Thread: 5x5 4wk experiment - good strength gains

1kg in 4 weeks is great if that is mostly muscle!

Sorry about the shoulder though. What do you mean you "did in" your shoulder?

Did you experience any fatigue? Everyone I have talked to gets very tired and feels kinda crappy after a while. It just seems to take a toll.

fatigue is hard to tell, as i was not sleeping much, and working some 15hr days for a while, so i was tired anyway. No real DOMS to report, as there was no slow ecentric work. but i would definately only do 3wks next time, then a light recovery week. I was doing 2 leg sessions per week as well.

I feel like im starting to get a cold, so it may have put a fair bit of strain on me.

CP - sharp pain, in the anterior deltoid area. pain whenever i try to bring the elbow up to shoulder height or carry things.the pain came on very suddenly during a shrug, but my shoulders didnt feel 100% before the workout. no real problems, was just a feeling, and my own stupid fault for being so determined to push the last session out hard instead of being cautious. Physio appt tomorrow morning, so see how that goes.

still have all the separation in the delts, back definition, and abs showing, and tracked mass change crudely with arm measurements just to check, as we dont have any accurate skin fold measuring equipment, so seems to be mainly muscle, with a tiny bit of fat (.4%/320g) just judging from experience.

Did only yourself participate in this experiment? Any of your friends/collegues?...who may have different training experience, age, gender, different lifestyle.

No, it was just me. We all have our own things going on, guys in 12wk challenges etc. (PT at a gym) I just experiment on myself so that I can say "ive done this, and it has worked" instead of "do this because a book/someone on the net/another pt/a bodybuilder said to". Cut from 9.6% to 7.6% with no cardio before this just to make sure my dietary methods/cacluations would work.

actually, i stuffed up, i was still cutting for the first week of this experiment, but meh.

Originally Posted by slip

No, it was just me. We all have our own things going on, guys in 12wk challenges etc. (PT at a gym) I just experiment on myself so that I can say "ive done this, and it has worked" instead of "do this because a book/someone on the net/another pt/a bodybuilder said to". Cut from 9.6% to 7.6% with no cardio before this just to make sure my dietary methods/cacluations would work.

actually, i stuffed up, i was still cutting for the first week of this experiment, but meh.

Okay. Good Stuff! Well done.

It's probably your lack of adequate rest that contributed to your shoulder injury, it's well known that getting 7+ hours of sleep is prime to recovering from workouts, especially those where you're pushing to increase strength. What was your pwo meal like?

I think you had some real good gains here, maybe with a more condusive schedule as far as rest and recovery you can do even more to benefit from a plan like this.

pwo varied, as sometimes i had a client immediately after a training session, so it could have been a musashi p40 (40g protein + some carbs) or chicken and rice, or a piece of fruit in a worst case scenario. i always tried to have protein with carbs straight afterwards.

the sleep thing was killing me, and even when im not busy i constatly put off going to bed, bad trait im trying to get rid of. interesting thought as to its effect on recovery and therefore contribution to the injury.

just had a shower and cant wash myself properly. great.

weighed in at 79kg earlier today, then high 78s later in the day, so definately getting bigger. yay. I thought i was going to be happy with 80kg @ 7%bf, but now i realise it will have to be more like 85kg/186lbs

Well, the 5x5 program advocates a few weeks of conditioning before the program and 2-4 weeks of unloading afterwards.

I've done the program. Mass gains were about equal (r a little less than) to push/pull/legs. Strength gains were quite a bit better. I didn't experience any overtraining really, except cramps in my hams (stretching solved the problem later on). I got really sick of the program at the end, but that's because I can't stand all that squatting and rowing without variation.