WEIGHT LIFING 5X5 PROGRAM HOW TO
WEIGHT LIFING 5X5 PROGRAM PRO

It doesn't teach you about rep schemes and how to adjust them yourself, and it doesn't teach you at all about accessory work. This leads me to my main criticism: SL doesn't teach you anything it wants to keep you stupid so you stay on the program. This led to some valgus collapse that I had to deal with, but the program is so inflexible that I ended up just stripping 25lbs off the bar and practicing at 5x5 because I wanted to stick to the program and there is no recourse for doing anything but 5x5. I was squatting my bodyweight before I was really in the groove with the movement. The volume is too low, and the progression too fast as a total beginner. It is unbalanced, having you squat 3x a week and do everything else 1.5x a week - what exactly is the reasoning for that? I believe the reasoning is the bullshit idea that squatting will somehow help your upper body grow too - experience tells us that this is not true.

It is not a good program for so many reasons. I would never recommend it to anyone though. It helped me begin to learn how to squat, bench, deadlift, press. I started on SL as a total beginner - never touched a barbell in my life before SL. A lot of people end up with severe fuckarounditis and no progress for a long time at that point and a lot of people quit.Įventually you go back and end up doing all the base building stuff that you realize you should have done and needed to do from the beginning-the bodybuilding, calisthenics, conditioning, and basic athletic skills, etc-and you rue the day that you ever put stock in what that idiot Mhedi ever had to say. Then your progress stops and you actually have to go back to the drawing board and figure out what training sustainably is actually all about. You get used to grinding out potentially ugly, soul crushing sets of 5 day in and day out with a myopic focus on nothing but the weight on the bar. A year later, they're on Reddit saying they're still on SL after being in and out of the gym a few times with little or no progress made in months and no sense of direction for what to do next.Įven for those who actually do get to decent numbers and have success on an LP, It often comes with a lot of bad habits that need to be unlearned in order to continue onward. For total beginners who don't have that background-people who are new to working out altogether, never mind the weight room-what will typically happen is that just dialing in acceptable technique with light weights is a struggle and then their linear progression comes to a grinding halt well before it 'should.' Once the wheels fall off, they flounder and wonder why their progress sucks and if it was because they didn't do the program correctly or they just have bad genetics.

Generally the people who do the best on SL are people who played sports and dicked around in the weight room or were in the military and then got serious with SL. And this lack of foundation often limits the effectiveness of the program itself. The con is that it really doesn't do much in the way of building a general foundation that will allow you to continue making steady progress long term after you're off the program. You put more weight on the bar and got through it so you feel good about going in again next time. Initially it gets you in the gym and it gives you a basic goal with the instant gratification of numbers that proved you actually did something and you aren't spinning your wheels.

WEIGHT LIFING 5X5 PROGRAM PRO

The pro is that it's simple enough for a beginner who just needs the initial psychological boost of doing something really basic and seeing measurable progress every day.

Weight lifing 5x5 program