Moving on from Stronglifts

ninenines

I'm starting to get curious about life after 5x5. I've read the sticky and about some of the different intermediate programs. For those that have moved on from Stronglifts (or another beginner program), please tell me about the change. When did you decide it was time to move on? Which program did you choose and why?

Jennifer_Lynn_1982

I started doing PHUL (https://www.muscleandstrength.com/workouts/phul-workout) in the fall and I've loved it. I felt that it had a good mix of hypertrophy and strength and am now looking to move onto another program. I decided to make a change when I was getting frustrated with moving up in weights on squats and overhead presses and feeling like I needed a few more exercises for different muscle groups. I hope that helps!

Sumiblue

I started doing PHUL in Fall, too. I got bored with doing the same lifts and all those squats every time. I wanted more volume and more rest time between lower & upper body lifts.

giusa

Here's some threads that might help you find your next program:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10331319/lifting-programs#latest
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10332083/which-lifting-program-is-the-best-for-you/p1
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1308750/so-you-want-to-start-lifting-great/p1

Hope it helps.

ninenines

Thanks for your comments @Jennifer_Lynn_1982 and @Sumiblue , PHUL seems to be a popular program to move on to.

Thanks also for those links @giusa that will give me a bit to think about and some ideas.

At this point I'm slowly figuring out my criteria to narrow down which way to go. I'm pretty sure I want just a 3x week program to fit in with my sport and general life commitments. I also need to be able to finish each workout in ~1hr. I really enjoy the simplicity of Stronglifts and I think it being a limited number of exercises is a positive for me.

I'm also considering finding a coach/trainer that can help prioritize my goals and work out a program that takes into account my sport, which might be the best option if I can find the right person.

Sumiblue

My average PHUL workout is 1.5 hrs, FYI.

canadianlbs

ninenines wrote: »

I'm starting to get curious about life after 5x5. I've read the sticky and about some of the different intermediate programs. For those that have moved on from Stronglifts (or another beginner program), please tell me about the change. When did you decide it was time to move on? Which program did you choose and why?

i'm pretty loosey-goosey about things, so i moved to wendler 5/3/1 exactly three weeks ago, when i 'failed' on bench. prior to that i'd been on a 5/5/amrap rep scheme with my trainer for about six months, and more or less doing the same thing on my solo workouts the rest of the week. year and a half before that of just doing stronglifts on my own recognizance and having a lot of back-to-square-one cycles because of issues.

when move?
i didn't fail bench press really. just did two reps at 80lb and told my trainer to fahgeddabahtit, i wasn't interested in even trying for more.

why move? spoilered for fairly psychological/ personal rant that may not be relevant

bench and ohp had just got to a point where i wasn't having fun anymore. it was ALWAYS work. i was still 'doing' my sets and reps, and i was still 'making' my scheduled weight jumps . . . but only just. and i felt like i had lost any sense of accomplishment and i was starting to resent the way it makes no difference if you do hit your numbers; all you get in reward is another 5 or 2.5 pounds and then you're going to have to struggle and somehow get that done too. and then even more weight will go on. it was psychological for me at least as much as it was physical. i was still adding weight, but i was always fighting. i never felt strong; i was always feeling like i was just scraping by. i was angry all the time and getting gut butterflies. it felt like ry cooder telling someone about how and why he kind of dropped out of being a 'professional' musician for a while: 'more records, and more records . . . it was just this tremendous burden of nothing at all'.

so i switched bench, and within the first week i had switched all my other lifts too. i'm still doing my first cycle, but atm i am much happier. i'm having fun with the variety, i.e. each week you're working with different weight jumps and rep counts per set.

why wendler? mr t suggested that i might like it, and i went 'sure, let's do that then'

i do like it. i switched because i was tired, and wendler's more adaptable to my day-to-day state. you do 3 sets per workout, and on the last one you CAN keep on going until you get tired, if you feel like it. i like that much better than 'always do five by five whether you like it or not.' i can pretty much always make the minimum, especially since the rep count drops as the weight goes up. and if i want to do more than the minimum on one of my bouncier days, then i can. so it fits with a wider range of 'states' in my life.

how wendler?

you're not supposed to mess with the program as it's laid out, but i'm kind of in an attitude now of 'i'm doing this for my own reasons and at least partly for fun.' so i'm messing with it. my squats are stalled at the gate, so i'm treating them almost like an accessory instead of a lift atm. for the other lifts, wendler says do only one of them per day and work out four times a week. i'm keeping the sl pattern of two lifts per workout, because that fits in with my once-a-week trainer patterns. and i haven't really figured out how many workouts per week, but when i double them up i can get away with just two or three workouts a week. i'm 51 soon so my optimal rest/workout rhythms may be different from yours.

Fittreelol

Novel inc:

Note about 531: I disagree a bit that you're not supposed to stray. He does say in his books if you're going to do the program then do the program, but then has 3 full books of modifications for 531. He says any accessories in any scheme you want are pretty much fine, but does offer some suggestions for things to try with them. Because it is so customizable you can really switch things around to fit what works for you. If you're short on time you can easily get a 30-40 minute workout in by skipping accessories. When I've used it for powerlifting training my sessions went 1:20-1:30. You can also change frequency around a lot. I've done 4x Week (normal) 3x week (combining dead and ohp), and 2x week- squat+bench day and an OHP/deadlift day. You could also combine bench+ohp or skip one or the other depending on what is helpful to your sport.

I started lifting in Dec 2012. I ran 5x5 for two months, fell on my knee and took time off, then ran another month before I switched to 3x5 with front squats on deadlift days for another 3-4 months. I switched because I started feeling the same dread that Canadianlbs was feeling.

I switched again because I was looking for a change. I was feeling beat up all the time. I never failed enough times tor require a deload so the weights were getting heavy. I did 3-4 months of Texas method continuing with front squats on deadlift days. I did a powerlifting meet in Dec. of 2013. Looking at my logs I ran Texas method or a variation until May 2014.

I was getting that beat up feeling again so I switched to basic 531 which I ran May-July had a meet and then did one more cycle in August. I took 6 weeks off from Sept-Mid October due to RL stuff. From there I did a fairly big deload and went back to 3x5 with our favorite front squats in order to get used to everything again.

I went back to 531 in January 2015, fell on my tailbone in Feb so I did Smolov Jr for OHP. In March I went back to 531, but by now I had read all the books so I modified it to fit powerlifting (as is it's meant to be a general strength program as part of an overall fitness routine). Had a meet in May. Did some more 531 and snuck a smolov jr for bench in there somewhere.

Then I started long peaking program by Paul Carter to prep for an October meet. It was the first peaking program I had ever done, and I wasn't sure how well it worked because the meet was crazy. After that I did a 7 week peaking program by Carter in prep for a meet that ended up being full. >.< So I did a mock meet at my gym. From there I worked out a sort of hybrid programming that mixes things I found worked well for me between Carter and Wendler. I've been running that since January 2016 and getting really good results. I'll continue this until I switch to Carter's 7 week peak for an August meet. I might see if I can squeeze a smolov Jr. for bench cycle in there somewhere.