Bill Starr strength factor routine

[Judoka Fighter]

I was looking at this routine: http://muscleandbrawn.com/bill-starr-strength-factor-routine/

The reasons I am interested in it is that the fact that his has a heavy light and medium day and you squat everyday like I am doing with starting strength.

The reason the light medium and heavy days appeal to me is that I'm going marine pt workouts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays and my rugby season starts soon so I feel like the light and medium days would help me recover better.

I like squatting every workout like starting strength so I would like to have a program that does that.

My plan would be to run the medium and light workouts on mondays and wednesdays when I have pt and run the heavy workout on friday.

 

[plugchop]

 

[Fighting Sprite]

Needs more pulling. Needs to be clearer with the progression; it says to add weight, but not how much. The 50 and 20 pound drops on the light and medium days should be chosen by percentage, it seems like an arbitrary number.

5/3/1 on a two day split might be best. It seems to be highly recommended around these parts for in season athletes. If you're married to the idea of squatting three times a week, you could check out Madcow. It's similar but better. It could still use some more pulling, though.

 

[DrBdan]

I agree with Fighting Sprite, I'd do Madcow over that program. Someone here could probably walk you through tweaking that program to be better but why bother when there is lots of info out there about similar programs?

Bill Starr 5x5 - Madcow Intermediate or Linear Version

 

[CRZA]

Needs more pulling. Needs to be clearer with the progression; it says to add weight, but not how much. The 50 and 20 pound drops on the light and medium days should be chosen by percentage, it seems like an arbitrary number.

5/3/1 on a two day split might be best. It seems to be highly recommended around these parts for in season athletes. If you're married to the idea of squatting three times a week, you could check out Madcow. It's similar but better. It could still use some more pulling, though.

Dont really agree with this
Your doing 5x5 deadlifts, good mornings, shrugs and chins. I dont see why you need more than that.

I agree that percentages should choose what you do on medium and light days. If you squat 5x5 with 400 pounds, the medium day will still be quite heavy. If you squat 200 pounds, not so much.

There are plenty of 5x5 routines, and most of them you add 5-10 pounds after completed sets. So If you want to do the routine. I would start light, then add 10 pounds to squat and 5 to bench. So that around 4-5 weeks in, you're working with your previous 5RM (similar to madcow 5x5), so that your able to continue the program for a longer period, then starting off with a true 5RM set and stall in week 3.

Madcow is a great 5x5 program, and there are several good excel spreadsheets out there.

Whatever 5x5 routine you do, start easy and build up.
It looks like a good routine, though. I like it.
When you do the medium and light days, dont follow the 20-50pound rule. Just take off some weight, and do some reps with good form and practice technique.

 

[luckyshot]

You might want to think about one of the Texas Method programs so you're not always doing 5x5 on the squats. I know that's popular, but it's a ton of volume, especially if you are working out on rest days, too.

What do you think of this:

Monday [High Volume/Moderate Intensity]
Squat 5X5
Push Press 6X3
Power Clean 8X3

Wednesday [Low Volume/Low Intensity]
Back Squat 2X5 (@80% of 5RM)
Press 2X5
Back Extension/GHR 5x10
Chin ups 3x12

Friday [Low Volume/High Intensity]
Squat 1X5
Push Press 1X1
or 1x2
or 1x3
Deadlift 1X5
or 2x3
or 3x2
or 5x1

You could sub in bench press if you wanted to of course, or alternate press and bench press.

 

[CRZA]

You're ramping up to a top set, so the volume is not that high.

 

[Fighting Sprite]

Dont really agree with this
Your doing 5x5 deadlifts, good mornings, shrugs and chins. I dont see why you need more than that.

I meant in terms of preventing muscle imbalances in the shoulders. Deads and GMs won't help here. Not sure if shrugs will or not, I don't really care to guess one way or the other. I don't see 5 presses to ~2 pulls(depending on how often you choose rows over deadlifts and whether or not you count shrugs) being a good idea.

You're ramping up to a top set, so the volume is not that high.

This. An argument could be made for Texas method actually being more difficult to recover from.

 

[lpaulgib]

I've been doing the 531 3 day full body split with the deload week taken out and love it. It follows a nice progression, and I know my squats have been going up awesome 3 days a week.

 

[luckyshot]

You're ramping up to a top set, so the volume is not that high.

That's a good point.

 

[TheLeftHandPath**]

Now some people start with a pretty big margin of bodyfat (approaching 20% or more), these people already have significant caloric excess built into their base diet. Most of them find that they can hold their calories constant and for a while they will add muscle and the maintenance of that muscle will use up the excess calories that are currently going toward maintaining their excess fat. This won't last forever but it will likely get them down to the mid to low teens without any issues. Everybody with lower bodyfat needs to add excess to their base diet as this body recomposition lowers bodyfat by nature and it gets harder and harder to pull off. And really even holding bodyfat constant and gaining muscle requires a proportion of the gain to be fat just to maintain the ratio.

Now this sounds like common sense but here is the kicker. There are a lot of people who really put a lot of effort into their diet and maintain fairly lean physiques. They carefully calculate and maintain a constant diet and precise level of caloric excess - nothing wrong with that. The only problem is that their calculations might not fully reflect their activity level or the requirements of their own individual body.

Keep in mind that they are already fairly lean so there is obviously little to no caloric excess in their base diets. Also understand that the lower your BF is, the less willing your body is to add muscle - very logically, muscle is calorically expensive and increases risk of death from famine, if fat stores are already low, it is very hard to convince the body to add muscle (the people with this genetic makeup died millions of years ago). This is also why people loose muscle when cutting (this is all based on natural lifters, steroids enhance certain abilities but don't erase restrictions completely). Granted a total novice can pull it off for a short while if there's a margin present but that's still suboptimal and generally they'd do fine adding excess, gaining a little fat and adding a whole lot more muscle.

true? false? myth?

my goal is to get to a 8% bodyfat than slowly build muscle up throughout the years.
I don't compete and I am not looking for quick results or any other method. I have patience and this is the route I wish to take.

I want to maintain a 8% bodyfat while slowly adding a pound of muscle at a X variable ( 3 days, 1 week, 10 days, 2 weeks - whatever the realistic # of adding a pound of muscle)

but that quote threw me off

 

[tkdyo]

Its true, thats why power lifters generally do cycles of bulking then cutting. You add fat when you add muscle, so to add the most muscle you eat in caloric excess, then when you reach your strength or mass goals you slowly cut weight back down again. I say slowly so that you retain your muscle.

 

[TheLeftHandPath**]

Its true, thats why power lifters generally do cycles of bulking then cutting. You add fat when you add muscle, so to add the most muscle you eat in caloric excess, then when you reach your strength or mass goals you slowly cut weight back down again. I say slowly so that you retain your muscle.

but couldnt you also just grow slowly w/o the fat so there is no cutting again??

I would assume, the same logic to lose fat can be applied to the same logic of building muscle.

For example

just as how a -500 deficit x 7 days = -3500 calorie burned aka 1 lb of bodyfat lost

you can also do

+500 of your maintenance x7 days for 1 pound gain
with a 50-60% protein macro to build muscle



or it doesnt work that way?

 

[KnuckleSangwich]

I'm running Madcow currently. Just do it the way it's written.

 

[bcplifter2]

but couldnt you also just grow slowly w/o the fat so there is no cutting again??

I would assume, the same logic to lose fat can be applied to the same logic of building muscle.

For example

just as how a -500 deficit x 7 days = -3500 calorie burned aka 1 lb of bodyfat lost

you can also do

+500 of your maintenance x7 days for 1 pound gain
with a 50-60% protein macro to build muscle



or it doesnt work that way?

it kinda works thats way.

 

[Cygnus-X]

with a 50-60% protein macro to build muscle

You don't need that much protein.

 

[luckyshot]

You don't need that much protein.

You need more.