounds, which is ok by me.

So in the future if you wanted to post better singles you'd want to lower frequency and load while keeping intensity high using doubles and singles for a period of 2 weeks (i.e. not 20 rep sets which can really fatigue you). Similar to going from the volume to the intensity phase but lowering frequency some. Stretch that out (you should be feeling really good and not burnt) and somewhere within 10-14 days you should be in a position to hit your best maxes. Granted it's sort of rigged to accomodate the 3x3 phase run at 3x per week but it will get the job done well enough - probably not as optimal as it would be for your 1RM if you didn't really hammer the 3x3 and made the transition smoother but decent enough. All that said, 10-15 lbs isn't going to make a huge difference and you can adjust on the fly fairly easily when you start up again. So this is more for just giving you an idea how the whole deloading/rebounding thing is carried through to perform optimally on a certain day/period.

 

[TheOak84]

so do u think ill be weaker next time around?

 

[Madcow2]

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

so do u think ill be weaker next time around?

Hmmm, I didn't mean that at all - probably bad communication or rushed on my part. I meant that your true maxes under optimal conditions are probably better than what you tested at. Once you start the volume phase again, if you find yourself stronger than you believed, just adjust upward on the fly to bring your lifts up to two full weeks of heavy loading on all lifts (i.e. the final record weeks).

 

[TheOak84]

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

Hmmm, I didn't mean that at all - probably bad communication or rushed on my part. I meant that your true maxes under optimal conditions are probably better than what you tested at. Once you start the volume phase again, if you find yourself stronger than you believed, just adjust upward on the fly to bring your lifts up to two full weeks of heavy loading on all lifts (i.e. the final record weeks).

aswesome.

im actually doin lots of working with my friend, putting up and taking down tents, it works ur delts alot.. that should keep me strong during my off week

 

[TheOak84]

i really wanna add close grip on wed, i remember when i used to do military and close grip, id get so much stronger on flat bench.

would this be too much:

squat
military
pullup
close grip

i was also thinking, this program would work better for me if the workouts were every 72 hrs, rather then 48.

or is it the every other day style that makes this routine work?

 

[Madcow2]

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

TRAINING LOADS EXPLAINED

Some Quick Definitions - this is a good link and it's worth reading the whole thing and seeing examples plotted out, I'm pulling a few key pieces below: http://www.qwa.org/articles/tmethod.asp

VOLUME

The VOLUME of training is the total number of times the weight has been lifted. For example, at the end of an exercise if a person has performed six SETS of three REPS the VOLUME of that exercise will be 18 REPS (6 x 3).

If in a training session a person performs four different exercises each time six SETS of three REPS then the total VOLUME of the training session is 72 REPS (6 x 3 x 4).

VOLUME is a measure therefore of how much training is done.

INTENSITY

Intensity is a measure of how severe training is. If a person can lift a weight with comparative ease then the INTENSITY is said to light. If on the other hand a person has to work extremely hard to lift a weight then the INTENSITY is said to be high.

INTENSITY is usually expressed as a percentage of one's maximum. For instance if the highest weight (or maximum) that a person can lift in a particular exercise (say the " Shoulder Press") is 100Kg then a weight of 50Kg is 50% INTENSITY and 70Kg is 70% INTENSITY.

TRAINING LOAD

TRAINING LOAD is a combination of INTENSITY and VOLUME. It is the TRAINING LOAD that determines how much fatigue will be experienced after a training session and how long that fatigue will continue.

In a well organised, sensible training program training sessions with high intensity and high volume will not occur often and then only with persons of some considerable experience in Weightlifting or Weight-training. Regular training with loads that induce fatigue lasting several days may lead to over-training indicated by increasing soreness, stiffness, reduction in eagerness to train and injury.

Loads which do not result in any appreciable fatigue do not provide any stimulus to the body to adapt. Simply put ..... "no fatigue = no training". However training with low intensity and low volume does have value. Such training is used for recuperation of the body after heavy loading.

Thus by varying the amount of loading in training the athlete can force adaptation by the body and allow for recuperation. The varying of the training load is an important concept in training methodology.

i was also thinking, this program would work better for me if the workouts were every 72 hrs, rather then 48.

or is it the every other day style that makes this routine work?

It's the amount of load over a period. If you space the workouts more (decrease frequency) you significantly decrease the load (volume/intensity yielding a total poundage number) over the same fixed period. It's probably helpful to calculate load in the form of total pounds lifted in the core lifts over a single cycle (1 week/3 workouts). You'll find a significant decrease is total pounds lifted over the same week if you opt for lowering the frequency. This results in less stimulus (also less fatigue because of more recovery time) but the idea is to get as much proper stimulus as you can (overreach) and then deload and disapate the fatigue and allow adaptation. This is why load calculations are used so frequently in athletics and OL, you can compare the total amount of work being done between periods (obviously the lifts have to be comparable like not leg press poundages vs. squat or some such).

Something you might find interesting. Compare a program where one squats 5x5 3x per week with a given set weight (similar to a heavy loading phase of the BS 5x5 except that the Wed workout isn't deceased for simplicity). The calcs are below and you will see exactly why the novice 5x5 program with the same frequency doesn't overtrain or accrue too much fatigue and why the other version does. The load being applied is drastically different. This is also why I generally have someone use the ramping method to a single heavy set of 5 one day per week and then as they gradually become more experienced and can tolerate higher loads add volume by moving toward 5x5 with constant weight on M/F rather than just the Monday workout. It's a happy medium and makes the program more doable for a wider range of people - this is kind of important since BBers these days tend to favor the 1x per week frequency on each lift and haven't really built up much capacity to handle a lot of load. It's still a hard program but most experienced lifters find it doable.


Basic Math:
-Assume a squat max of 240,
-60% of 1RM is 144 to be used when determining the most significant sets applied
-Assume we only look at the squat but realize that this type of difference will accrue through all the core exercises resulting in a similar total difference.

5x5 with Constant Weight:
5x5 with 200 = 5000 lbs per session
3 sessions per week = 15000 lbs load
Weekly Total Counting > 60% Weights = 15000lbs
<note - if you did the 10% less on Wed you'd wind up with 14500lbs so not worth making the math hard for this example>

5x5 with progessive weights using the novice BS 5x5:
MONDAY:
120x5 = 600
140x5 = 700
160x5 = 800
180x5 = 900
200x5 = 1000
Total = 4000lbs
WEDNESDAY:
120x5 = 600
140x5 = 700
160x5 = 800
160x5 = 800
Total = 2900lbs.
FRIDAY:
120x5 = 600
140x5 = 700
160x5 = 800
180x5 = 900
210x3 = 630
Total = 3630lbs
Weekly Total = 10530lbs
Weekly Total Counting > 60% Weights = 6630lbs

Novice Weekly Total = 10530 (70% of Periodized 15000lbs load)
Novice Weekly Total Counting > 60% Weights = 6630lbs (44% of original 15000lbs load)

So just from pure poundage we are at about 70% and this assumes no warmups for the straight 5x5. This is actually much more significant because many of the sets being done are at intensity levels (%of 1RM) that are not very taxing and really don't play much of a factor (some training systems only use lifts over a given % like 70 or 80 to calculate loads and this slashes a lot of the ramped weighting scheme's total i.e. 60% 1RM or greater lifts come to 6630lbs vs. 15000lbs which is now 44% of the original 5x5 load).

 

[TheOak84]

ok, so 3x a week at this intensity is designed to work the muscle just enough for it to be used again in 48 hrs? i think i got it. i keep forgetting insensity and frequency play big roles.

and about the close grips?

 

[Madcow2]

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

ok, so 3x a week at this intensity is designed to work the muscle just enough for it to be used again in 48 hrs? i think i got it. i keep forgetting insensity and frequency play big roles.

and about the close grips?

Sort of. Try not to think about stimulus as a single workout and recovery as immediately post workout before you stimulate the muscle again. Instead consider the entire block of loading as the stimulus. You could increase the frequency significantly but you wouldn't last the 4 weeks because fatigue would be too great (you'd last for a bit though which is why it's not workout to workout recovery but a matter of continuous buildup). Plenty of olympic lifters around the world doing some type of squatting 3-6x per week and doing the classic lifts (both of which involve recovery from the full squat position) 6-9x. That means their legs are getting hammered on a daily basis and often multiple times per day. Might be useful to read for perspective (also consider that the regimen listed is heavy deloading before a major competition): http://www.midwestbarbell.com/totalelite/index.php?showtopic=857

As for the closegrip, I saw this above:

would this be too much:

squat
military
pullup
close grip

I'm guessing no deads? With deads the Wed workout gets to be pretty grueling. Might be a better alternative to try to put a few sets of closegrip on the 1x5 bench day. I don't know that giving up pulling from the floor completely - maybe you know how to do high pulls, powercleans, or snatches to reserve some recovery. Another option is to run a bench assist mesocycle for 3 weeks of loading and 1 deloading where you'd employ a lot of this work to specifically target the bench and maybe (or not depending on how much emphasis you plan to have on it) ease back a bit on the other lifts if that's desirable for you.

 

[TheOak84]

you must have missed one of my posts, this is my 2nd routine:

squat
bench
power clean
shrug

squat
military
pullup
closegrip?

squat
bench
gm
row

 

[JL_204]

Results

I didnt gain much wieght from the 5x5 because i was extremely active throughout the program(Work, school, sports, etc.). I gained 4 lbs so im now at 198 lbs. I didnt eat all that much so i know the wieght gain could've been higher.

I had some pretty good strength gains despite not eating much.

Squat (atf) before= 225x1
Now= 250x3 (I got this with ease yesterday)

Bench before= 215x1
Now= 235x3

BBrow before= 135x5 (it was very new to me)
Now= 205x3 (My upper back has changed tremendously)

Ill have my day 2 stuff tomorrow.

BTW i had to take week 5 off due to being sick. i did week six 2x deload, then jumped right back into it.

I cant wait to do this again as i kinda messed up a few starting wieghts.