Cool Temperature. Your body’s temperature drops when you sleep. Get your room to 18C/60F to help this. Turn off the heater and use blankets if needed instead. This means the warmup calculator in my app is different. It gives you less warmup sets if your work weight is light so you don’t get tired for your work sets. But it givesyou more warmup sets if your work weight is heavy so you don’t end up taking too big jumps. This is more effective. Total. Squat 350lb, Bench 220lb and Deadlift 430lb to join the 1000lb club. Squat 140kg, Bench 100kg and Deadlift 160kg to join the 400kg club. Create your own clubs. Deload and switch to 3×3 – three sets of three reps. You can’t get five reps on every set anyway so just do three. Then add weight every workout again. It will be easier since you stopped failing. Plus the exercise stress is lower so your body recovers better between workouts.

You do increase the weight on every exercise where you did get five reps on every set. Let’s say you fail on the Squat but don’t on the Bench Press and Barbell Row. Don’t increase your Squat weight next workout – repeat it. But add weight on Bench and Rows since you got 5×5 there. Consistent Sleep. Avoid staying up late on weekends and then waking up early on weekdays. The is like getting a jetlag every Monday.Wake up at the same time each day. This is why dumbbells don’t work for this program. They usually go up by 2kg/5lb. This forces you to add 4kg/10lb per workout since you hold one in eachhand. Moving from 50lb to 60lb dumbbells is a 20% increase.This is too much, too soon. It makes you miss reps and plateau. On StrongLifts 5×5 you do five exercises – the Squat, Bench Press, Deadlift, Overhead Press and Barbell Row. Every workout starts with Squats. The other exercises alternate each workout. The intensity is higher on compound exercises because you can use heavier weights. StrongLifts 5×5 uses the five best compound exercises –“the big five”. Here are all themuscles you’ll work by doing the Squat, Bench Press, Overhead Press, Deadlift and Barbell Row every week…If you’ve done these exercises before, with proper form, then start with 50% of your max. So if you can Squat 5x100kg/220lb, start with 50kg/110lb. This will be easy but within two months you’ll be Squatting 110kg/245lb for 5×5 – more than you started with.

Warning: this program looks easy, but isn’t.You’re adding weight every workout. This triggers your body to gain strength and muscle to lift heavier the next workout. It’s the most effective way to train but it’s hard work. Some people don’t have the mental fortitude for it. If you do, you’llgain. Muscles WorkedThe proper way to warmup is to start with two sets of five with the empty bar. Add 10-20kg/25-45lb and do your next warmup set for 2-3 reps. Keep adding weight until you reach your work weight. Don’t rest between warmup sets to keep your workouts short. Only rest after the last one. Substituting any exercise will make the program less effective. You’ll introduce exercisesthat trigger less strength and muscle gains because you can’t go as heavy. Or you’ll usemachines where you don’t balancethe bar. There are no better exercises than these fives. They’re the best. Progressive Overload. Increasing the weightprogressively triggers your body to get stronger. Your body arms itself to better handle the load next time. So your muscles get bigger, bones denser, and tendons stronger. Not lifting heavy makes you lose muscle and strength. Use a barbell for every exercise. You can lift the heaviest weight with a barbell. It’s therefore thebest tool to trigger your body to build strength and muscle. It’s also the best tool to progress because you can start light with just the bar, and add weights as low as 0.5kg/1lb each workout. Your body releases muscle building hormones like testosterone and growth hormone when you sleep. They help you recover from your workouts. Sleep eight hours a night to maximize recovery.

Assistance exercises target small muscles which grow more slowly like your arms, abs a Barbells. You can lift heavierweights with barbells than dumbbells or kettlebells. Barbells therefore triggeryour body harder to gain strength and muscle. And you only need one to do all StrongLifts 5×5 exercises. This makes building a home gym cheap and easy. This means if you’re used to going by bike to work, it’s probably okay to keep doing it even on your rest days. Your body is already used to it. Your legs might actually recover faster because this flushes blood and nutrients in your legs. If you never biked to work, it’s probably a bad idea to start now. ProgressionMore Time.Only three workouts per week. Each takes 45 mins the first 12 weeks, max 80mins after that. So you’llspend max four hours in the gym each week. The other 164 hours you can spend-guilt-free on family, friends, hobbies, etc. You’ll have a life outside the gym. I know you don’t want to get fat. Unfortunately it’s hard to build muscle without gaining any fat. You have toeat more to build muscle. But you need to eat less to lose fat. These goals contradict. If you try doing both, you’ll either end up eating too little to build muscle, or too much to lose fat. Don’t skip your workouts if you’re sore. This will only make the soreness last longer. Soreness will be worse two days after your workout, and can last up to seven days. If you wait for the soreness to be over, you’ll miss a week of training. Bad start. Plus it will hurt every time you move. Quiet Bedroom. Noise in the middle of the night disrupts your sleep and wakes you up. Shut your ears by wearing ear plugs. You can also use a fan or white noise generator. The program progresses faster when using kg than lb. This is because the default increment of2.5kg equals 5.51lb. So if you use kg like me, you’ll Squat 7.5kg/16.5lb more in12 weeks than the guyusing lb.This is finefor SQ/DL. But you’ll need to microload sooner on Bench and OHPress.

Avoid Coffee and Alcohol. Caffeine is a stimulant that keeps you awake. Avoid coffee, tea and chocolate before bedtime. Avoid alcohol too as it helps falling asleep but hurtssleepquality. More Progress. You can add 2.5kg/5lb each workout more easily when doing five reps because you can lift heavier. This means you can apply progressive overload longer without plateauing. You’ll lift heavier, get stronger and thus build more muscle massby doing fives. LessFat. The heavier the weights, the more energy you’ll burn. You’ll also burn more energy post-workout for muscle recovery. Your metabolism will be higher. Eat right on top of lifting weights and you’ll lose fat. Your waist and body-fat will decrease – without doing cardio. This also means that what takesyourSquatfrom 0 to 100kg usually won’t takeit to 180kg. Nothing works forever, not even StrongLifts 5×5. As your strength increases and body changes, the only way to keep progressing is to move to a different training program – in this case Madcow 5×5. All weights include the bar because you lift it. So Squat 5×5 27.5kg/60lb means you put3.75kg/7.5lb on each side of the 20kg/45lb Olympic bar. You need small plates of 1.25kg/2.5lb to do this.Compounds. You can lift heavier on compounds like Squats than isolation like leg curls. Squats use more muscles – you can lift heavier and thusbuild more muscle. And since compounds work several muscles you don’t need gazillions exercises. Three is plenty – saves time. No Big Meals. It takes about three hours to digest food. Don’t eatbig meals before bedtime or you’ll struggle to fall a sleep. Move dinner time earlier and eat light before bed. Deadlifts after 5×5 Squats doesn’t work. Deadlifts use more muscles. The weight is heavier and each rep starts from a harder dead stop. Pulling heavy for 5×5 is brutal. Instead of accelerating your progress, you’ll slow it by missing reps more. Deadlift only 1×5 – it’s enough.