Unless you have had your head in the sand the last few years, you’ve most likely come across the 5×5 workout featured on Stronglifts 5×5, Starting Strength and the like.
The 5×5 workout is is intended predominantly for developing strength.
It’s correct that size and muscular strength are connected. But there are actually several ways in which you can acquire strength with no equivalent increase in muscle size. Stronger doesn’t mean bigger, and bigger does not always mean stronger.
If muscle building is your primary goal, there’s a simple technique to make the 5×5 workout do the job even better. And that’s by adding a little more volume.
If your primary goal is to gain more muscular mass and size, preserving a higher volume day in most cycles is necessary.
A specific example might be the athlete who is principally serious about putting on muscular bodyweight. He’s finished the novice stage, and has finished a training cycle with 5 sets of five for one workout and speed sets for the other.
He would like to put on weight, so he will retain the five sets of five portion of the exercise session and incorporate a higher volume training session for the second session. The alternatives could be five sets of ten across, 5 sets of 12, or even three to four sets of 15.
There are numerous means to build up your training volume. The main one I want to take a look at right now is something called a back-off set.
Let’s say you’re using a 5×5 workout, and you’ve just finished your final set of squats. To perform a back-off set, all you do is reduce the weight and crank out an additional set of ten to thirty reps.
Interestingly enough there was research done several years back where scientists found that incorporating a back-off set led to more rapid gains in muscular mass and muscular strength.
In essence, one particular number of subjects carried out two leg workouts for 5 sets of three to five reps, whilst another group did exactly the same thing, but included a back-off set (25-35 repetitions with a lighter weight) thirty seconds later.
Over the course of 4 weeks, the guys making use of the back-off set added more size and got stronger more rapidly than guys doing solely 5 sets of 3-5 repetitions.
This kind of “combination training” is absolutely nothing new. The fact is, it happened to be very well liked with some of the top bodybuilders during the fifties.
The body of a human hasn’t altered since that time and the basics continue to deliver the results. The same thing that got men and women in shape 50 years earlier continues to work today.
You will always need to work tirelessly while using primary compound movements.
These guys would mix up their training, using a combination of heavy and light weights.
For instance, they’d perform 3-4 sets using a large weight and lower repetitions, and then finish off with 2-3 sets of higher repetitions with a lighter load.
Doing 5 sets of 5 reps will help your body look thick. But when you mix up your training, your appearance will reach its ultimate potential.
In conclusion, the 5×5 workout is a highly effective way of getting stronger. Squeeze in a little more volume and you’ll realize that it’s a fantastic way to add size as well.