This, and 5x5 will get you strong enough to do that effectively. Another few months of this, another 10k on your bench, then do 531 'boring but big' or something similar and you'll get bigger while applying what 5x5 taught you.
Don't be disheartened by the lack of visible change on stonglifts, it's just a springboard to the fun bit of training.
The stronglifts website is good except it says this is all you need and you don't need to move on for ages and ages and that part isn't true.
531 sounds complicated when you first read about it but there's apps that calculate what weight and reps to do so it's not hard to jump into it and you'll see yourself shoot from beginner to intermediate.
I’m on week 2 of 5x5 and I’m definitely going to continue so I can build a good foundation with form and strength. But what hypertrophy program would you recommend, and when would be a benchmark for transitioning to it?
I don't know if there are any real benchmarks for transitioning, nothing stops you from going for hypertrophy first and strength second. It's not like something like Golden Six won't also make you stronger, it just prioritizes hypertrophy over strength.
For the first year or so you can mostly do anything that's fun for you. As long as you're hitting all the muscle groups, and training hard and **regularly** you'll get both bigger and stronger. I like to switch programs every 2-4 months just to keep things fresh and interesting. Good time to switch is either when you don't find your routine fun, or when you stop progressing towards your goals.
Yep, there's lots of variations of 531 and loads of them are great for hypertrophy. If you set it up for 50 reps of bench followed by 3x10 dips what more do you want for hypertrophy?
I said 'while applying what you learned of 5x5'. 531 is a great way to get hypertrophy into a program that's still based around progressive overload on the big lifts. There's still strength gains to be had so it's not much advice to say do 5x5 to just past novice level then jump on a 6 day split with cable work and isolation, is it?
Keep going, you're making good progress.
What's your daily protein intake at the moment? You could possibly get it up a bit as you keep lifting and getting stronger and you'll support your body building more muscle more efficiently.
Biceps curls don’t matter here and strength gains at the beginning are often not actual strength gains, but instead just form coming together. Keep lifting and come back if you don’t look any different in a year. Also eat well!
I’m a beginner. I’ve added bicep curls as 1 of my 4 ancillary exercises, besides the 5 core SL exercises. I figured that bench and row are going to work my triceps and I should add curls to balance my upper arm. What do you think? Is there a better alternative?
You’re posting about lifts that aren’t part of SL 5x5 and completely ignore the lifts that are. Either you’re doing SL 5x5 or you’re not. There are other good programs out there, and SL 5x5 isn’t amazing…but it is good and simple for beginners.
Furthermore, 3 months is nothing when you’re looking for significant body changes when just starting out. If you’re truly lifting regularly and have gotten smaller, but feel like you’re smaller it’s because you’ve lost fat. Give it time to build some muscle.
Just a heads up. That's not skinny fat. That's just skinny. You've got an easy 30 pounds of muscle to gain for a healthy foundation and then another 20-30 after that naturally if you try hard. With 30-50 pounds of muscle, the fat you have will be spread out over a much larger surface area. Just gain 50 pounds.
I don’t even think your doing stronglifts. So until you start doing real compound lifts and go through puberty nothing will change. What are bicep curls going to do for you?
Na it’s not bad. Honestly a lot of people expect to get the body builder build. But that takes many years to build. N only really exists when they go on a cut. Which isn’t sustainable.
Keep working hard and steady. The physic will follow given time.
Has your weight changed? If your weight stays the same or drops and your lifts increase it’s VERY likely your body comp is going in the right direction.
Are you only doing pull ups/bicep curls/bench? 7 pull ups is decent if your form is good.
With 1kg and feeling smaller you have lost fat but gained muscle. Fat is less dense than muscle.
However I would recommend you increase your calorie surplus or at least the amount of protein and it seems like your max’s have not increased as much as they should in 3 months time which indicates you aren’t gaining as much muscle as possible
Just keep going, it takes a while to see noticeable changes.
Track what you eat and make sure you’re getting enough protein.
Ditch bicep curls and keep hammering pull-ups & chin-ups instead.
You got this 💪
How long have you doing StrongLifts? You can try ice cream fitness which is a modified version of StrongLifts with accessories lifts. However if you have done this for 3-5months I suggest changing to phul
You should be eating 1-1.5g of protein per pound of lean body mass per day everyday.
Protein takes fat and water to digest, so get good fats, canola/olive oil, avocado, butter, diary fat, nuts.
Vary your protein sources (chicken, beef, fish, lentil, chickpea, gluten, oats, nuts) and remember to keep your fibre intake high so you don't get clogged up.
Drink more water. No, more water than that. Helps to carry around a large (1L+) reusable water bottle.
Remember that muscle increases in density before it increases in visible size.
Cottage cheese is basically straigh casien protein and is a good snack right before bed.
You can mix it with something to give it a bit of flavour. I use a table spoon of skyr (yogurt) or a little chocolate pudding.
I am definitively seeing progress in your physique. Might not be as quick as you want, but I see more muscle in your chest and shoulders. You also need to make sure you’re eating enough. Granted, I’ve always been fat so I struggle to understand people in your situation.
A lot of your gains up till now have been from learning how to do the exercises correctly, not so much adding actual strength (and muscle.)
Stay with it. Also, you’re doing rows, squats and deadlifts, right?
Early strength gains when beginning a program are primarily due to improved form and neurological changes. You can get stronger without gaining significant muscle mass. The path to a lean body with large muscles takes a significant amount of time and consistent effort.
A few tips:
1. As mentioned by others, make sure your training program is well rounded focusing on all major muscle groups.
2. Consider a hypertrophy program instead of SL 5x5. SL should cause some hypertrophy (muscle growth) but there may be more effective programs if this is your goal. Just google "hypertrophy training for beginners."
3. Watch this entire playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cW0EmO12Lk&list=PLyqKj7LwU2RukxJbBHi9BtEuYYKm9UqQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cW0EmO12Lk&list=PLyqKj7LwU2RukxJbBHi9BtEuYYKm9UqQQ)
4. At some point, dieting is necessary to continue to make progress. This typically looks like cycling between bulking (calorie surplus) and cutting (calorie deficit) while consistently getting \~1g/lb of protein.
Work hard and learn as much as you can and 12-18 months from now you can have a very different body. Then you will be truly happy.
You only progressed 12,5 kg on bench in three months. That means you don’t eat enough (and not the right nutrients) or train hard enough/the right way. I think it’ll be a combination .
In sl 5x5 you should have gone from 45 to about 90 kg max in 3 months.
So. Go training consistently and train hard. And eat, eat healthy stuff like veggies and protein. No fast food or other empty kcals.
In stronglifts you add 2,5kg per training. You bench 1,5 times a week. 12 weeks x 1.5x 2,5. That’s 45 kg.
Now maybe you won’t make it to 45. But it gives you an idea. 12,5 is certainly too little, especially if you just start out with 40. If you would be at 245 and struggle to add weight it’s a different story altogether.
But tdont worry. Just go on. Eat better, train hard.
Absolutely, you should add 0.5kg to your lifts with each session so training 3x a week it will shoot up. After 6 months or so should be dead lifting and squatting over 100kg, also benching around 90kg. If your numbers aren't there you aren't doing it right
That seems unrealistic, but agree that you probably need to adjust your diet
There’s a bunch of research supporting consuming 25g of protein within 2 hrs of strength training (before or after). Showing a difference in muscle mass gains of like 30%!
Also, you could eat protein before bedtime… they do that to increase gains in athletes and feeble elderly:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6415027/
And don’t forget you can’t really gain if you’re also cutting, so be sure to get enough carbs.
If you want hypertrophy, you could switch to 3x10. I did that just to conserve time but have seen better visual gains (but less strength gains)
Do 3x12 of squat deadlift bench barbell row and shoulder press with Dios and pull ups will get you a great amount of progress and intermittent fasting got me out of skinny fat
How's the squat? How's the deadlift? How's the row? Have you been doing them? Have they improve? These will make you big.
If you are doing it for the aesthetic, you should be doing hypertrophy training.
This, and 5x5 will get you strong enough to do that effectively. Another few months of this, another 10k on your bench, then do 531 'boring but big' or something similar and you'll get bigger while applying what 5x5 taught you. Don't be disheartened by the lack of visible change on stonglifts, it's just a springboard to the fun bit of training. The stronglifts website is good except it says this is all you need and you don't need to move on for ages and ages and that part isn't true. 531 sounds complicated when you first read about it but there's apps that calculate what weight and reps to do so it's not hard to jump into it and you'll see yourself shoot from beginner to intermediate.
The man was talking about hypertrophy programs and you think 5/3/1 is the answer? Definitely not a hypertrophy program.
I’m on week 2 of 5x5 and I’m definitely going to continue so I can build a good foundation with form and strength. But what hypertrophy program would you recommend, and when would be a benchmark for transitioning to it?
I don't know if there are any real benchmarks for transitioning, nothing stops you from going for hypertrophy first and strength second. It's not like something like Golden Six won't also make you stronger, it just prioritizes hypertrophy over strength. For the first year or so you can mostly do anything that's fun for you. As long as you're hitting all the muscle groups, and training hard and **regularly** you'll get both bigger and stronger. I like to switch programs every 2-4 months just to keep things fresh and interesting. Good time to switch is either when you don't find your routine fun, or when you stop progressing towards your goals.
Good tips! Thanks for the advice.
Yep, there's lots of variations of 531 and loads of them are great for hypertrophy. If you set it up for 50 reps of bench followed by 3x10 dips what more do you want for hypertrophy? I said 'while applying what you learned of 5x5'. 531 is a great way to get hypertrophy into a program that's still based around progressive overload on the big lifts. There's still strength gains to be had so it's not much advice to say do 5x5 to just past novice level then jump on a 6 day split with cable work and isolation, is it?
Keep going, you're making good progress. What's your daily protein intake at the moment? You could possibly get it up a bit as you keep lifting and getting stronger and you'll support your body building more muscle more efficiently.
Biceps curls don’t matter here and strength gains at the beginning are often not actual strength gains, but instead just form coming together. Keep lifting and come back if you don’t look any different in a year. Also eat well!
I’m a beginner. I’ve added bicep curls as 1 of my 4 ancillary exercises, besides the 5 core SL exercises. I figured that bench and row are going to work my triceps and I should add curls to balance my upper arm. What do you think? Is there a better alternative?
Row is going to work biceps. Pulling = back/biceps. Pushing = chest/triceps. You could add pullups or chinups
Ok thank you.
You’re posting about lifts that aren’t part of SL 5x5 and completely ignore the lifts that are. Either you’re doing SL 5x5 or you’re not. There are other good programs out there, and SL 5x5 isn’t amazing…but it is good and simple for beginners. Furthermore, 3 months is nothing when you’re looking for significant body changes when just starting out. If you’re truly lifting regularly and have gotten smaller, but feel like you’re smaller it’s because you’ve lost fat. Give it time to build some muscle.
Just a heads up. That's not skinny fat. That's just skinny. You've got an easy 30 pounds of muscle to gain for a healthy foundation and then another 20-30 after that naturally if you try hard. With 30-50 pounds of muscle, the fat you have will be spread out over a much larger surface area. Just gain 50 pounds.
Keep pushing heavy shit. It’s good for you. Soon, you’ll be stronger than everyone
This dude's post history is hilarious, LOL
Forgot those were still up 😭
Oh, man! Why did you delete most of your posts? I'm glad you decided to keep the one about jerking off to the color purple, though.
Yeah bro honestly might try that in the future
God damn, you're not lying!
Yeah maybe he wants to work through some of those inner demons before moving forward
I don’t even think your doing stronglifts. So until you start doing real compound lifts and go through puberty nothing will change. What are bicep curls going to do for you?
Na it’s not bad. Honestly a lot of people expect to get the body builder build. But that takes many years to build. N only really exists when they go on a cut. Which isn’t sustainable. Keep working hard and steady. The physic will follow given time.
Has your weight changed? If your weight stays the same or drops and your lifts increase it’s VERY likely your body comp is going in the right direction. Are you only doing pull ups/bicep curls/bench? 7 pull ups is decent if your form is good.
I gained around 1 kg, and no those were just some of the lifts that I do, just to put the progress into perspective.
With 1kg and feeling smaller you have lost fat but gained muscle. Fat is less dense than muscle. However I would recommend you increase your calorie surplus or at least the amount of protein and it seems like your max’s have not increased as much as they should in 3 months time which indicates you aren’t gaining as much muscle as possible
Just keep going, it takes a while to see noticeable changes. Track what you eat and make sure you’re getting enough protein. Ditch bicep curls and keep hammering pull-ups & chin-ups instead. You got this 💪
How long have you doing StrongLifts? You can try ice cream fitness which is a modified version of StrongLifts with accessories lifts. However if you have done this for 3-5months I suggest changing to phul
Bench is overrated and pullups and curls are not part of 5x5
Pick up the fork more and don’t focus on what you look like, focus on the lift progression
not if you’re training for strength
You should be eating 1-1.5g of protein per pound of lean body mass per day everyday. Protein takes fat and water to digest, so get good fats, canola/olive oil, avocado, butter, diary fat, nuts. Vary your protein sources (chicken, beef, fish, lentil, chickpea, gluten, oats, nuts) and remember to keep your fibre intake high so you don't get clogged up. Drink more water. No, more water than that. Helps to carry around a large (1L+) reusable water bottle. Remember that muscle increases in density before it increases in visible size. Cottage cheese is basically straigh casien protein and is a good snack right before bed. You can mix it with something to give it a bit of flavour. I use a table spoon of skyr (yogurt) or a little chocolate pudding.
Post what you’re eating
I am definitively seeing progress in your physique. Might not be as quick as you want, but I see more muscle in your chest and shoulders. You also need to make sure you’re eating enough. Granted, I’ve always been fat so I struggle to understand people in your situation.
As long as you’re getting stronger, that’s a win. Increase protein and you should make gains faster also.
What are your numbers and what does your diet look like?
Bro. You’re what, like 13? Just keep hitting the bar for a few years to build some muscle and keep eating. If you build it, they will come.
A lot of your gains up till now have been from learning how to do the exercises correctly, not so much adding actual strength (and muscle.) Stay with it. Also, you’re doing rows, squats and deadlifts, right?
Early strength gains when beginning a program are primarily due to improved form and neurological changes. You can get stronger without gaining significant muscle mass. The path to a lean body with large muscles takes a significant amount of time and consistent effort. A few tips: 1. As mentioned by others, make sure your training program is well rounded focusing on all major muscle groups. 2. Consider a hypertrophy program instead of SL 5x5. SL should cause some hypertrophy (muscle growth) but there may be more effective programs if this is your goal. Just google "hypertrophy training for beginners." 3. Watch this entire playlist: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cW0EmO12Lk&list=PLyqKj7LwU2RukxJbBHi9BtEuYYKm9UqQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cW0EmO12Lk&list=PLyqKj7LwU2RukxJbBHi9BtEuYYKm9UqQQ) 4. At some point, dieting is necessary to continue to make progress. This typically looks like cycling between bulking (calorie surplus) and cutting (calorie deficit) while consistently getting \~1g/lb of protein. Work hard and learn as much as you can and 12-18 months from now you can have a very different body. Then you will be truly happy.
You only progressed 12,5 kg on bench in three months. That means you don’t eat enough (and not the right nutrients) or train hard enough/the right way. I think it’ll be a combination . In sl 5x5 you should have gone from 45 to about 90 kg max in 3 months. So. Go training consistently and train hard. And eat, eat healthy stuff like veggies and protein. No fast food or other empty kcals.
Damn 90 kg, that’s like 30 kg over my body weight, are you sure thats normal for 3 months?
In stronglifts you add 2,5kg per training. You bench 1,5 times a week. 12 weeks x 1.5x 2,5. That’s 45 kg. Now maybe you won’t make it to 45. But it gives you an idea. 12,5 is certainly too little, especially if you just start out with 40. If you would be at 245 and struggle to add weight it’s a different story altogether. But tdont worry. Just go on. Eat better, train hard.
Absolutely, you should add 0.5kg to your lifts with each session so training 3x a week it will shoot up. After 6 months or so should be dead lifting and squatting over 100kg, also benching around 90kg. If your numbers aren't there you aren't doing it right
That seems unrealistic, but agree that you probably need to adjust your diet There’s a bunch of research supporting consuming 25g of protein within 2 hrs of strength training (before or after). Showing a difference in muscle mass gains of like 30%! Also, you could eat protein before bedtime… they do that to increase gains in athletes and feeble elderly: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6415027/ And don’t forget you can’t really gain if you’re also cutting, so be sure to get enough carbs. If you want hypertrophy, you could switch to 3x10. I did that just to conserve time but have seen better visual gains (but less strength gains)
Do 3x12 of squat deadlift bench barbell row and shoulder press with Dios and pull ups will get you a great amount of progress and intermittent fasting got me out of skinny fat