StrongLifts 5×5

I did StrongLifts 5×5 way back in 2008 when I was looking to get back into barbell training after taking a hiatus after my high school football days. StrongLifts is similar to Starting Strength in that you do basic barbell lifts like the squat, shoulder press, bench press, and deadlift. Instead of the power clean, StrongLifts uses the barbell row as the fifth lift.

Like Starting Strength, StrongLifts is a linear progression program for novices in which you add a bit of weight (5 to 10 pounds) to each exercise every workout.

The barbell lifts are awesome, the program is simple and straightforward, and Mehdi at StrongLifts has a tremendous amount of free and useful content available on his site. The main issue I had with StrongLifts 5×5, however, was how much volume the workouts required. Instead of doing three sets of five (as SS recommends), StrongLifts has you doing five sets of five on all the lifts (except for deadlift, which is 1×5). I was completely worn out after a training session and recovery took a long time. I think the amount of volume required had something to do with how quickly I plateaued on the program. After a few months of following it, I stopped making progress, and I never got past 100 pounds on the press or over 300 on the squat. I’d do the requisite de-loading that the program prescribed to try to break through the plateaus, but still couldn’t. I ended up stopping out of frustration.

StrongLifts 5×5 has worked for other people, it just didn’t work for me after a certain point. I found Starting Strength’s 3×5 rep scheme to be just the right amount of volume to induce adaptation for strength gains without totally wiping me out.

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