You can think that a program as simple as 5x5 does not need any explanation. That is true to an extent , however the program can be interpreted in a variety of ways. So let us directly go into the details and parameters involved in this program.
Warm-up:
Warm up exercises are recommended because of the heavy weights involved in this routine. Lifting heavy weight with warmed up muscles will allow your to lift more weight than you would with a cold muscle and also it will help you prevent any chances of injury. To warm-up your muscle, just do a set or two with about half or even less than half of the weight that you would use for a normal set.
For example if you do bench presses with 200 pounds do a set of 100 pound bench presses to get your muscles warmed up.
Ramping Weights:
This is basically increasing the weights set after set. If your top set is 315 x 5 then you might go with 135 x 5, 185 x 5, 225 x 5, 275 x 5 and then 315 x 5 to finish the movement. By this way you reach the workload without fatigue and you can overcome overtraining. If you try to do 315 x 5 for all 5 sets then the workload is lot higher and doing it couple of times will make you exhausted and you may not see any gains in terms of strength or muscle.
Ideally the jumps can be between 10-15% per set to ramp your way up.
Sample workout program:
Monday: Maximum effort day
Try to add 2.5% more weights to each lift
* Olympic Squats: 5X5
* Bench Press: 5X5
* Barbell Rows: 5X5
* Accessory exercises: weighted sit-ups and a tricep exercise (These exercises are done to round out the program and to help you keep the helping muscles strong and full. So the same 5 x 5 protocol need not be followed with these. 2-3 sets of 5-8 reps should be fine)
Wednesday: Light day
Reduce your weights by 25% on each lifts
* Front Squats: 5X5
* Military Press: 5X5
* Deadlifts: 5X5
* Pull-Ups: 5X5
* Accessory exercises: 2-3 sets of 5-8 reps of a bicep and abdominal exercise
Friday: Heavy day
Use same weight as Monday
* Olympic Squats: 5X5
* Bench Press: 5X5
* Barbell Row: 5X5
* Accessory exercises: 2-3 sets of 5-8 reps of a triceps and abdominal exercise
Progress:
In this program you will be working your whole body thrice a week. Hitting your body hard to failure on all three days will not actually help you grow but will eat up your gains.
If you notice the sample workout chart, we try to reach our maximum on Monday, drop the weights that we handle on Wednesday and try to use the same weights on Friday. On the next Monday we try to increase our lifts by 2.5%. Some people may think that this is very slow progress, but believe me 2.5% increase each week is very aggressive progress.
Final note:
As you all know diet is 80% of your physique goal, without a proper diet the program will not do any good for you. So get at least 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight and start eating more protein rich food and lot of complex carbohydrates to create the caloric surplus to aid muscle gain and strength gains.
With this program you can expect very aggressive strength gain accompanied with very good muscle gains.
Follow this program for 8 weeks and take a week off and you can continue on the same principle again and again in cycles till you see improvements on strength and gain muscle.
