5*5 Program, your experiences and recomendations?

[Slindsay]

Hi everybody

I've been slacking in my lifting for the last couple of months unfortunately :cry: I was trying to get back to trainning 2 weeks back but went and messed up my gym mebership, then this week I've injured my knee though God knows how I've manged it so I've beenr esting up.

Anyway, I had a look about and found this program which I thought might be a fun way to try and get back into lifting again:

http://www.eclipsegym.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=57

I actually did the prep work to find my 5 set max before I went and messed up the last couple of weeks and was goign to have a go at it but now with my un-wanted hiatus I thought I might as well take the opportunity to get some opinions on what people think of the 5*5 program.

On of the most important things about the program (To me anyway) Is that it give me something to focus on and gives me some relaistic goals, somethign that I am currently seriosuly lacking, I figured I'd record my lifts and keep track and hopefully be able to take heart by seeing myself inprove (Before I stopped lifting I had hit something of a plateau).

So anyway, any thoughts or opinions are always welcome, I am planning on mixing in some interval trainning with the whole thing as well on the off days to try and, actually appear a little less like a fat slob.

[sync]

I am currently on a 5x5 program and loving it. Been on it for about 12 weeks and have seen incredible gains in strength and size. I highly recommend this workout if you are looking to gain muscle mass.

Currently, I am working this routine 3 times a week. This gives my muscle plenty of time to recover.

Supplements I use are Creatine, LOTS of whey protein, Multi-Vitamin, and Glucosamine Chondroitin compound. I occasionally use a N.O. supplement to get a better workout.

[SickDevildog]

What are N.O supplements?

[Vita]

What are N.O supplements?
nitrous oxide.

[sync]

N.O. stands for Nitric Oxide. When ingested, these supplement compounds give you greater energy, strength and mental focus during a workout. There are 2 popular brands out there. The most popular is N.O. Xplode. The other is SuperPump 250. I have tried both and SP 250 is MUCH better than the N.O. Xplode. Both will give you an incredible workout and will prolong the time it takes to get to muscle failure, so you can workout longer and harder.

P.S. Drinking SP 250 before a fight/match works great by making you very focused and aggressive.

[TheCount]

I did a 5*5 with a compound and iso per most bodyparts and it worked very nicely. Rotating every two weeks with 3*8 it was fantastic

[jabcrosshook]

Yeah, I've done 5x5 - it's great! I'm not doing it at the moment, because I'm not a fan of waiting 'till I hit a plateau before I change things. I switch around after a few weeks just to vary things, but I'll definately be coming back to 5x5 very soon.

One thing to note is that I personally only found it of much use with compound movements (in other words still do isolations if you want but not 5x5). In any given workout I'd do 3 or 4 "big lifts" but wouldn't go overboard and do every compound exercise I could think of. Again, this is only my opinion and different things work for different people, but the point of this post was 5x5 = good.

[Reakt]

I actually do less in 5x5 usually. I'll normally try and hit at least 20 reps on Compound exercises like the bench press but everything else is sometimes just 3x3.

Either way I've also seen very impressive strength and size gains.

[Slindsay]

Cheers guys, sounds like it's a decent program. I'm hoping to increase strength and lose fat rather than anything else but it sounds like this routine should be able to help with that.

[Slindsay]

A quick update for anyone that cares, I started the routine about two weeks ago and, although I'm hardly in a posituion to make sweeping judgements yet, so far I like it a lot.

The first week seems to havge really been a feeling out week, making sure I was doing everything right and getting my weights right, the second week I've started to really push myself and I'm finding that keeping a record is inavluable, seeing what I did last week and even just trying to add one more kg to it is really motivating me. :D

[Pitfighter]

I used to rotate each week in a month between 5x5,3x10, pyramid of sets of 5 down to my max and sets of 10 then 8 then 6. Over the course of the year I doubled in strength and cut my fat% from 18% to 10-13%.

I don't have access to a gym anymore and have a poor man's odd assorment of weights.
Now I just flip between 5x5 and 3x10 or change up exercises. The results are a little slower but I am working on perfecting my form and trying new excercises so that might explain the slower results.

5x5 routines are great but I don't think they are the greatest routines by themselves.