Get Bigger & Stronger with Stronglifts.com
January 17, 2008
The market is saturated with materials on exercise and fitness. Books, magazines, and videos all promise that they have the newest and most effective workouts that will turn you from a chump to a champ. Unfortunately, most of the stuff is crap and it makes your life more complicated than it needs to be.
Thankfully, there is a site dedicated to promoting a no frills workout that produces results. StrongLifts.com is authored by a guy named Mehdi from Belgium.
Every week, Mehdi offers great advice on strength training, nutrition, and motivation. However, the core of StrongLifts.com is the StrongLifts 5×5 workout. The routine consists of simple exercises that are designed to increase your strength, increase your muscle, and reduce your body fat.
Why every man should use the StrongLifts 5×5 Workout
1. You don’t need much equipment for the StrongLifts workout. Just a gym that has some barbells, plates, a bench, a power rack (for squats), and pull up and dip bars. That’s it. No machines, no girly rubber balls, and no elastic cables.
2. Moreover, the exercises themselves are simple. You’re doing basic strength training lifts like the squat, bench press, and deadlift. You won’t be doing any complicated or awkward moves. Just the tried and true exercises that have been proven to work for decades. And the set and reps formula is elementary: 5X5=5 sets of 5 reps each.
3. Each workout works your whole body and consists of compound exercises that hit multiple muscles at the same time. This is the best and most efficient way to lift weights. Many men’s magazines show you exercises designed to isolate a specific muscle. This is inefficient and a waste of time. The more muscles you activate in a workout, the stronger you will get and the more fat you will burn.
4. You get results. The workout is designed so you can push yourself and get stronger and leaner each week. Each workout out you’ll be adding a small amount of weight. Before you know it, you’ll be bench pressing cars over your head. Because strength training increases muscles and muscle burns more fat, you’ll also get leaner. After a couple of months with this workout and a proper diet, you can kiss your belly and man boobs goodbye.
My Results Using the StrongLifts 5×5
To give you an idea how effective the workout is, here are my results after doing the StrongLifts 5×5 for four weeks:
- My body weight has stayed the same (190 lbs), but my body fat percentage has gone down 4%
- I’ve increased my bench press 5×5: 155 lbs to 5×5: 190 lbs. An increase of 35 lbs.
- I’ve increased my squat from 5×5: 190 lbs to 5×5: 245 lbs. An increase of 55 lbs.
- I’ve gone from being able to do 1 stinking pull-up to being able to do 6.
The last time I was putting up weight like this was seven years ago when I played high school football. The way things are going now, I’m confident I can surpass what I lifted back then. My entire body is also toning up in general. Despite not doing any isolated exercises, my body is getting bigger and more defined.
Time to get crackin’
Are you ready to man up your workout routine? Head on over to StrongLifts.com right now. Yes, right now. Subscribe to their RSS feed or email updates, so you’ll get their latest strength training tips and, best of all, their FREE ebook on How to Build Muscle & Lose Fat Through Strength Training. It’s 55 pages full of useful information.
I’m a 16 year old Junior at Lakeland High School. I play football, and wrestle. I can’t seem to get any bigger, when i was 13, i weight about 98 pounds. Then i started to work out, and gained about 60 pounds. And last year i was working out, and my testicle blow up, and i lost about 25 pounds of all muscle. I’ve been working oteven harder, and eating more. And ive even increase on my speed and agility. But i can’t seem to get back to my regular size of 170. I weight 157 pounds. Do you have any advise for me so i can get back to my regular size and bigger.
Thank you,
Aaron Benwell
@ Aaron-
Your testicle blew up? Man, I don’t even want to imagine the details of that.
I played high school in football and wanted to put on muscle too. What worked for me was eating a mix of quality protein and carbs 6 times a day (about every 2-3 hours). You say you are eating more, and that is good, but you may need to up your intake even further. Putting on muscle requires a surprising amount of calories. Just make sure you are eating good stuff so you don’t put on flab.
Also, start taking creatine. Creatine is not a miracle worker, but it will definitely help you build more muscle. It really helped me in high school.
Other than that, I recommend you peruse http://www.stronglifts.com. Medhi is the real expert on this stuff. Right now he has a great article about what to eat to gain muscle, and he has tons of other great posts about getting strong. Check it out and good luck.
Alright I will try that. And tell you how it works.
Aaron!
im about 17 i weigh about 135 5′5 and bench 210 squat around 300-400 pounds…i took creatin alst year and it helped alot i bought cheap version from walmart lol only 20 bucks for a huge thing and i gained like 20 pounds then over the summer i stopped it and now im just 135 before i was as strong prob. mabe stronger sucks ive went through whey protein muscle milk, everything and havent gained a pound i cant say i eat a huge amount but i do eat alot i need somethin else then just that to gain weight and muscle…i work out every sat. monday. wed. thursday. for a long time now and i havent seen ne difference in size than last year last year i was huge from creatin from friggin walmart n now i take creatin monohydrate n doesnt even do the same effect n its like 60 for a tiny bottle its crazy…all i need is to gain alot of weight n muscle n keep it all i dont wanna stop workin out for a month and have it all go away u knoo? any suggestions? been a hassle for quite some time now i wanna get big idc ill get fat either way i wanna gain alot of weight
im about 17 i weigh about 135 5′5 and bench 210 squat around 300-400 pounds…i took creatin alst year and it helped alot i bought cheap version from walmart lol only 20 bucks for a huge thing and i gained like 20 pounds then over the summer i stopped it and now im just 135 before i was as strong prob. mabe stronger sucks ive went through whey protein muscle milk, everything and havent gained a pound i cant say i eat a huge amount but i do eat alot i need somethin else then just that to gain weight and muscle…i work out every sat. monday. wed. thursday. for a long time now and i havent seen ne difference in size than last year last year i was huge from creatin from friggin walmart n now i take creatin monohydrate n doesnt even do the same effect n its like 60 for a tiny bottle its crazy…all i need is to gain alot of weight n muscle n keep it all i dont wanna stop workin out for a month and have it all go away u knoo? any suggestions? been a hassle for quite some time now i wanna get big idc ill get fat either way i wanna gain alot of weight