Five by five workouts are effective. This fact can't be denied. They build strength, and provide a good enough mix of volume and weight intensity to build muscle.
The bottom line. The 5×5 is a simple and effective barbell training program that's well suited for beginner and intermediate lifters. The 5×5 focuses on key barbell movements for a full body workout that will build strength and muscle, as well as your athletic performance and a host of other benefits.
At this point, you may be wondering about the best “percentages of your percentages” when doing your 5×5 workouts. The most common figure I see is that a 5×5 workout is best done with about 81% of your 1RM. That works out to about 90% of your desired 90% intensity.
5x5 training is one of the original and most popular muscle mass building programs being used by elite bodybuilders and athletes. It's designed to hit a muscle group hard 2-3 times per week, while still providing enough recovery time to promote significant muscle growth.
The 5x5 workout is primarily for hypertrophy, or, muscle growth. For beginning to experienced lifters, 5x5 is appropriate for those who want to increase both upper body and lower body strength, and also muscle mass.
On the heavy 5x5 day, you're using 80-85% of your 1RM. This means all of your reps are maximally effective reps. That's 25 maximally effective reps and that translates to a great muscle-growth day.
Some people respond better to volume, and some to intensity. My advice from my own experience: When doing light weights (especially when starting with just the bar, as in Stronglifts), go with 5x5. When it's time to deload on squats for the 2nd time, switch to 3x5 and try to get a little more out of linear progression.
With all that said, you can expect a workout with two or three exercises done 5×5 style to last anywhere from 30–60 minutes. One popular method of employing 5×5 is to do three exercises in a session, using 5×5 to train the whole body.
Together, these compound exercises work your whole body. This is what makes this program so time-efficient – you can train every single muscle by doing only three exercises per workout. This can be hard to believe if you're used to training one muscle a day by doing a dozen of exercises per workout.
Pushing Ourselves Hard Enough. The StrongLifts 5×5 workout program starts with an empty barbell, and then every week more weight is gradually added. This means that, unless you can only do 5–8 reps with the empty barbell, you probably won't stimulate any muscle growth for at least a few weeks.
5X5 vs 3X10: Which Is Better For Building Strength? Look at any legitimate strength program out there, and it'll focus on lower-rep, higher load set schemes. Because 5×5 uses heavier loads, it's superior for strength training. But don't throw away 3×10 if you are just focused on getting stronger.
Putting this information in another way, it's about 36 million men, and approximately 1 to 3 percent of this population can bench 225 pounds.
Linemen: 30-39. Tight Ends and Linebackers: 25-30. Running Backs: 20-25. Defensive Backs and Receivers: 15-20.
The 5x5 program can't be beat for increasing strength, breaking plateaus, and adding muscle. Try out this classic lifting routine and see results! One of the most popular muscle and strength-building programs of all time is the 5x5 protocol.
Doing around 6–20 reps per set is usually best for building muscle, with some experts going as wide as 5–30 or even 4–40 reps per set. For bigger lifts, 6–10 reps often works best. For smaller lifts, 12–20 reps often works better.
Thus, if strength is your primary goal, you will love cluster training. Regardless, the volume is the same as a regular 5x5 program making the 5x5 cluster training program an excellent option for hypertrophy training as well. To further induce hypertrophy, just decrease the breaks in between each cluster.
When Should I Stop Doing Stronglifts? Put simply, when you can no longer add weight to the bar every workout, and you've already de-loaded 2 or more times. At this point, it's very unlikely you're going to get anything else out of the programme.
The most compelling reason the 5x5 program works so well is that it minimizes time and volume. This means that you're doing less actual work, and thus your muscles have to recover less in between lifts. Less recovery = more gains!
StrongLifts 5x5 is a great beginner's program, but may not be a great choice for intermediate and advanced lifters. Simplicity and practice pays off for the less-experienced individual, but lifters already aged with iron need a bit more programming complexity to make continued gains in size and strength.
Your five-rep max is usually around 85% of your one-rep max – if you attempt to work this out make sure you warm up thoroughly, get a spotter and work your way up to a final heavy single. Don't get used to that weight though – this plan will aim to increase your strength rapidly.
How It Works. The StrongLifts 5×5 Program alternates between two workouts, three times a week with at least one full day of rest between workouts. All exercises are performed in straight sets with anywhere from one minute to five minutes of rest between sets.
A 5x5 based workout for only 3 exercises seemingly takes little time. That depends on how strong you are and how hard you push. The stronger you are, the longer it would take. For me, doing 5x5 at 80% for squat, bench press and deadlift would take about 2–2 1/2 hours, assuming I could finish it at all.
Whether you should be doing 5x5 deadlifts depends on individual factors, but in any case, that's a very high volume to be using. Unless you're specifically focusing on deadlift, and providing extra room for recovery in your program, that's likely going to be more volume than you should be doing.
13-rep max – 70% 14-rep max – 68% 15-rep max – 67% 16-rep max – 65%