Weightlifting coach Mark Berry gained 50lb body-weight by Squatting. By the late s he was telling everyone to Squat in his magazine Strength. He could Squat lb, Bench lb and Deadlift lb.
He was a competitive olympic lifter and powerlifter before turning bodybuilder. They might have met…. In he popularized it in his book The Strongest Shall Survive. In my mentor told me to start a website about lifting. The routine and its principles have been around long before I was born. Many training programs come and go. The next two exercises change based on whether you do workout A or B. The workouts…. Do one workout per day. Be patient or increase the weight.
Alternate workout A and B every time you train. Start with workout A today, do workout B in two days, then do workout A again. Wait at least one day between two workouts. This gives your body time to recover, get stronger and build muscle to lift heavier next workout.
Do three workouts a week. Try to train the same days and times each week. This creates a habit that will increase your consistency. You could do four workouts a week.
You still have that day off inbetween but progress will be slightly faster. Most people like having two days off in a row though. And those who start with four usually switch to three later. So stick with three. Your training schedule will be more consistent.
If you miss one or two workouts, continue where you left off. Do that workout on Saturday. Again, use the app , they take care of all of this. Note that these three workouts a week are a full training program. It would hurt your recovery and prevent you to add weight each workout. Do this program or the other — not both. Every workout starts with Squats. The other exercises alternate each workout. You do these five exercises because they let you lift the heaviest weight.
You can Squat heavier than you can Front Squat. Every exercise lets you lift the heaviest weights to work your major muscle groups. Use a barbell for every exercise. You can lift the heaviest weight with a barbell. The barbell must move freely. You have to balance the weight yourself, not let a machine do it. It also forces you into unnatural movements that can cause pain and injuries. The heaviest kettlebell is 48kg. Plus kettlebells go up by 4kg.
Safety concerns usually makes people prefer the smith machine or dumbbells. Failing their weights could kill them. Your gym may not have a Power Rack or even a bar. Either go to a real gym or build a home gym. Substituting any exercise will make the program less effective. There are no better exercises than these fives. The key is to use proper form by using a complete range of motion. A half Squat will not build legs like a proper Squat will — your muscles are only working half the movement.
Read the guides so you do the exercises right. Use the same range of motion on every rep, set and workout regardless of the weight. Keep it constant. Always start with Squats. Bench or Overhead Press next. This gives your legs and lower back rest before you need them again on Barbell Rows and Deadlifts.
Your lower back and legs will be tired from Squats. You need them for Rows and Deadlifts. Starting with Deadlifts tires your lower back for Squats. Squats tire it for Deadlifts too.
Sticking to the same exercise order every workouts also makes it easier to track improvements. Not because you did this exercise first today and were more fresh. Your goal is to build it. Get used to it. Do five sets of five on one exercise before moving to the next one. Stay focused on one exercise instead of rushing from one to the other.
The Power Rack may not be free when you arrive in the gym. I encounter these situations all the time but never change the exercise order of my workout. Just ask how much time he has left. This is the best way to make friends in the gym. Again — do it. Warmup with light weights before your heavy worksets. Deadlifts use more muscles.
The weight is heavier and each rep starts from a harder dead stop. Five sets also give you almost double the form practice than three sets. The more you practice proper form, the more efficient you become. This increases how much you lift and decreases injuries. Rest as long as you need between sets to get five reps on your next set. Rest times matter because ATP is your primary energy source for lifting.
Each set depletes your ATP stores. So resting longer between sets gives you more ATP for your next set. It helps you lift heavier. Short rest times make you sweat more and cause more pump. But they limit how heavy you can go by forcing you to lift with depleted ATP stores.
Rest longer so you can go heavy. The drawback of longer rest times is that it makes your workouts take longer. You can fix that by only resting longer when needed. Keep longer rest times for your hard work sets. My app has a built-in rest timer to guide you. It tells you how long to rest between work sets, warmup sets and exercises. It suggests different rest times if your last set was easy, hard, or if you missed reps. Download the app here. Stay focused between sets. You can sit on a bench, but I like to stand.
Review your form if you just taped yourself. Look at your training history in my app. Maybe visualize yourself doing your next set with perfect form. Use the lifting tempo that lets you lift the heaviest weights with proper form. Lifting slow is no good because it wastes strength. But lifting too fast makes it harder to control the bar and lift with proper form. You must be in control of the bar at all times. But as you gain experience you can start accelerating the bar on the way up.
This recruits more muscle fibers and helps you lift heavier weights. Always lower the bar under control. Control it on the way down so you can maintain proper form. The bar should go down faster than it moves up. And the bar path should be as close to vertical as possible. Lifting slow causes more pump and fatigue. But it also limits how heavy you can go. The goal on this program is to lift heavy.
You can lift heavier when you lift fast. Your lighter warmup weights will move fast. The bar can sometimes move slowly on hard reps aka grinders. The point is that you put all your strength into the bar by trying to accelerate it. Take your time between reps. Rest a second before doing the next rep so you can get tight and take a big breath.
This will also give you some recovery. The general rule is to take a big breath before you do the rep, hold it while you do the rep, then exhale when you finished your rep.
Your blood pressure will increase when you hold your breath like this. But your body will get used to this, especially if you start with the empty bar and work your way up slowly. Your heart is a muscle, and it will get stronger like all your other muscles. Ignore people telling you to inhale on the way down or exhale on the up and similar bullshit. All of that does release pressure, but it also weakens your torso. It makes your lower back more prone to injury. The point of taking a big breath and hold it, is to create pressure in your abdomen.
This pressure increases support for your lower back. It makes your lower back safer and less likely to get injured. Exhaling during reps does the opposite. An advanced technique that works well on the Bench and Overhead Press is to press several reps with one breath. But you must be able to hold your breath for reps for this to work. Rest days are crucial to get results on this program. The weight stresses your body every workout.
This triggers it to get stronger and build muscle mass so it can better cope with the weight next workout. But your body needs time to recover, gain strength and add muscle. Workouts also cause fatigue. They increase your strength, fitness and endurance in the long-term. But in the short-term they tire your body, muscles and mind. You need rest days to start your next workout fresh.
Your legs will still be tired for Squats , shoulders still tired to press, back still tired to pull. Worse, you could still be sore from your last workout if it was hard. This will make you struggle to lift more weight.
Your schedule may force you to workout two days in a row. Once in a while is fine but every week will hurt your progress. This gives your body more recovery time.
A walk or light jog is fine. A marathon is not. Avoid high intensity activities where you go all out. 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, probably a bad idea to start now. Increase the weight on every exercise where you did five reps on every set last workout. So add weight to it. Ask them to get a pair or buy your own set. Put it in your gym bag and take it with you every time. Small plates take no space and weigh little. This shifts the center of gravity. This is asking for bad form, uneven loading of your body, and injury. Just get small plates. The weight is heavier as a result. The weight is lower which makes big jumps harder.
This is too much, too soon. It makes you miss reps and plateau. Small plates delay plateaus. So get a pair of 1. Then get fractional plates of 0. The lighter you are, the more you need this. The program progresses faster when using kg than lb. This is because the default increment of 2. This accelerates your progress when the empty bar feels too easy to start with. But lower the increments before you struggle to get your reps. Remember avoiding plateaus is easier than needing to break them.
But remember each workout makes you stronger. So stick to the progression and increase the weight anyway. Focus on lifting with proper form meanwhile. This will prepare you for the heavy weights later. Starting too heavy will cause soreness. One skipped workout often turns into two skipped workouts. Now you have to restart and lost a week. This ruins your motivation and usually ends the program.
But this is irrelevant. Starting too heavy also causes plateaus. Your starting weight must be light so you have room to easily add weight for several workouts. Of course lifting heavy is better. But lighter weights trigger your body to gain strength and muscle too. The other issue with starting too heavy is that it encourages bad form. Instead of practicing proper form with easy weight, you must lift it at all costs to get your reps.
This builds bad technique habits which will cause plateaus and injuries later when the weight gets even heavier. Starting heavy is trying to accelerate your progress. You think it will make you stronger faster. Remember the fable of the rabbit losing the race to a turtle. You want to be like the turtle — starting light, adding weight steadily, and getting there faster by avoiding soreness and plateaus on the way. Your starting weights depend on your strength and experience.
Each rep must start from the floor. Use full diameter plates so the bar starts at your mid-shin on each rep. If the empty bar is too heavy to start with, then use a lighter bar. This is a common issue with females who have less upper-body strength.
Add weight each workout. The program will get you stronger. If the starting weight is too light, you can fix that by using bigger increments for a couple of workouts. Instead of adding only 2. Switch back to the recommended increments once the weights becomes more challenging. Understand you gain little by starting heavy since the weights increase fast anyway. What you lose is time spent working on proper form with lighter weights.
This turns into a huge advantage when the weights get heavy. So be conservative with your starting weights. If you make the mistake of starting too heavy, you should go to the gym anyway for your next workout, but lower the weights. Do several lighter warmup sets before your heavy work sets. Warmup with the empty bar. Repeat until you reach your work weight. Warming up increases how much you can lift while decreasing the risk of injury. The warmup sets raise the temperature of your muscles and lubricate your joints.
They also give you form practice before lifting heavy. And they prepare you mentally for the heavy weights to come. Never jump into your heavy work sets without warming up first. Always warmup by doing several lighter sets first. You must still do lighter warmup-sets. Also, too much cardio pre-workout will pre-exhaust your legs for Squats. Skip the cardio and do lighter warmup sets — it will save you time.
The proper way to warmup is to start with two sets of five with the empty bar. Keep adding weight until you reach your work weight. Only rest after the last one. The weight is too light to get injured plus doing extra sets could tire you out. The StrongLifts app has a built-in warmup calculator that gives you the exact sets, reps and weights to warmup with.
It gives you this for every exercise and weight. Or you can use one of those free warmup calculators online. But they all suck. The mistake they make is to make you do five warmup sets regardless of how heavy your work weight is. This means the warmup calculator in my app is different. This is more effective. Warming up makes your workout longer. The stronger you are, the heavier your work weight, and the more warmup sets.
Keep your workouts short by not resting between warmup sets. This will give you a good sweat without getting you too tired since the warmup weights are light. The only exception is your last warmup set. Rest before doing your first work set. This way you have full ATP available before doing that heavy set.
On your other warmup sets, just add weight and go. Use the warmup rest timer in our app — it tells you how long to wait so you can focus on lifting. Respect your warmup sets by lifting them like your heavy sets. Your workout starts with your warmup. Put the same focus and effort into them. If you do it right. This gives you more reps to practice proper form.
It also increases how much Deadlifts you do. You also get breaks from lifting heavy when you deload after hitting a plateau. All of this takes care of your recovery. So keep lifting and adding weight. I usually take a week off training when going on holiday with family or friends.
I was exclusively weight training at the time, and it blows my mine that I was for up to 5 sets of 5 at during my workouts. The stronglifts program requires major fueling calorie surplus for sure needed once it gets heavy , great sleep, and definitely minimal added physical stress.
I have a tough time calibrating as well, I can go for a max DL and feel pretty fresh after, despite 3 seconds of balls to the wall power. Thanks guys. I think the only metric you can usefully apply to StrongLifts is the weight itself, but I was wondering if anyone had made HR measurements work. For sure, as it gets heavier the HR measurement goes up, but as I said I can get a bigger calorie burn walking my dog.
Given my biking plans have been blitzed for this year, I may focus on StrongLifts this year. I have been doing off and on SL for a two years, With warm up sets and modified 3x5 with Pull ups and crunches added in.
But burning calories is not the best way to think about exercise or health, for a few reasons. For one, those calories-burned estimates are just that—estimates. And they might not look anything like what a particular individual is actually burning. Exercise is really good for your health , period. And after lifting, you have built actual muscles and strength to use in your daily life, a benefit that cannot be underestimated. Any beginner lifting program will instruct you to add weight to your lifts consistently , and if you are eating and resting enough to support your lifting program—barring injuries or limiting factors like mobility problems—you should be able to.
They are designed specifically for building strength, keeping the reps low and intensity high so that your muscles get the right amount of damage to rebuild on your rest days, and then you come to the next session stronger than before.
It is possible you have just started at weights that are relatively easy for you, but the nice thing about linear programs is that they get tougher relatively quickly. If I feel out of breath and taxed and need time to stand and collect myself, but was still able to finish all the reps with perfect form, that was the right amount of difficulty.
If you let these programs get you stronger and you decide to transition out of strength building after a while, you will be able to lift more weight when just working out. This allows you to see how active you have been and to help you make improvements. Allows you to set your own goals, such as reaching 15, steps in a single day. You are awarded achievements for reaching goals, helping to encourage you and keep you motivated.
Nutrition tracking 1. You can input your weight data, making it easier to track changes. You can use it to log the water you drink throughout the day. Drinking enough water is essential to your well-being, with the European Food Safety Authority recommending that women drink about 1.
Using the app, you can input the food you eat to help you manage your nutrition better. A food diary allows you to easily keep track of the food you have consumed, an important part of staying healthy and losing weight. Features 1. Your data is synced to the cloud, making it easier to access across different devices and making sure it is always backed up in case you lose your device.
0コメント