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

[JKurz1]

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

well, i'm not sure i'd go that far, but he has serious issues breaking his habits. his OCD may be a big part of that though. he needs to realize that AM cardio regularly and training weights 6x week and only hitting most bodyparts once is not the way to go for the vast majority of people. he complains of no gains, but won't fix what is broken. i think his 'brother' is him lol.

*cough*..did u guys miss the part where I said I havent started it yet....I gave my brother the jist of it, and apparently he should it for himself as I did a poor job teaching the principle........I am pretty confident I understand in full and plan to start soon......as for you Tom, go f- youself kid......

 

[Tom Treutlein]

I know you said you haven't started yet. Regardless of that, it takes you such a long time to grasp something. It's ridiculous, to be honest. The worst part is, you've got a couple years on me and your level of intelligence and ability to comprehend basically anything reflect that of a child. So, really, think before you call me a kid, 'cause it seems to be the only thing you've got against me, and it's a pretty moot point.

 

[wnt2bBeast]

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

*cough*..did u guys miss the part where I said I havent started it yet....I gave my brother the jist of it, and apparently he should it for himself as I did a poor job teaching the principle........I am pretty confident I understand in full and plan to start soon......as for you Tom, go f- youself kid......

pay no mind to the negativity of certain people..
we learn by doing..if you make a mistake along the way it wont kill you.... we're not performing an operation here lol...

this thread should pretty much answer anyones questions on how to get rolling on this routine..just start on monday youll be fine

 

[Madcow2]

Just so it's easy to find again I'm going to copy and link another thing I wrote for the anabolid board. I've said it all hear before in different places but this one has a few unique facets that might come in handy again.

Source Post: http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/showpost.php?p=4647007&postcount=22

First of all - soreness has no correlation to the effectiveness of a workout. It is generally a product of low frequency and high volume training. Being sore is neither good nor bad - although it can impede another workout which is generally bad. Phenomenal gains have been made on programs where athletes almost never get sore. This is accepted as fact by every researcher and strength coach in the world - DOMS has no correlation to either a good or bad workout.

As for recovery - do you really think muscles recover in a few days? Maybe a week right? Nope, look up complete tissue remodelming, it can take well over a month from a single bout of weight training if I remember correctly but regardless it is far longer than any split in use. Bottom line you are almost always training in some type of recovery deficit.

Where did the 1x per week come from? It came about because BBers started talking about overtraining back in the late 1980's (at the time just previous to this the common workout in the muscle mags was 3 on 1 off and I remember a fair amount of AM/PM days too). A few guys began to notice that if they took time off they came back stronger. They then thought that this was because their workouts weren't optimally spaced and timed. This is the essense of single factor theory or Supercompensation where you go in the gym and work ultra hard pushing your muscles to the point of full exertion (welcome to the training to failure school). Then you retreat quietly and heal up slightly stronger. Just after you've gotten your growth response but before you begin to detrain and lose it you hit that muscle again and do the same thing. The idea is that you can link up a series of these and grow in a linear pattern.

Pretty fucking cool eh? Too bad it's wrong. First, there's no scientific backing. Arthur Jones is partially responsible for this shit and he's long since recanted his short, intense, and infrequent methodology a la Mentzer's Heavy Duty. I will say that this program does work for beginners but for an experienced lifter it is drastically suboptimal. Oh yeah - if you take a shitty stimulus and magnify the response with enough drugs you can still make progress but for a given individual a supperior stimulus would allow for more gains at an individual's given dosage or equal gains for that person at a lower dosage level.

So where does that leave us? Well luckily people figured this stuff out a couple decades ago. There's a fatigue factor that gets built into this stuff and managing this fatique is important (both CNS and at the muscular level). You see, you can make gains and train without being fully recovered, it's actually better (think back to the people taking some time off and noticing they came back stronger - we'll revisit this in a moment). Rather than thinking about a single workout as a stimulus, consider a block of training - let's say 2-4 weeks. The fatigue is actually a recovery deficit that accrues during stimulative training. Unfortunately, a deficit means that it can't continue forever because you are running your body into the ground - but wait! This is actually fortunate.

You see, the idea that an experienced lifter can go into the gym and train once and then have his body respond with increased musculature on a consistent basis is rediculous. The body is first and foremost a survival machine. Muscle is calorically expensive and it's the last thing the body wants to add (people who had this genetic makeup died in famines very quickly and aren't around to reproduce). So a single session for an experienced lifter won't convince the body to pack on more muscle, and definitely not a short and infrequent stimulus because the body isn't convinced there is need. Bring in the fatigue accrual - in a training block of coninuously increasing fatigue the body gets a different message. The message is that there is a frequent, sustained, and increasing need for adaptation and that the body is falling behind and will soon break down under the strain. This is the stimulus we are looking for.

So now you train hard for 4 weeks and build up this deficit where you are right on the verge of overtraining (this point is called overreaching and the 4 weeks are called loading). The body knows it's screwed. What do you do? Pull the rug out and allow it to recover (deload). Generally you slash volume and frequency for a period to allow the body to recover and add some muscle in adaptation to the training stress. After a period of deloading you come back and load again - bigger and stronger (wait - remember about the BBers who took some time off and came back stronger - amazing fit is it not?).

This whole idea is called dual factor theory. Now most BBers haven't heard of it and couldn't explain it. It's largely greek to most of the people reading this. I mean, there are guys on here that know just about everything about drugs and diet but this is brand new to them. Well, it isn't brand new. It's not even remotely new or a little bit obscure. This is how 99.9% of the world's elite athletes are trained. We are talking near universal acceptance by every researcher and strength coach in the US, China, Europe, the Eastern Block, the former Soviet nations - everywhere. It's absolutely and totally prolific. On top of that there is a massive mound of scientific evidence to support it.

So how do you incorporate something like this? Logical question because in all my time at EF <I was here for a while as Madcow1 in 2000-2002ish too> I see people posting their programs and splits but there are critical factors missing. I can take the best split and exercise selection and bust my ass in the gym yet the stimulus is subpar because I'm not providing for loading/deloading. Generally this is handled by managing volume. A high volume period and then a low volume period.

There is a good program here that breaks many of the common rules in this thread (number of sets, frequency of training, all kinds of stuff). It has you squat 3x per week in addition to DLing once, rowing and benching twice. That won't work you say no one can squat 3x per week. Well it's actually not a problem and people have been running this program for 30 years and making huge gains. Several board members here are running it now or have just finished with big steroid like results but they were natural lifters (off the top of my head one is up 17lbs in week 7, another 16lbs in week 6, one younger guy was up 12 in week 6-7 but got that damn flu and has been out of commission). I didn't make this program so I can't take credit but it was orignally designed by Bill Starr, one of the greatest strength coaches ever, and later adapted by a Johnsmith182 from Meso who is actually one of the US' finest strength coaches - incidentally this job entails adding LBM to athletes in time constrained environments and this program is as good as any designed at doing it and far far better than just about anything most guys are using around here to add muscle. It's also avoided like the plague by weightclass constrained athletes who are near the top of their class as it simply causes too much weight gain and the diet restriction to prevent it is very severe. I ended up running it a few years ago and had to slash my calories twice in order to keep my gains down to the 8-10lbs range over 8 weeks (and I was not stuffing myself before). The cream of the program is that it is fantastic at adding LBM to an athlete but is also a very simple and easy to understand implementation of dual factor theory.

So anyway - that's the jist on training. None of this is revolutionary. It is in fact very standard stuff. The single factor camp is nearly empty devoid of anyone except BBers and I can certainly respect an educated choice to disagree in the face of all this but the fact that almost no one understands or has heard of what is the basic and dominant theory of training around the world doesn't exactly give me confidence that this is the situation. In fact the situation is that BBing has fallen so far behind on training knowledge that something really needs to be done.

I really hope this helps someone - I have no idea how training became all voodoo and the general population separated so far away ( likely A.Jones and Nautilus, the near extincation of Olympic Lifting, Weider's rosy image of BBing, the heavy reliance on steroids to compensate, who knows).

My wife is about to kill me for being up late and my 15 month old is crying let me provide some links for those who are interested. For those that aren't and are totally happy with what they are doing - that's cool too and all that really matters. But, if you want to learn about how training is done around the world and how the best coaches bulk and strengthen their athletes and why it is very very different from what is commonly seen in the gyms - maybe even make some better gains than what you are used to, then maybe this is useful to you:

<snipped because it's all the first page and some other stuff in here anyway>

 

[Madcow2]

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

TRAINING NEW LIFTERS - Glenn Pendlay and Mark Ripptoe

This is Something Glenn Pendlay wrote regarding his and Mark Ripptoe's use of a similar methodology. It specifically focuses around training progression for new lifters (so dual factor is not implicit here so much but make no mistake it is essential for experienced lifters). According to his interview here: http://www.readthecore.com/200503/reynolds-glenn-pendlay-05.htm Mark is routinely able to get 30-40lbs onto a new lifter in 6 months:

<what should....>A relatively inexperienced athlete who wants to train for general strength and size.

GLENN: He should live and die in the squat rack. Most put too much emphasis on the barbell bench press and not enough emphasis on other types of pressing, including not enough on overhead pressing. Bench pressing is great but if you do it to the exclusion of everything else you won’t get as big or strong and you can have some stability and structural problems as the years go by. Also most don’t work the back hard enough or often enough. But if you’re a beginner and want to get strong, squats are the main thing. An alternative to that would be to just go to Mark Rippetoe and get a program and do what he tells you. Its normal for him to take a high school kid and put 30-40lbs of muscle on them in a period of less than 6 months, without drugs and without ever spending more than 3 days a week in the gym. I should say it’s normal IF they listen to him, most won’t listen to anyone.

GLENN:
there are really so damn many ways to squat, even to squat with 5 sets of 5, or 6 sets of 4, or 4 sets of 6, or any similar thing, that there is not really any one program... im always hesitant to even write it out as a "program" becasue i dont really know what we will be doing in 4 weeks when we start such a thing... it kind of adapts as it goes.

but there seems to be some confusion as to the pyramid version or the non-pyramid version, so ill try to briefly explain the differences.

the EASIEST method we use for squats, and the one which rip used for beginners, is a simple pyramid program, the weights are pyramided BOTH monday and friday... and another leg exercise is used for wednesday, usually front squats for the young and athletically minded, sometimes leg press for the old and feeble.

say a person tests at 200lbs for 5 reps on their initial workout. well then monday they might do the following sets for 5 reps, 95, 125, 155, 185, 205. fairly equal jumps, ending with a 5lb personal record. if the last set is successfull, then on friday they will go for 210 on their last set, with adjustments on the other sets to keep the jumps about even as needed.

the average beginner can stay on this exact simple program for anywhere from 4 weeks to 4 months, as long as they continue to improve at least 5lbs a week, most can do this for quite a while.

when they stop improving, the first thing he does is to drop a couple of the "warmup" sets down to one or two reps, to decrease fatigue and allow a few more personal records on the top set... so that 200lb top set of 5 workout at this point would at this point have the 155lb set at maybe 3 reps, and the 185lb set at one or two reps, then try for 5 at 205.

this change usually lets people get new personal records for another 2-3 weeks, sometimes more.

at some point, of course, this doesnt work anymore. so now we change the monday workout to 5 sets of 5, still with heavy front squats or for some lighter back squats on wednesday, and the same pyramid on friday, trying for one top set of 5. the 5 sets on monday with the same weiight will be some amount less than the current personal record for one set of 5.

usually with this raise in volume, the weights are set somewhat lighter than they were, and people are given a few weeks to work back to their personal records, then try to go past them, invariably they will pass them, and invariably eventually they will stall again...

at this point we usually lower the volume of training, raise the intensity, in some form we will go with lower reps, lower amounts of sets, cut out a day of squatting, something to allow a raising of the numbers... again, the numbers will raise for a while, then stall again.

a this point, another raise in volume is needed, and at this point we will go to the program that most usually associate with the "5 by 5"... squatting 5 sets of 5 with the same weight 3 times a week, lighter on wednesday and heavier on mon and fri. you are all familiar with this i think, we raise the volume for 2-4 weeks, then slowly cut the volume aned intensity of most workouts, going for a big workout every 1-2 weeks, might be a single, a single set of 5, or even one big 5 sets of 5 workout. with people cycling down for a big contest at thsi point we might go for lower reps and try for the big singles.... with someone not at a place where a big peak is needed, its just cycling down to less sets but keeping the reps at 5, and trying to make a pr on a set of 5. this can be repeated several times over and over, but at some point you have to have a period of lower intensity training for a while in between cycles.

i will add that often, for the people with higher goals who want to really train hard, i will start right in with the 15 hard sets a week version, but with weights low enough that they can endure it, and when they get in condition and get used to the volume, will then go back and start at the normal place where rip starts right from the beginning. i find that people who have been athletically active, who have been training on other programs, etc, usually do well with an initial 4-8 weeks of high volume lower intensity training to get them mentally and physically used to this sort of training, get their form changed to a good squat, etc.

this post describes as much as a year of training for most people, with some that adapt well it is stretched to two years.... two years from when they start their initial "pyramid" workouts, or their initial month or so of conditioning with 15 moderate sets a week to when they get through their first real cycle with heavy weights and 15 sets a week cycled down to a peak.



it seems simple. it is.

 

[wnt2bBeast]

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

GLENN: He should live and die in the squat rack. Most put too much emphasis on the barbell bench press and not enough emphasis on other types of pressing, including not enough on overhead pressing. Bench pressing is great but if you do it to the exclusion of everything else you won’t get as big or strong and you can have some stability and structural problems as the years go by. Also most don’t work the back hard enough or often enough. But if you’re a beginner and want to get strong, squats are the main thing. An alternative to that would be to just go to Mark Rippetoe and get a program and do what he tells you. Its normal for him to take a high school kid and put 30-40lbs of muscle on them in a period of less than 6 months, without drugs and without ever spending more than 3 days a week in the gym. I should say it’s normal IF they listen to him, most won’t listen to anyone.

ive been saying that on here since ive been a member but most dont seem to believe me...lol which is fine (glad im not the only one who thinks this way)

i dont want to start a controversy and when i ask this question id like for madcow to answer and i dont need all you HST lovers hoping in and ruining the thread because im not going to argue..im asking the question and whatever answer MC provides that will be the end of my commneting on the issue..

in the link it talks about recovery and that it takes a lot longer than a few days for recovery..HST is modelled on the fact that you "do" recover after i think its 48 hours?? so isnt that line of thinking false?

 

[JKurz1]

You must spread some Karma around before giving it to wnt2bBeast again

You must spread some Karma around before giving it to Madcow2 again.

 

[Madcow2]

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

So my note on the top under dual factor and this being more a beginners program comes into play here. Single factor programs based solely on supercompensation work fairly decently for novices. Once you've adapted past that point you need to take into account the fatigue factor and it helps to directly manipulate it via the training load. For a beginner, as long as it's in a fair range - you are cool (you'll also notice the program here trains until someone isn't making progress and then change the protocol or step back slightly which implicitly takes this into account - sort of like the record weeks in the 5x5 most can tolerate only 10 days so 2 weeks of it generally puts them at their limit). So anyway, from what I've gathered reading over HST a bit and hearing others discuss it, is that it definitely accounts for the fatigue element and is based on dual factor. They aren't saying, you are fully recovered (you aren't) but they are saying that progress can and should be made in a non 100% recovered or fatigued state. I'm guessing as they ramp the intensity over the period that the reps are backed off to control for volume so you get a longer ramping period under which progressive overload is applied. They alter volume via reps as the weight scales where the 5x5 holds those constant and winds up with a more intense loading period. Of course you could take the 5x5 scheme and set it up similarly to where you are altering sets/reps similarly but this is more of a general program. This works for hypertrophy, strength, performance - just about anything under the sun. It doesn't specialize in any one aspect but is sort of a catch all program being really good at everything. For hypertrophy and adding LBM, I'd put it up against just about anything - look at the results some have had here and they are not anomalous. String together 6 months of this type of training and you'll have a hell of a base. Hope that helps - I"m not an HST.

EDIT: last sentance didn't get completed "I'm not an HST..authority or guru by any means but that's my understanding of the program."

 

[wnt2bBeast]

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

thnks bro makes sense

 

[ghettostudmuffin]

So I take it from those 2 snippets above that a good way to set up the next year's worth of training for me would be:

9 weeks
DFHT-madcow2's

2/1/2/1/2/1/2 weeks
Bill Starr

9 weeks
DFHT-madcow2's

2/1/2/1/2/1/2
Bill Starr

5x5-bill starr, 2 weeks volume loading, 1 week deload, 2 week intensity pr, repeat?

So like 2 weeks strict 5x5, followed by 3x3 week deload, then like 1x5 pr's instead of 5x5 pr's for 2 intensity weeks and lose a squat day which cuts volume way down, then deload a week again and restart at volume for 2 cycles back to back, then go back to madcow2's routine again?

That's kinda what I'm getting from reading those posts on how to organize my training.

I can't get on meso-rx anymore for some reason, but I could also switch between the Bill Starr program on that board and the madcow2 variation right? I can't remember if the Bill Starr version had dual-factor applied to it.