This variant of the Bill Starr 5×5 program is not Bill Starr himself, but Glenn Pendlay, a former powerlifter and weightlifter, and now a very successful coach. He is a close friend of Mark Rippetoe (author of Starting Strength), who in turn was a student of Bill Star.
TARGET
The goal of this program, like any 5×5 program, is to get stronger. You also build functional muscle mass with it and you (probably) lower your fat percentage.
By functional muscle mass we mean an increase in muscle mass accompanied by an increase in strength, the so-called myofibrillar hypertrophy. (Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy is not so much associated with gains in strength, but rather with an increase in muscular endurance.)
TARGET AUDIENCE
This version of Bill Starr’s 5×5, which is called Periodized Version for Advanced Lifters in full, is based on the principles of periodization and is intended for those who are no longer making progress on a program that follows linear progression.
The program is suitable for anyone who wants to get stronger: strength athletes, such as bodybuilders, weightlifters and powerlifters, but also practitioners of non-strength sports, such as football and martial arts. It is also an ideal program for someone who wants to lose weight while preserving as much of their muscle mass as possible. Remember that strength gains precede muscle growth. One of the dumbest things you can do in a cut is to lower your exercise intensity.
Before you start this program, or any periodization program, we recommend that you milk a linear program like Mark Rippetoe’s Starting Strength, Bill Starr’s 5×5 for Beginners and Bill Starr’s 5×5 for Intermediate Lifters to the last drop by program to reset.
To reset is to take one step back to make two forward. In concrete terms, this means that you go back a few weeks in the program and start with lighter weights, with the aim of breaking through your current training plateau. For example, are you now bench pressing 5×100 kg? Then take a step back to 90 kg. Increase the weight by 2.5 kg each week until you reach a training plateau again. Repeat this ‘trick’ until you really don’t get any further and then say goodbye to linear progression.
THE KEY COMPONENTS
Training frequency
The program consists of three full-body training sessions per week. That is, three times a week you train your whole body, or if you prefer all your muscle groups, on non-consecutive days – for example Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Exercises
The fastest and most efficient way to train your entire body is with compound exercises such as the squat, deadlift, bench press, bent-over rows and pull-ups. A compound exercise is an exercise that involves more than one joint and thus more than one muscle group, as opposed to isolation exercises, where you isolate one muscle group.
In this program there is little to no room for isolation exercises, with which you can target a muscle, but you do not learn different muscle groups to work together. Compare it with a football team that will not play better if the eleven players only complete individual training sessions.
The program owes its simplicity (partly) to the limited arsenal of exercises. It is a real ‘basic’ program without unnecessary insulation work. A nice side effect of 5×5 training and compound exercises is that you grow a proportional physique with it and that you also look as strong as you are. You use your muscles the way they are intended: a link in the whole, not as a separate component. If you’re still concerned that your triceps and biceps are shrinking without biceps curls or triceps pressdowns, we can reassure you. They have to endure hard enough under the heavier bench press and rowing work.
Format and duration
The program is essentially a 9 week mesocycle consisting of two macrocycles of 4 and 5 weeks respectively. (For clarity and completeness, one week, or three workouts, is a microcycle, if you’re not familiar with the concepts of meso, macro, and micro in relation to programming.)
The first 4-week macro cycle is the base or volume phase. The second 5-week macro cycle is the deload and peak phase. An alternative to the deload and peak phase is a deload phase of 2 weeks or longer, without peak phase.
THE PROGRAM
Before you start the program, you need to know your 5RM (RM = Repetition Maximum), the weight that allows you to do a maximum of five repetitions. You can predict your 5RM based on a certain number of reps with a certain weight, but it is better to know your real 5RM. If you switch from a 5×5 program like Starting Strength, you probably have a realistic picture of your 5RM.
In addition to your 5RM, you also need to know your 5x5RM. That is, one and the same weight with which you can do five sets of five repetitions. That’s different from your 5RM, or better 1x5RM, the weight you can do one set of five reps with.
Usually your 5x5RM is 5-10% lower than your 5RM. To be on the safe side, choose only 10%. So if your 5RM in the bench press is 100kg, your 5x5RM is probably 90kg rather than 95kg. Don’t underestimate how much heavier each extra kilogram each set becomes!
To get the most out of the program, it is best to start relatively light, by calculating with 90% of your actual 5RM and 5x5RM. You can easily catch up with that ‘backlog’ if you add weight weekly, and you can also make progress for a longer period of time. Promised. A conservative start is one of the success factors of this program.