But I did. These guys have been a great help and encouragement through some tough times for me and they probably don't even realize it. - Pagangoddess
I started it in january 2007. I'd been doing random curlmonkey/machine exercises before that and built up some muscle foundation. During this time, I was travelling and wanted to try something different to stay in shape. I always liked the freeweight exercises better than the machines, cause I felt like a girl doing leg curls and machine presses.. I found the program online and decided to give it a shot.
I was on the program for 6 months, after which I went to central america, where gyms are pretty much non-existent and dropped weight training for about 3 months, after which I went back to Holland and continued.
My starting stats:
20 yrs old
1.77m
67kg
around 10% BF
Squat: 50 kg (I'd only ever done smith squats at about 80 kg...)
Bench: 60 kg
BB Row: 40 kg (Did DB rows before)
Deadlift: - (I had no clue how to do these, so I did pullups for the first 6 months)
Incline bench: 50 kg (there's no OHP in Madcow's version of the program)
Dips: 3x8x BW
Pullups: 3x10x BW (I'd struggle to pull that off now, low BF really helped.)
My stats after 6 months
20 yrs old
1.77m
80kg
20% BF (I know.. yikes. I pretty much just ate everything in sight. GOMAD (nonstop for 6 months...), a dozen eggs, bread, pasta, meat, chocolate pies, I even tried weightgainer shakes when I was in China and the food was too disgusting.. Whatever I could get my hands on basicly.
Squat: 5x 80 kg (High bar squats, I only learned how to do low bar squats about a year later.)
Bench: 5x 80 kg (Sadly, this is where I'm at now.. My form was horrible here though. Hurt my right shoulder a bunch of times.)
BB row: 5x 60 kg
Deadlift: 5x 100 kg
Incline bench: 5x 70 kg
Dips: 3x8+12kg dumbbell between legs
Pullups: - (dropped when I learned how to deadlift halfway through)
Things I did wrong:
- Where to begin... My form on every single exercise was absolute crap. I just did what I thought would be okay and never thought twice about it (if only I had SL sooner!).
- I ate way too much and unhealthy at that. While my total weight gain was 13kg, I gained 10% BF!! That's another 8 kg, leaving only 5kg of muscle. This is a result of a combination of eating too much and the next thing I did wrong:
- I wasn't an intermediate trainee, but did the intermediate program anyway. Out of sheer ignorance. I thought having been to the gym before made me an intermediate trainee
. This severely reduced my gains since weight increments were weekly, instead of workout to workout.Things I liked:
- It worked.. Even though I messed up everything, weights still went up and I got bigger (..and fatter, but didn't care at the time, just wanted to get big and strong). As a teen I was always very skinny, weighing about 54kg at 1.70 m when I was 14-15.
- I did the program a 2nd and 3rd time some time later, with improved knowledge of technique and gained about 10kg on all my lifts at the same BW in 2 months.
- Most important thing: It taught me the basics of what a useful program should look like. (I never heard of Starting Strength or PPST)
- It taught me to focus on strength for progress measurement (I had been lifting the same weights for like 3 months doing the machine/ curl type thingy).
Remarks:
- Try the intermediate program when the SL5x5 beginner program isn't working for you anymore. Volume is alot less, a buildup to one heavy set of 5 on all exercises except assistance and the double squatset on wednesday (recovery/light day).
- If you're stuck at a plateau, the 1x3 on friday/ 1x5 on monday seems to break through it quite easily long as you eat enough.
- The light day really feels like a break, even though you have to deadlift heavy. It makes the program sustainable and keeps motivation high.
