Linear/Single Factor 5x5

[septooth]

Im not understanding this completely. How do you ramp the weights?



Monday
Squat 5x5 Ramping weight to top set of 5 (which should equal the previous Friday's heavy triple

Bench 5x5 Ramping weight to top set of 5 (which should equal the previous Friday's heavy triple)

Barbell Row 5x5 Ramping weight to top set of 5 (which should equal the previous Friday's heavy triple)
Assistance: 2 sets of weighted hypers and 4 sets of weighted sit-ups



Wednesday
Squat 4x5 First 3 sets are the same as Monday, the 4th set is repeating the 3rd set again

Incline or Military 4x5 Ramping weight to top set of 5

Deadlift 4x5 Ramping weight to top set of 5
Assistance: 3 sets of sit-ups




Friday
Squat 4x5, 1x3, 1x8 First 4 sets are the same as Monday's, the triple is 2.5% above your Monday top set of 5, use the weight from the 3rd set for a final set of 8

Bench 4x5, 1x3, 1x8 First 4 sets are the same as Monday's, the triple is 2.5% above your Monday top set of 5, use the weight from the 3rd set for a final set of 8.[/COLOR
]
Barbell Row 4x5, 1x3, 1x8 First 4 sets are the same as Monday's, the triple is 2.5% above your Monday top set of 5, use the weight from the 3rd set for a final set of 8.

Assistance: 3 sets of weighted dips (5-8 reps), 3 sets of barbell curls and 3 sets of triceps extensions (8 reps)


Here is a link to the program. I understand that you raise the weight 2.5% each week, just dont understand how they are saying to ramp it and stuuf. Possible to explain it better than they do?

5 rep maxes:

Dead - 180
Bench - 165
Military - 85
Row - 120
Squat - 115

 

[Lifting N Tx]

The wording that you are quoting sounds like the "Madcow Linear" 5x5, found here . Scroll down the page to the link for the zipped Excel file. Unzip and open the spreadsheet--that's the easiest way to see how it's supposed to work.

Basically you ramp up 10-15% at a time. For example to end up at 200, you might have 100x5, 125x5, 150x5, 175x5 and 200x5.

 

[Cynical Simian]

Well, if I had to explain it in more detail, I'd probably say something like this:

This is basically increasing your weight set to set like warming up. If your top set of 5 is 315, you might go 135, 185, 225, 275, and then 315 all for 5 reps. There are several reasons for this, you are warming up, getting a lot of practice and really groove the coordination of the lifts, and contributing to workload without raising it so high that fatigue overcomes you and you overtrain. If you do 315 for all 5 sets, workload is a lot higher and doing that a couple of times a week ensures that you won't last long on this program.



Typically jumps can be somewhere between 10-15% per set based on your top set (or 12.5% and round up or down). An easy way to figure this is to find out what 10% and 15% are for your top set and then track backwards into the other sets using the variance to round or help it make sense.



Example:

Your top set is 100lbs

10% is 10lbs and 15% is 15lbs

Your 5th set is 100x5, 4th is 90x5, 3rd is 80x5, 2nd is 70x5, and 1st is 60x5

These are the minimum jumps of 10%, the math doesn't always look this neat but using 12.5% isn't as intuitively easy to see for explaining this.



Make sure this makes sense and you aren't so strong as to make the jumps ridiculous at 10-15%. But keep in mind, going 200, 205, 210, 215, and 220 is a lot closer to 220 for 5x5 and that's too much on this kind of frequency, it will fatigue you a lot faster (i.e. prevent you from progressing) and hurt your ability to get as much as possible with your top set.



*Note: for the math inclined you probably realized that when moving up in weight you are taking 2.5% of the current weight but when I have you set up the initial weeks moving backward you are taking 2.5% off the forward week which is a slightly larger number than moving in the other direction. So if you want to really be exact, you can work it out the other way but the math is harder.

Try reading the entire program description and the starred write-ups on the main page of madcow's site so you understand what's happening instead of hoping that somebody has put together a magic program that lets you train mindlessly.