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.
Submitted by: Russell in Cedar Rapids, Iowa
