Alex E. has doubts about the effectiveness of the StrongLifts 5x5 program. Read the interesting argument he emailed me. Quote...
If the StrongLifts 5x5 program is so unbelievably effective, why doesn't EVERYONE at the gym use it?
Because the majority is always wrong. Most people struggle with money, have bad relationships and are out-of-shape fat slobs. Quite bluntly, their life sucks. Yet they copy eachother likes monkeys and give unsolicited advice at every single opportunity they get. Worse, they feel compelled to criticize us and call us freaks, even though we're actually getting results. They're nuts.
Look, when I joined the gym in 1999, I was completely clueless. Everybody was doing split routines. So I did split routines. And, guess what? After 17 weeks of relentless benching and curling, I had almost no results to show for, hit a brick wall and my motivation was shattered. I swear I’ve sat on the bench, right after struggling to get my normal reps, one emotional hair-trigger away from tossing the barbell into the mirror and never stepping into a gym again.
Now, I'm no a genius, but I quickly figured out there was something wrong with the way I trained. So I sought for help, met my mentor, started doing Squats and that's how I surpassed all the other guys in the gym in record time.
Today, it's obvious to me and all my StrongLifts Members that Squats are quite simply imperative to put on rock-hard muscle and real-world strength as fast as humanly possible. Nevertheless, most gym guys don't do Squats and the few who Squat do frigging partials because "Squatting deep is bad for your knees"...
Consequently, these same guys never achieve the physique and strength they want, spin their wheels for weeks, get burned with bogus supplement because they thought that was the missing ingredient and eventually quit.
Yet everybody keeps copying everyone, expecting different results, but making the exact same mistakes like fish biting into a hook. Einstein called that insanity, expecting different results from doing the same thing over and over. Nuts.
The truth is that most guys have no idea what they're doing, why they're doing it and don't ever realize it isn't even working. Heck, they won't take the time to read an actual book on how to train, but read muscle magazines supplement catalogs in disguise, while calling you a bookworm for educating yourself.
Earl Nightingale said that whenever you have no idea how to achieve your goal, a foolproof technique is to look at how the overwhelming majority tackles the problem and do the exact opposite. Fact is, most people are dead wrong.
I do my best to follow that advice, so should you. Dare to be different.
I wholeheartedly agree on this philosophy. Just too bad that most gym instructors are part of the majority and keep interfering in a solid SL workout with their unsolicited referral to machines, partials and curls. It’s become so bad I now only work out after 21.30, when the personal trainers have gone and can no longer nag about how I’m destroying my knees by squatting below parallel. And those guys are supposed to be the experts teaching us how to train. Forget about it.
very solid answer mehdi. very well writen.
I completely agree. I did the wrong thing for years, reading the wrong articles, listening to the wrong people. Then I finally found this site, and through it the work of Mark Rippetoe and it all makes sense.
I still see bodybuilders at the gym giving bodybuilding split routines to skinny guys and fat girls and they eat it up. Its not my place to tell them they’re wrong. If they’re smart and resourceful they’ll figure it out for themselves, like we all did.
D.
As you was saying above motivation is one of the biggest factors that will determine your results. My favourite excuse is down to rugby injuries and going back to the gym once recovered my motivation is further diminished by the drop in weights I am able to lift. Obviously this is just an excuse and I need to get back on that proverbial horse. (Which I hope you’ll be happy to know I have this week).
I’d also like to take this opportunity to say I love your work and I am very happy to of found it when I was just starting out in the gym.
Regards Jake.
I have seen huge guys who do not squat or deadlift. But I’d be willing to bet they are on roids. They are the ones that look like Lou Ferrigno from the waste up and Napoleon Dynamite from the waste down. I never squatted and had little results. Doing stronglifts and squatting has added alot of size to my frame. I don’t know why (scientifically) but it does work. Me before and me after squats are 2 totally different looking people.
Unfortunately popular culture rules today. If there’s a gym scene in a Hollywood movie, you can be pretty certain that it’ll show a guy doing bicep curls, or a girl doing aerobics.
This is probably one of your best works yet, Sir. I love your program and I love the benefits that I am getting.
I will always be proud to be a Stronglifter.
Regards,
Justin
SAD BUT TRUE! SO TRUE!!! Most people just have no personal discipline.
“Most people struggle with money, have bad relationships and are out-of-shape fat slobs. Quite bluntly, their life sucks. Yet they copy eachother likes monkeys and give unsolicited advice at every single opportunity they get. Worse, they feel compelled to criticize us and call us freaks, even though we’re actually getting results. They’re nuts.”
In general people are sheep. Easily led. If you dig a little deeper, you can start to really get an idea for why programs like SL 5×5 and Starting Strength don’t get more publicity. So let’s break it down:
1. Most gyms cater to people who just “want to be fit”, not knowing what that means.
2. Most gyms have tons of machines and they have to be used to justify the space they take up and the expense the gym paid for them.
3. Personal trainers are there to teach you how to use machines. Plain and simple. I worked with a personal trainer a couple years back and _every week_ he changed the routine on me. I had no clue what I should be doing.
4. SL 5×5 and Starting Strength aren’t selling anything. You don’t have to have supplements or buy specialized equipment to do it. It’s hard to build a business around something so simple.
5. Machines are less intimidating than free weights. My wife is only one week into SL 5×5 and still feels this way. It’ll take a couple more weeks for her to feel really comfortable with it.
When you go gym shopping, and all the gym has is free weights and racks, what’s your reaction? For most people they don’t feel like they belong there. They’re afraid of the free weights. They’re afraid of the “muscle heads” they perceive are the only ones who go to that type of gym. But if you go to a gym and they have all kinds of cardio and other machines most people feel a bit more at ease.
I have to hand it to my gym in that the personal trainers who are asked to do a proper weight training routine will teach squats the right way. They’ll even teach deadlifts. I just didn’t see it until after I started SL 5×5. They still perpetuate the split routine thing, but at least it’s a more challenging version.
A pretty stupid question anyway.
Why would EVERYONE be doing the same thing in the gym? People’s goals are different, as are their levels.
As great as 5×5 works, it would be keen to remember that is being promoted for individuals who are beginner level trainees (in the sense that they can progress linearly work out to work out) interested in building strength.
The strength of a training program should be measured in two areas: its ability to facilitate progress towards the goals of the program and its ability to manage the trainee at the level which the program is intended for.
Now let’s shut up and squat.
I also suspect that for the majority of people, getting fit = cardio and lifting weights = looking like Michelin Man.
I was not motivated to go to the gym because like many others I was doing the split routine, not eating the right things and of course not seeing any results.
Strong Lifts has taught me following things
1] You don’t need 10 exercises to build strength, especially get a solid base
2] Incremental increase builds strength and keeps you motivated
3] Don’t exercise because your primary goal is getting AWESOME cut body. Do it for gaining real strength and feeling real strong
4] This was MOST critical because I have ganglion cyst and I was afraid I will hurt my wrist. LEARN THE TECHNIQUE. After doing SL5x5 for 8 weeks and benching close to 100lbs I haven’t hurt my wrist yet. I realized I got ganglion cyst because of bad technique.
Human nature is to go for shortcuts, not take the long hardworking route, and for majority gym is mainly to LOOK GOOD..
‘Cause the people in the gym that I go to haven’t even heard of 5×5, or they’ve heard it before, but as soon as they discover that it’s just a 3-exercise program per session, they quickly dismiss it and dub it as “not enough.”
So true. I started starting strength about 12 weeks ago and have gained more mass, strength, and general muscle thickness (that people notice and comment on) than I did on 14 straight months of split routines last year. I haven’t done a curl or a triceps extension in weeks and my arms have gotten thicker and more muscular. I never would have believed that doing a handful of huge compound exercises three times a week would make me big all over (well, bigger) in such a short period of time unless I actually experienced it myself. And nobody ever said anything about my form until I started doing deep squats – now every jackass is an expert telling me to look at the ceiling and only do partials, etc. But I’m up to 230lbs on squats, 315 on deadlifts, 105 on OP, and 175 on bench. Way more weight than I could ever move doing a ton of sets with 8-12 reps. WAY more. It feels awesome to get stronger.
And once i get my new place, I’ll be setting my squat rack back up at home so I don’t have to listen to “experts” tell me what I’m doing wrong, even while I’m lifting more than they are.
So Alex E., doubt no more. Linear progression works. Big time. Just make sure to eat, too.
Exercise and eating right will keep you from getting fat, but not everyone does it…
“why doesn’t EVERYONE at the gym use it?”
I thought the same thing and then started doing more research and realized that EVERYONE at the Olympics is using some variant of this program. Those are the people at the top of the discipline and if that’s how they got strong then that’s how I want to get strong.
Before SL5x5 I was one of those people who ‘needed’ a partner to keep me motivated to go to the gym. Now, in week 5 the motivation is seeing the weight going up linearly each workout. I don’t need anyone to push me. I *want* to do it. I even wake up to work out @ 5:30 am without an alarm clock because the program is so successful at getting me results.
And now that the weights are starting to get heavy for me its nice to only have 5 sets (after warm-ups) to do. After 3 sets and I start getting tired I look down and realize I only have to do 2 more sets and that motivates me again since I know I can knock out 10 more reps and then I’m done.
“Does history record any case in which the majority was right?” Robert A. Heinlein
Berin said:
In general people are sheep. Easily led. If you dig a little deeper, you can start to really get an idea for why programs like SL 5×5 and Starting Strength don’t get more publicity. So let’s break it down:
1. Most gyms cater to people who just “want to be fit”, not knowing what that means.
2. Most gyms have tons of machines and they have to be used to justify the space they take up and the expense the gym paid for them.
—–
So so true. The gym I go to is better than most commercial gyms in my area as it actually has a power rack and lots of free weights. It sucks though in that it has only 1 power rack,1 bench press bench and a whopping 3 Olympic bars. At the same time it has a hammer strength machine for every body part and 3 smith machines. I put in a request for another power rack and some more Olympic bars and the response was: there is no room.
I guess the upside to the original question of why everyone isn’t doing some variant of the 5×5 routine is that with 90% of the people doing split routines on machines and Smith machine squats, I don’t often have to wait for my turn on the power rack.
Well written post. I was on a bodybuilding split forever and I am called a beast because of my size. Now I don’t have to worry about being ridiculously sore and thinking twice about going to the gym the next day to put my body through another piece of hell to just tempt me to stay in the bed a lot longer and eventually not go at all.for weeks! Now I hit the gym at 530 in the morning and get there before the trainers do. I know they look at me strange for coming in so early and doing the same thing every time and working with such small weight. But, they are all still smaller than me so they don’t say much. I love the fact that I get my cardio by shortening the rest periods during my warm ups and pushing at the target weight for the day. Not to mention I save tons of gas money by only going 3x a week. I’m not a sucker and I have always been an advocate of unconventional wisdom and this program is right up my alley. From the looks of it, I ‘ll be squatting 400lbs by the end of summer!
My first thought when seing this page was: how does this guy make money, since most guys dont give out anything for free. When reading this stuff it became apparent, that u give strenght building lessons and also have another job. So I thought: I might give SL a shot, since I understood ur motivation behind this page.
Now I’m not particularily strong, but squatting 80 kilos by now and recently improved my technique a lot. I can now even carry my girlfriend… I want to thank you for the content, since it really works and improved my well feeling by quite a bit.
I think most people want to get results without hard work. It’s much easier to do high rep iso exercise with 1-2 minutes in between sets, since the weight will have to be fairly small. This way the body isn’t worked hard, yet person is tired and feels “the burn”. This only feels like some heavy excercising was done. Now, to lift an extremly heavy compound for only 5 reps would be too much work – it’s just too heavy! No burn, no pump, only exhastion and feeling of wanting to puke and pass out.
Who would enjoy that?
Who would like all that damaging and unnecessary work?
Who would want to not hit muscles from all the angles and not get pumped?
Who would want to eat all that cholesterol and loose the sight of their abs?
Who wouldn’t want to stay up late for another beer or another episode on TV?
I know I do.
Off to deadlift.
Then I’m nuts. I left school (no money), my girlfriend piss me off every two or three days, … What’s wrong with me heh ? Must be my sick brain, telling me that training is better than studying, that good and healthy food is better than pizza beer partys, that being different is better than being nobody…
Damn I wished live would be more easy but at the same time, i like it like that
Stronglifts is a solid program,truth is though as long as you do compound lifts and put in the effort you will grow on any program. I find bodybuilding split works just as well for me and 8-10reps gives me more muscle,but stronglifts and starting strengh are both awesome programs for beginners.
Not only do I love reading the articles but I love reading the comments and replies keep it up Medhi and fellow lifters.
I’ll tell you why I think not everyone does it at the gym because they “want to be tone” and think 12 weeks of SL will turn them into incredible hulk. When in reality if you want to be toned you need a solid strength base and muscle building to begin with and 12 weeks of SL will do that for you. Its also disrespectful for people to think it only takes a short time of lifting heavy weights to get huge, power lifters and bodybuilders take in extreme amounts of calories and dedicate years to achieve such results.
This is my favorite post yet! Lots of quotable lines in there…..
“Because the majority is always wrong.” So true.
The Earl Nightingale quote is great as well.
Good job Mehdi!
“Why doesn’t EVERYONE do it?”
Because it’s HARD!
“but read muscle magazines supplement catalogs in disguise,”
wait! all the bs is just starting; witness todays post at daily beast titled: Invasion of the Bodybuilders
hahaha
thanks for great work Mehdi
Very Well Put!!
i am constantly bombarded the trainers telling me that i am going to break my back doing heavy squats and deadlifts and i am sick of it..
The wisdom of the ‘functional’ trainer who believes progression better comes through engagement of more muscle fibres through unstable surface training are the first to pick on deep squats. Yet have no answer when you point out the risk factor of doing squats on a bosu ball.