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IrishTusk
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20 Aug 2012, 6:22 am

So I went to the gym for about three months doing Freeweights 5 days a week and I made rapid improvement, but at the same time doing alot of different dumbell excerises bluntly bored the heck out of me, Remembering the weights and the methiods of doing each indivual muscle group it honestly just drove me mad.

Last night I found the strong lifts website and I was wondering if they're right. Is doing exercises like the Squat/Deadlift/ bench press, over all alot better for building strength and your curls with dumbells. Reason I ask it because it'd cut the ammount of different excerises down alot and motivate me to go to the gym more as I'd not need to remember so much.

Or is it aload of bull?

Stronglifts 5x5

It seems genuine because the guy is giving you what you need to know to begin the program so you can see for yourself if it works, I presume it's the mindset that if they like it they'll buy it.


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Shatbat
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20 Aug 2012, 9:18 am

I followed exactly that one program at a certain point of my life. It works, I put on a hood amount of muscle thanks to it.

Back in 2009 Medhi, the site owner, was less commercial and more down to earth, but his teachings still stand. Compound exercises are a great way to build strenght, and muscle.


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1000Knives
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20 Aug 2012, 10:44 am

Well Mehdi has commercialized it, but no, it's not a scam. All it is a common 5x5 program, this type of program would be the kinda program you'd get if you played like college football or something. It's not really a bodybuilding program per se, but it'll build muscle mass and strength. If you wanna use it for bodybuilding, pretty much all you'd have to do is, say, add calf raises (I think even Bill Starr's 5x5 does that) or curls to it. That and watch your eating and don't dirty bulk through it. But, this is the type of program you'd do up until the 70s or so, if you wanted to gain muscle mass. Then that's when bodybuilding and isolation exercises and stuff like that really took off on it's own.

But, for what it's worth, I added about...10lbs? or so of muscle since last year at about this time, not even doing this program, just doing compound exercises on my own without this program. I mostly just squatted, deadlifted, and did Olympic lifts, and then I'd do standing strict overhead presses too, very rarely benched and if I did it usually was on an incline bench. So if you follow the program strictly, then yeah, you'll probably go far.

If you wanna cut your exercises down even more, you could just train for powerlifting or Olympic style lifting. Powerlifting just gives you bench, squat, and deadlift, and Olympic lifting is snatch and clean and jerk. You then just concentrate on getting the two or three lifts up, then any assistance exercises are pretty much just chosen by you, with the goal of getting the lifts up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUl7UqbL3uc Looking like an Olympic lifter wouldn't be so bad, no?

The only negative part of a 5x5 or any program really involving compound exercises, is that, well, it's hard. While the bodybuilding programs that like, pick out specific muscles and work them to infinity are tedious and OCD, they don't really tax the body that much. But, with a Stronglifts type of program, you're picking up 300lbs off the ground, and that's hard. So that's why they fell out of favor. When you're done with a workout, you're not gonna be like "AWW MAN I FEEL SO MUCH PUMP" you're much more likely to just wanna go to bed. So it's not really self gratifying. Also, lifting heavy like that does take it's toll on your central nervous system and your immune system if your nutrition and recovery is bad, so you need to get lots of sleep, eat healthy, and take some vitamins/herbs.

But yeah, I hope that answers your questions some. No, not a scam at all, though.



kx250rider
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20 Aug 2012, 11:05 am

My experience is that if you want to build size, choose the amount of weight for each exercise that you can do 10 reps on 3 sets, and you need to not quite be able to do the last few reps on the 3rd set. That formula is basically the "lift to fail" routine, which builds size the best, IMHO. As far as strength, it does build strength too, but probably a few more reps of less weight would do more for strength but a little less size.

NOTE: If you're sore the next day, you did it right. If you can't get out of bed the next day, you overdid it. If you feel fine the next day, you didn't do it heavy enough.

Charles



1000Knives
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20 Aug 2012, 11:15 am

kx250rider wrote:
My experience is that if you want to build size, choose the amount of weight for each exercise that you can do 10 reps on 3 sets, and you need to not quite be able to do the last few reps on the 3rd set. That formula is basically the "lift to fail" routine, which builds size the best, IMHO. As far as strength, it does build strength too, but probably a few more reps of less weight would do more for strength but a little less size.

NOTE: If you're sore the next day, you did it right. If you can't get out of bed the next day, you overdid it. If you feel fine the next day, you didn't do it heavy enough.

Charles


Me personally, I'm really liking this Russian Olympic lifting program for snatches, I use it for like, everything. http://www.charlespoliquin.com/Articles ... thods.aspx

Percent of 1RM: 60-65 70-75 80-85 90-95 100
Low-Level Lifter: 8 17 5 2 1
High-Level Lifter: 5 15 8 4 2
I'm using the low level lifter one. Basically tons of reps in the 70-75% range, the Russian rationale is that range is better suited for building speed, and I need more speed. According to that article, if you can squat 200 kilos, but clean and jerk 100, you need to develop better speed, and that's about the gap I have now, about 155lb clean and jerk, but last I did 235 for a double (with more in the tank) for ATG backsquat.

One thing to keep in mind for muscle building programs is fast twitch and slow twitch muscle. The way to test it (besides a biopsy) is if you can do 80% of your max for like 8 reps, then you're likely slow twitch, and then if you fail sooner, you're likely more fast twitch dominant. I fail after like 2 or 3, so yeah. Slow twitch benefits greatly from higher reps, fast twitch not as much.



IrishTusk
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20 Aug 2012, 12:22 pm

Thanks alot for your replies I appreciate it. I'm not interested in these excerises to -get- bigger, it's more the fitness and strength side of things am interested. I love the idea that the 3-5 simple exercises targets most things while with the Dumbells/curls there's so much I can simply avoid doing and that's my bane.

Thanks alot though! Sadly cant Re-start my gym membership till the start of Sep but I look forward to going back now I've a real routine to follow.


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1000Knives
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20 Aug 2012, 1:00 pm

IrishTusk wrote:
Thanks alot for your replies I appreciate it. I'm not interested in these excerises to -get- bigger, it's more the fitness and strength side of things am interested. I love the idea that the 3-5 simple exercises targets most things while with the Dumbells/curls there's so much I can simply avoid doing and that's my bane.

Thanks alot though! Sadly cant Re-start my gym membership till the start of Sep but I look forward to going back now I've a real routine to follow.


Then usually lower reps add strength better. Me personally, since I mostly lift for a sport (figure skating) I usually do lots of leg and lower back centric exercises, as how much you can benchpress doesn't matter too much for figure skating. Lately I've been finding probably one of the best exercises for explosiveness is hang power snatches and split snatches. I find the Olympic lifts super fun to do, they can be dangerous if you try to bite off more than you can chew, but they're really fun to me. Split snatch has lots of carryover to jumps in skating, as the jumps mostly come off one leg. Deadlifts might be the most practical lift, though, as almost everyday in life you pick up heavy stuff off the ground, so why not make it easier? But yeah, leg exercises are awesome because you can run faster, jump higher, and lift heavier things up. Strict overhead presses are fun, too, but hard hard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDulY9AJc_c

As far as the dumbbells and isolation exercises, they're good tools to reach your goals sometimes. Just, arguably it's hard to make a big strength building program out of them. You'll find out after doing compounds which exercises you'll do and which ones you won't, which ones help you further your goals or work on weak points. Just, most of the time, it's better to keep things simple.



IrishTusk
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01 Sep 2012, 7:15 am

Sorry It's me again.

So I've been back to the gym and I've gone from just using 10kg dumbells every single work out to Squating 40kg so far, Benching 35kg, Deadlifting 50kg, and overhead pressing 30kg. Not alot but for me this is bloody brilliant heh.

But for the life of me I can't barbell row at all, I keep getting a sore lower back. Does any one have any suggestions? Or helpful linkys?


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1000Knives
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01 Sep 2012, 1:22 pm

IrishTusk wrote:
Sorry It's me again.

So I've been back to the gym and I've gone from just using 10kg dumbells every single work out to Squating 40kg so far, Benching 35kg, Deadlifting 50kg, and overhead pressing 30kg. Not alot but for me this is bloody brilliant heh.

But for the life of me I can't barbell row at all, I keep getting a sore lower back. Does any one have any suggestions? Or helpful linkys?


Well Mark Rippetoe says you can substitute barbell rows with power cleans. You could try that. The sore lower back could just be your muscles being sore from being worked, a lot of people don't have strong lower backs, but it's pretty much the most important set of muscles you got, your back. That's where real life strength comes from.

Anyway, power cleans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TlbDQUWs0s Power cleans make the deadlift go up faster, too, as you're learning to pull from the floor really fast, and the speed will translate to strength. You can also do hang cleans, where you lift the bar up and keep it at torso level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpXqVba1mFo

There's then the snatch, the snatch works many of the same muscles as an upright row.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43qi9DlGUxU That's a hang power snatch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng1rkNXyh0g And that's a full snatch.

So there's some exercises you can use if you wanna ignore barbell rows (even Rippetoe has said "f**k barbell rows, get your deadlift to 500") but the lower back hurting could just simply be it getting stronger, as muscles tend to do (well some people turn the pain around and call it "pump" but yeah) when they're worked.



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01 Sep 2012, 1:39 pm

What kind of "sore" is it, the "I've never lifted anything heavy before" sore, or "I just ripped a tendon" sore? I noticed some sore lower back issues when my bent over barbell row hit 180 lbs, and that's with a 300+ lbs deadlift.



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01 Sep 2012, 2:37 pm

IrishTusk wrote:
Sorry It's me again.

So I've been back to the gym and I've gone from just using 10kg dumbells every single work out to Squating 40kg so far, Benching 35kg, Deadlifting 50kg, and overhead pressing 30kg. Not alot but for me this is bloody brilliant heh.

But for the life of me I can't barbell row at all, I keep getting a sore lower back. Does any one have any suggestions? Or helpful linkys?


No need to be sorry.

Try Yates rows. They hit your upper-back more and your lower back less. :) Keep in mind that rows are a SUPPLEMENT to deadlifts, though...



IrishTusk
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01 Sep 2012, 4:22 pm

Thanks alot for the help again folks.


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Your Aspie score: 56 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 144 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical