Plateauing Lifts:
The first lifts to plateau will be the squat and deadlift. What I mean by plateau is that they will no longer progress from this style of programming. This is because you are handling a heavy enough load that the body now needs more time to recover from it. Plateauing is different to stalling; stalling is where you stop making progress but when you deload and work your way back up you can continue to make more progress.
The bench press and press will see more stalling compared to the squat and deadlift, but won't plateau as early.
There are people who have started on 5x5, and people who have started on Starting Strength so I will consider both cases in terms of how to modify your routine.
If You Started Out With 5x5:
Once you stall on a lift that you are doing 5x5 with (squat, bench, press, row), you should switch to 3x5. This will reduce the volume, and still allow you to continue to make linear progress. You will switch to 3x5 on the lifts at different times, because they will plateau at different times. Just because things stop working for one lift doesn't mean you need to change things for the other lifts if they were still progressing.
In essence you'll end up doing Stronglifts 3x5. The following sections will then also apply to you.
When the Deadlift Plateaus:
Eventually deadlifting heavy twice a week will be too much for the trainee (make sure the deadlift has plateaued first, if you are unsure, deload and try again and see if there is much of an improvement). What they can do instead is reduce deadlift frequency to once a week. The routine might look like this:
Monday
Squat 3-5x5
Bench 3-5x5 (will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Row 3-5x5
Wednesday
Squat 3-5x5
Overhead Press 3-5x5(will be switched with Bench Press in the following week)
Chin-ups
Friday
Squat 3-5x5
Bench 3-5x5(will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Deadlift 1 x 5
Note: I have written 3-5x5 because the deadlift may plateau before you need to switch from 5x5 to 3x5 on the other lifts.
Now deadlifting will occur every Friday. The reason I prefer to leave deadlifts on Fridays is so that you can still squat on Friday will 100% effort. I found I could get away with deadlifting on Wednesdays for a while, but eventually I had to move the deadlifts to Friday because my lower back would not recover in time for Friday's squatting.
When the Squat Plateaus:
Eventually squatting 3x5 will be too much for your body, because you are handling a heavy enough load that it takes longer than 48 hours for your body to fully recover from. What you can do in this case is change Wednesday's squat session into a light day. What you can do is instead substitute Wednesday's squat for front squats, with a load that is lighter, say 75-80% of the load you handled on Monday, for 3x3.
At this stage, you should be familiar enough with the back squat, that you can try to learn the front squat without it affecting your ability to back squat (i.e you can UNDERSTAND the difference between the 2 squat styles). If not, you're fucking up. Put in more effort to understand how the different squat styles work.
Put more effort into your squatting
This light squat day serves to give you more time to recover from Monday's squat session, and also pumps blood through the muscles involved in the squat to help reduce DOMS which was incurred from Monday's squats. On many occasions my legs felt less sore after I did light squats on Wednesday.
The routine will look something like this:
Monday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5 (will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Row
Wednesday
Front Squat 3 x 3 (80% of Monday's session)
Overhead Press 3 x 5(will be switched with Bench Press in the following week)
Chin-ups
Friday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5(will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Deadlift 1 x 5
Eventually this way of squatting will stop working too and you'll need to switch to another way of programming, known as intermediate programming (or weekly programming). I'll save this for another post.
When the Bench Press and Overhead Press Plateau:
Once you have exhausted your linear gains on the bench press and overhead press, I would consider that to be the end of your time on linar progression and it would be time to move on to a different style of programming (since you have already plateaued on linear progression for the squat and deadlift already).
Remember, to get the most out of your linear progress for the bench press and overhead press, you should use fractional plates (they weigh 0.5kg). They will allow you to take smaller weight increases than 2.5kg and will reduce the likelihood of stalling.
You may also wish to switch to 5 sets of 3 reps for the overhead press which worked pretty well for me. Don't be lazy with the overhead press, train it hard and you'll have healthy shoulders.
Power Cleans:
Power cleans are great. They are highly technical and force you to perform a forceful hip extension at just the right time and position in order to get the bar onto your shoulders. If I get better at them I'll do a post on this exercise :P There are plenty of useful resources on the internet though, Don McCauley and Glenn Pendlay are Olympic coaches who would have some good articles on the interwebs.
If you want to do power cleans, there's a few ways you can implement them into your routine:
Monday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5 (will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Row
Wednesday
Front Squat 3 x 3 (80% of Monday's session)
Overhead Press 3 x 5(will be switched with Bench Press in the following week)
Power Cleans 5 x 3
Chin-ups
Friday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5(will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Deadlift 1 x 5
Note that power cleans are performed much differently to deadlifts, in that they are eased off the floor in a controlled manner, and using the lats you sweep the bar inwards to keep the bar close to your body, then you accelerate as the bar passes your knees. This is much different to a deadlift where you drive your legs hard into the floor at the start to break the bar off the floor.
Assistance Exercises:
One final thing before I forget; assistance exercises. This includes pull-ups, dips, ab work and curls.
You can implement them into your routine like so:
Monday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5 (will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Row
Curls
Ab Work
Wednesday
Front Squat 3 x 3 (80% of Monday's session)
Overhead Press 3 x 5 (will be switched with Bench Press in the following week)
Chin-ups
Ab Work
Friday
Squat 3 x 5
Bench 3 x 5(will be switched with Overhead Press in the following week)
Deadlift 1 x 5
Dips
Ab Work
You might want to superset the ab work and assistance exercises to save time.
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