Quick question on madcow's 5x5....

[bhillier]

Hi out there,

Is there any reason why I can't to swap round MP & Bench in madcows 5x5 program and only bench once a week like this:

Monday - Squat, MP, Row
Wednesday - Squat, Deadlift, Bench, Pull-ups
Friday - Squat, MP, Row

The reason I ask is that I am currently attempting to rectify my neanderthal posture by de-emphasising chest exercises. It occured to me that this may compromise the symmetry of the routine.

Would appreciate your thoughts.

 

[view]

sound like it would work for your goals.

 

[Guinness5.0]

Welcome to the board bro.

I'm not sure how important this is, but the bench is paired with rowing and the OHP is paired with chins b/c those movements operate in the same planes of motion and thus help prevent injury. I'd venture to guess that if you bring your row up (and possibly add some minor assistance work to correct the caveman look ) you can run it as outlined (2x/week bench). Besides, if you bench PL style w/ your shulder blades pinched together that may help also.

That's pretty much a guess though. Hopefully someone else will know whether it's all that important to keep movements in the same plane in the same workout.

 

[blut wump]

The MP is a less stressful movement that the bench and so you'd be reducing the overall workload significantly. You'll also find it very difficult to get some worthwhile benching in after any worthwhile deadlifts.

If you know how to power-clean, that makes a reasonable substitution for rows and hits the upper back and posterior delts quite hard which might help to balance you out a bit.

 

[anotherbutters]

I'm no expert either, but I'd assume you'd want to keep the same amount of volume for rows as bench, since they work opposing muscle groups. If you want to move MP to Monday/Fridays, I'd also suggest moving pull-ups to those days too.

Otherwise you're doing twice the volume in MP and rows as you are in the opposing exercises.