Yes i know, Sacrilege...surely, but hear me out. Ive only rescently started, fair enough, but looking at the calculated weekly weights based on my 1rm, ive noticed something. The program only goes up by 2-3 lb a week....1kg a week. Now me being a healthy, young, testosterone pumped individual, surely my weights can go up by more than one kg a week. Youre all going to put me down and say im being silly to doubt such a good routine, but do you not agree that people are able to make a bigger jump in big lifts like squats and bench press?
When I did Starting Strength (same thing basicaly just 3x5 instad of 5x5) I made a weight jump to soon on the Squat and DL and it bit me in the end. Like 10-15 lb or so, way to much. I see nothing wrong with adding 2-3kg, if you start stalling out, just deload and reset to a lower weight. You could either do that, or try bumping up the weight 1kg per session, not per week, and see how that goes. I'd go with option number 2, it gives you mroe room for error imo.
eh, a good judge is if you go up either by weight or reps each workout. if you don't go up in either, you are either overtraining or doing something else wrong. now if you are new to lifting, the gains will be alot more, and you might be able to go up alot more(when i started i was going up about 5 lbs on my working sets each benchpress workout) but that's what i'd focus on, and get lots of rest. 5x5 is a good set/rep guide to follow...my friend has made extremely high gains on it in benchpress and squats the past 5 weeks or so, and he's in decent shape and not new to lifting.
I just finished 8 weeks of the 5x5. I was acctually suposed to go for 12 weeks but I bumped up the weights to fast. I was adding 10lbs to my squat and 5lbs to my bench every week. I did, however, get much stronger; awesome. But, I burnt out. Starting a new routine ....yesterday haha.
I made great gains in 6 weeks on TC's Push-Pull workout on T-nation. I think the key was the following: 8x3 in the first part of the week 2x12 later in the week. The 8x3 is amazingly hard. My 1RM DL is about 450 right now, so having to get three reps of 385-415 pounds, for eight sets is menally... exhausting. That is what was really hard for me. But I think that is what made my strength go up- I had to push really hard every workout.
