When to start madcow 5x5
Counterfeit Programming?! Review of Stronglifts and Madcow; 5x5 Novice Linear Progression Explained
I strongly encourage you to pay homage
to the wise elders that came before you
to no longer refer to these as strong
lifts or Mad Cow because they are very
clearly what's going on guys finally at
Empire barbell and today I want to cover
a couple of LP programs that have been
requested from you guys so I want to go
over a timeline here because in covering
strong lists in Mad Cow these programs
have been aware of and never leave dug
into these I started to get a job they
started to look familiar when I dug in a
little bit I saw something that I think
is important to at least understand the
timeline in the history of program
development and to kind of give credit
where credit is due because these
programs are very obvious either
imitations of other more well-known
programs or outright copies of them I'm
not saying that's intentional
I think it's as they've gotten popular
people have known them they've kind of
mistakenly given credit where it
shouldn't be but I'm gonna break apart
strong lifts and Mad Cow specifically
had a strong list is essentially
starting strength and Mad Cow is exactly
bill stars power program so I'm gonna
break that down how they're similar how
that timeline happened why think it
happened I don't think there was really
a lot of funny business it was just how
things on the internet evolved and you
know the game of telephone people lose
information every time something gets
passed around but I'm gonna break that
down right now strong lifts is an a/b
split this is strong lifts a strong this
B it follows compound movements that's
the backbone of all basic programming
structure especially linear progressions
squatting benching rowing dead lifting
so strong lifts is five by five on squat
bench in rows and on day two on the
second day its squat overhead press and
deadlifts now dead lists are done for
one set of five and set a five sets of
five die dia being the deadlifts are
harder to recover from so you need less
volume especially with the high
squatting frequency so if you're doing
three days a week you're going a B a and
then the next week B a B you're going to
be squatting three days a week you're
going to be doing some type of pressing
three days we
going back and forth between bench and
overhead and I'm gonna be dead lifting
once or twice a week but only for one
set so it shouldn't be that detrimental
and you progressed linearly so you start
back some percentage of what a five rep
max would be so you can do the minimum
amount of work and then it's time goes
on you add five to ten pounds every
session and as a novice you should be
able to progress well beyond your five
rep max
indefinitely until you hit a brick wall
which should be several months down the
road you should be a lot stronger by
then starting shrank is essentially the
exact same split a B except it's three
sets of five instead of five set to five
it's still one set a deadlift and it
cleans instead of rows four triples
because cleans are explosive so you
don't do them for higher reps five six
to three but other than that it rotates
the same so the main difference are
cleans instead of rows and three sets of
five instead of five sets of five the
the set count is entirely arbitrary it's
just 100% arbitrary if you if you are
volumizing you're trying to build volume
over time or adding volume to what
you're doing that exposure to ever
increasing volume is what drives growth
this is not volumizing as much as it is
intensifying because you are adding
adding weight the volume will go up very
slowly but the intensity jumps up very
linearly thus linear progression if you
are starting a complete baseline if you
are completely sedentary and you go to
some amount of workout that exposure
breaks you out of homeostasis and causes
you to grow from there it is the changes
in each successive workout that continue
to spur growth so starting at five sets
as opposed to three is not very
consequential it's not really at all
because the changes are the same your
baseline from going sedentary to
training whether it's three sets or five
sets it's the change is week to week
that spur progress and those changes are
the simple addition of five to ten
pounds every session so it's essentially
the same now getting the timeline
straight support understand the G
players mark Grippit o row starting
strength I believe in 2000 mark grip toe
row starting strength in 2005 and then
he published practical programming the
next year in 2006 mark repeat always
have
influenced by Bill starveling he trained
directly under Bill star and Bill star
was a has a couple books and is well
known from being a strength training guy
from the 70s he wrote strongest she'll
survive and there's a lot of bill star
five-by-five routines in there 5x5 s go
back to like the 30s like the 30s the
day era of reg Park and John Grimm occur
talk about the 50s and 60s you're
talking about way back in time when
training was very simplistic and people
didn't have a ton of resources that's
what they did so there's nothing new
Under the Sun but this is a very obvious
imitation of starting strength now
strong list is run by a guy named Eddie
who's a computer programmer who like to
live Medhi started his website strong
lists before everybody really had access
to the Internet in that way back then
and you had to have some type of
programming background you had to kind
of know what you're doing you can just
want to wake some sort of website so
many was on a forum that this mad cow
gentleman was on and apparently Glenn
Penley was on anonymously from time to
time as well that forum ended up going
under many ended up backing up a lot of
information and he ended up starting
this this large strong list website
which it has a lot of good information
but it's so long form to me it looks
like something that was just optimized
for search engine results where the same
keywords are repeated over and over it's
very wordy very lengthy it might be a
good resource for some of you but a lot
of it is just very lengthy and it
contains really the same very similar
principles we're looking at up here so
this strong list program so you're
looking at strong list starting by medi
in 2007 that was well after starting
strength was published we know that they
were influenced by Glenn Penn Leigh and
Mark Grippit oh because Penn Lee was
part of the forum that they were on
supposedly Penley trained out of Wichita
Falls so you have Ripa Taub who is
training under Bill Starr
he takes those principles and goes on to
write starting strength to pack
practical program 2005-2006 he's
training Wichita Falls Athletic Club
which is where Glenn Headley is training
Glen pan Leigh subsequently stumbles
across the Texas method there's a whole
backstory about how a lifter one
get out of doing his fives across so he
said if you could hit a max five you're
out of your work you get out of doing
your work for today and then they ended
up just carrying that on and found it
was a very good balance for more
intermediate lifters of intensity versus
volume versus recovery days so
subsequently Rippa toe ended up putting
that in practical programming and Texas
math they'd kind of got attached a
starting strength as a natural evolution
of what a novice might do is they get
stronger and breaking Hydra media
territory so knowing that Penley
influenced these guys because he was on
the forum that mehdi and this mad cow
character were on moving on to mad cow a
lot of people will credit mad cows
having been influenced by Texas method
because supposedly this guy who as of
right now is an anonymous person I
haven't heard anybody cited as an actual
person was supposedly in contact with
Glenn Pedley and they said the Texas
method
it was inspiration for this now we can
see the Mad Cow methodology you're
looking at five by fives on day one
you'll get a heavy triple on day three
and in the middle you have recovery
lighter percentages that's pretty close
to the Texas method a subtle difference
is the fives are ramping fives so you're
actually ramping up to a hundred percent
of your five rep max so that's still
like a max five-day yes there's more
volume but not nearly as much as if you
did five sets across at the same weight
so this is a heavy day and this is a
heavier day 102 percent of your fiber at
max done for a triple and in the middle
two to four sets of five going up to
seventy-five percent incline our
overhead press earlier ratios incline I
saw get reproduces overhead press
deadlift is still one set of five and
then you have some token accessories now
mad cow is literally exactly verbatim
bill stars power program bills bill
stars power program didn't show up in
his later publications strongly she'll
survive whatever other publications yeah
now people are familiar bill stars 5x5
which is simple 5x5 routine that
inspired a lot of this but his power
program was first put on line it looks
like in 1999 Chris man dry published on
deep squatter and you could still find
it up there today his power program that
built
gave him and outlined it very
specifically this is it exactly that it
even has the back offset of eight that's
seventy seven and a half percent you hit
fives all the way up to a top three you
drop the weight you do a set of eight
these exercise accessory movements these
supplementary accessory movements are
exactly the same dips curls and tricep
work sit-ups weighted sit-ups back
extensions 100% exactly the same
I don't think mad cow was being
disingenuous I don't know because I was
on the forum but this is known as mad
cow this is 100 percent bill stars
routine it's not mad cow which bill
stars power program so it's important to
know that so I don't think any real
funny business was going on with Mad Cow
but I think the whole interpretation of
how this came about it's just a matter
of fuzzy information being passed around
just entropy the information gets lost
this time goes on so I think that that's
just a natural evolution of
misinformation on a platform like the
Internet
however I am a little bit more
judgmental of medi because Mehdi was
obviously optimizing his website to be
an authority site he had a decked out
for search engine optimization it still
ranks today even though it's kind of
very very old very plain information to
saw something he's actively kept up for
a long period of time and this is a very
obvious twist he named it strong lifts
he called it strong lifts he says very
plainly his write-ups he didn't invent
5x5 but he leaves out and all of that
starting strength and my belief is that
starting strength was knew enough
there's only a year to removed before
starting strength really developed the
following that it has today I don't know
if he thought he could get away with it
or if you thought that just adding a
couple sets maybe get a 5x5 instead of a
three by five and swapping out the
cleans was a big enough change to rename
it this is not proprietary this is a
pretty blatant copy so I take issue with
referring to strong lifts as anything
other than a starting straight knockoff
so I think it's important you guys know
that I have another video that compares
starting strength with the Texas method
again Texas method is a little similar
to Bill Starr's power program
differences between Bill stars power
program and the Texas method are not
substantial the main difference is
you're working up to a ramping five so
five sets leading up to 100% of a fiber
at max I would actually biased towards
the Texas method to do your sets across
so you actually have a clear cut volume
day and a clear cut heavy day and then
progressed accordingly everything else
is so damn similar it's not even worth
discussing I believe that that's an
example of convergence I don't think
that pen lay ripped off bill Starr's
power program I think you have enough
good ideas that are out there in the
ether and it was far enough removed and
there were influenced by the same types
of people eventually you come you end up
good ideas you end up coming to
accidentally on your own anyway so it's
very validating when you get a really
good idea on your own and you find them
to just happen to converge with the
other old wisdom from the past so I
think that's a pretty clear-cut example
of that I would bias towards Texas
method over this but try both there are
some templates that give you some good
recommendations on where to start
exactly how to progress it's a little
more cut and dry and I think anybody
that follows any of these routines
diligently is going to benefit if you're
a little doer start here for several
months and then you move to the to the
logical advancement which is to go to
something a little more intermediate
that spreads those difficult efforts
apart so it's not a Bab where plus five
pounds plus five pound PR PR PR PR you
have to spread those apart so you're
getting more time in between each
training session so you can recover and
so that you can add weight again to
expose yourself to that greater stimulus
because when you start to hit that brick
wall and you will it's because you
either can't recover or because you
can't perform with more weight on the
bar to expose yourself that greater
stimulus so that's why we have
ever-increasing gaps between substantial
attempts that's what makes it an
intermediate program so this is just a
breakdown of the history of these
programs I strongly encourage you to pay
homage to the wise elders that came
before you to no longer refer to these
as strong lifts or Mad Cow because they
are very clearly not so if you have any
questions anything else you want to add
go ahead and leave in the comment box
thanks for watching guys and
next time this Bromley Dunbar barbell
I'll see you
