Can You Gain Muscle with the 5×5 Workout
Unless you have had your head in the sand in recent 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 was developed predominantly for attaining strength.
It’s true that muscle size and muscular strength are connected. But there are numerous ways in which you can gain strength with no equivalent development of muscle size. Stronger won’t always translate into bigger, and bigger does not always mean stronger.
If muscle development is your main goal, there’s a very simple technique to make the 5×5 workout work even better. And that’s by adding a bit more volume.
For anyone whose main goal is increased muscular weight and size, preserving a higher volume day in the majority of cycles is necessary.
A particular example of this may be the athlete who is mainly interested in increasing muscular mass. He has concluded the newbie phase, and has ended a training cycle with five sets of five for one training session and speed sets for the other.
He hopes to put on weight, so he will keep the five sets of 5 part of the training session and put in a higher volume workout for the 2nd session. The alternatives could be five sets of ten across, five sets of twelve, or even three to four sets of 15.
There are several ways to build up your training volume. The main one I want to take a look at at this time is something called a back-off set.
Let’s say you’re utilizing a 5×5 workout, and you’ve just completed your final set of squats. To do a back-off set, all you do is reduce the weight and crank out an additional set of between 10 and 30 reps.
Interestingly enough there was a study done a few years back where scientists discovered that the addition of a back-off set led to quicker increases in muscular mass and strength.
In essence, one number of subjects performed two leg exercises for 5 sets of three to five repetitions, whilst another group performed exactly the same thing, but added a back-off set (25-35 repetitions with a lighter load) thirty seconds later.
Over one month, the people making use of the back-off set gained more muscle and got stronger more quickly as compared with guys performing solely 5 sets of 3-5 reps.
This sort of “combination training” is absolutely nothing new. Actually, it was very well liked with a number of of the top rated bodybuilders in the fifties.
The human body hasn’t altered since then and the basics still work. The same thing that got people in shape fifty years ago still works today.
You still have to work tirelessly utilizing the basic compound exercises.
These guys used to mix up their training, using both heavy and light resistance.
For example, they would frequently complete 3-4 sets using a large weight and lower repetitions, after which they’d finish off with two to three sets of higher repetitions with a lighter load.
Doing 5 sets of five repetitions will help your body appear thick. But if you mix up your training, your body will achieve its ultimate potential.
To sum up, the 5×5 workout is a simple yet effective way of getting stronger. Add a little more volume and you’ll find that it’s a terrific way to increase size at the same time.