needsize said:
thats why we need separate names, my version has proven very effective, but frankly I am more impressed with what I am reading about madcow's version
Core lifts in a good volume/rep range, progressive overload, a consistent plan and methodology, backing off and beginning again after strength peaks (i.e. precedes onset of overtraining) - your program is a good one, it's going to be damn hard to screw it up and not get bigger or stronger. You should be proud that you made it especially coming from a pure BBing setting which doesn't really expose one to much of the training world. It's as good as anything else out there that I've come accross and certainly head and shoulders above most of the garbage that passes for training. If everybody in the gym used this, it would solve the vast majority of their problems. It's not as big a departure from the Starr 5x5 as you might think, it's just a matter of making room so to speak.
I played no part in the Starr 5x5 or any of the periodization stuff. It's all Starr, Rippetoe, Pendlay, Kilgore, etc...I guess I added the 3x per week intensity/deload but that was more as a one off for a specific individual who I knew had a good tolerance for workload and just seemed to work for a lot of guys and add a much bigger emphasis on strength and neural efficiency which could be used later when one transfered to a higher rep range or back into the volume. This probably caused more issues and confusion than anything else so I can't really quantify this as a contribution, that said, it's brutal for many but it works if managed correctly.
Anyway I'll go into some of the differences and give you an idea on where the gains and strength are coming from relative to a standard 3 day split bodypart 1x per week linear protocol, this is pretty important for experienced lifters so it's definitely relevant for someone like yourself.
The biggest differences are going to be the pure focus on the core lifts and through management of fatigue, the ability to train them with higher workloads and frequency. Muscles respond to workload and fatigue is the limiting factor in the ability to apply more stimulus. So when you manage fatigue you are creating the opportunity to do much more work over a period than you would if there was no active management over a long linear period (fatigue can be disipated quickly, much faster than fitness (gains) and you can tolerate a lot more work over a limited period than an infinite one i.e. what is tolerable for 3 weeks is much greater than what is tolerable for 10 weeks - over the same 10 weeks a periodized management of fatigue will allow much higher average workloads).
So anyway, now you have greater workload and you can divide this with greater frequency and perform the big lifts that matter a lot more often. Adaptation and specificity go hand in hand - you adapt to what you train for so the more you train for something (within tolerable limits) the more your body will try to accomodate it - naturally you choose the big lifts that develop the entire body like the squat, row, etc... This greater frequency allows the body to build skill and accomodate the specific movement (a la getting better at it - it's damn hard to get better at something you do 1x per week - the body and CNS just don't adapt as well to the movement regardless of the amount of work you do simply because it's so infrequent - or when you are trying to do 20 different exercises as most BBers seem to shotgun into their programs), so you add the benefits of this aspect too. Now you get better at the Class A exercises by training them more often and with much higher loads. These are the exercises that matter and they drive gains over the entire body.
So in a sense, it's not really very different - it just makes room for a lot more work. Periodization allows bigger workloads and this excess is spent purely on the core lifts, performing them as often as possible and pushing yourself into record territory on a pretty frequent basis. This is going to increase capacity in the core lifts in a huge way, obviously this is going to result in a lot of muscle. It's basically the same program as yours but the periodization allows it to do what you really want to do but often can't when you are experienced and training in a linear manner - pound the core lifts as often as possible for a lot of volume and waste as little recovery as possible on the stuff that doesn't really matter.
So on the one hand it might appear very different but in reality the aim and underlying method are exactly the same. The periodized Starr 5x5 takes advantage of dual factor theory and periodization to make room for a lot more work and frequency - something that would plunge someone into overtraining fairly quickly were it not setup to account properly for this. It's not like this is in any way common in BBing or understood even though it's very common just about everywhere else. What at first seems night and day, boils down to one or two point really. Anyway, I hope that helps a bit.
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