The Power of 5X5

Anyone who has been involved in strength training for any appreciable amount of time has probably heard of the 5X5 protocols. It's an old-ass method supposedly developed by legendary bodybuilder Reg Park in the 1940s. Many of the strength and physique athletes of the '60s and '70s used it to build the size and strength they are renowned for. The Governator used it, so did Lou "The Incredible Hulk" Ferrigno, and many, many others.

Legendary strength coach Bill Starr used it. He was the first professional, full-time strength and conditioning coach in the NCAA. All these guys used it and got results because it fucking works. Where did we get this idea that 3X10-12 was the key to hypertrophy? From lab studies on out-of-shape doughnut munchers that were strength training for the first time. Of fucking course it worked on them. ANY STRENGTH TRAINING would have worked, they were out of shape genius!

The 5X5 works for a couple of reasons. Most notably because, if you're doing it right, you're doing it heavy. Lifting heavy shit will make you strong. Lifting heavy shit and eating enough will make you big. It's really that simple. If your goal is to get big and strong in a hurry, you need to do two things- (1) you need to eat a lot. Unless you are already a fat body, that means you are goning to need to eat more than you already do. Don't whine at me that you will get fat. What you are eating now is not enough or you would get bigger. If you are maintaining weight now, at your current activity level and are strength training....add 3500 calories a week (that's 500 calories a day for the mathematically challenged!), and you will gain one pound a week. If you eat adequate protein and carbs, and lift heavy shit regularly, that pound will be muscle. That's the only way to get bigger and more muscular. Pretty goddamned simple, isn't it?

If you add one pound of muscle per week, you will get stronger. Again, pretty goddamned simple, isn't it?

So, how do you do the 5X5? One method is to start by lifting the first four sets as gradually increasing amounts of weight, until you do a maximum-effort 5-rep max on the last set. It works. You'll get stronger.

Another method is to do the first two sets as warm-ups, then do the last 3 sets as a 5-rep max effort, with adequate recovery time between sets.

The final method is "sets-across." This involves doing a couple of warm-up sets, then all 5 sets are as a 5-rep max loading effort. This is probably the best all-around method. It WILL make you big and strong, while also offering some level of stamina.

Rest intervals? Between set rest intervals are dependent on two factors, your recovery time and how much weight you are lifting. If you limit yourself to 30 seconds of rest between sets, your 5-rep max is going to be considerably less than if you rest of 2-3 minutes between sets.

If you rest for 5-10 minutes between sets though, you lose any sort of benefit at all in regards to stamina development. My rule, and the one I consider the most sensible and useful, is to wait as long as it takes...sort of...

I wait a minimum of 2 minutes, or 120 seconds. The intra-cellular supply of ATP has largely been replenished in that period of time. Your nervous system should be largely re-set by then as well. If I feel like I need a little more rest, I'll take it. I will not, however, let my rest interval go longer than 5 minutes. That's just kind of ridiculous I think. If I was training to be a competitive O-Lifter or Powerlifter, I'd take more time, for certain. For sports-conditioning strength training though, less than 5 minutes is pretty well the cake!

So, we're doing 5X5, sets across, with a 2-3 minute rest interval in between. What other details are important?

Exercise selection and training frequency.

For sports applications, from football to wrestling; from baseball, basketball, and rugby, to mixed-martial arts and self-defense, isolation exercises are, with a few VERY specific exceptions, a flat-stupid, fucking waste of time.

Let me put it this way...If you are doing bicep curls and can't do twenty chin-ups, you're a douchebag! I believe in whole-body movements as much as possible. Don't even try and throw the whole, "Ooh, but I'm so important, I don't have TIME to do a whole body workout." argument at me either. I can smoke your ass on a whole body program that works in less time than you can do a solid, bodypart-isolation workout.

So, what kind of exercises? Multi-joint, compound movement exercises, as absolutely much as possible. Your workout should be based around the T-Rex Five: Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift, Overhead Press, and Power Cleans. If you don't know how to do power cleans, and are too scared or too stupid to ask for coaching, you COULD replace them with bent-over barbell rows, or even something like high pulls. It'll be less effective, but hey, you're too much of a pussy to do power cleans anyway, so who cares, right?

Supplemental exercises should be used also...pull-ups/chin-ups, parallel dips, push-ups, and ab/core work, like the fucking ab wheel that I go on about.

Three workouts a week is the norm, but you COULD go to a four a week if you split them up into an upper-body/lower-body split, and just did deadlifts on the last workout day of the week. It's really not worth the effort though.

Just do a 3-a-week, split like I do mine. I do my powerlifts- squat, bench, and deadlift one workout, then my O-lift variations and the supplemental exercises the next workout, contintually alternating them. Each time you do a workout on your mid-day (making it the only time you'll do the workout that week), add 5 pounds to every exercise. This even gives you a lower-intensity (not LOW) workout regularly, cause the third time you do an exercise at a given weight it's going to be easier than it was when you added the weight.

It's a simple program, but one that has been proven over and over and over and over to work. Try it. Give it one month and see if you don't get bigger and stronger. You will. Then, you can come back and thank me.