Slowing Down on Madcow

Bigger Stronger Leaner Beginners
1

I’m just starting my third week of Madcow’s 5*5 Intermediate. I know that after week 4 things start to pick up and that it becomes harder to progress until you hit a point that you either reset back a couple of weeks or stay at that weeks reps/weight until you get over it. For those who have ran this program before, when did you get to this point?

One other small question, but how accurate have you find the spread sheet provided on the website to be in terms of what it says to do vs what you actually did especially as the weeks progressed.

2

I’m currently on week 5, although I did not do a complete re-set on all my lifts, so I’ve had 3 weeks of PRs. The progression doesn’t change after the first 4 weeks, you’ve just going past your previous PRs. IF you do start stalling on a particular lift, set that lift back a few weeks and keep going.

As far as the spreadsheet goes, I’ve been tracking it fairly closely, although I have a tendency to round up to the nearest 5 lbs.

3

[quote]kion wrote:
I’m just starting my third week of Madcow’s 5*5 Intermediate. I know that after week 4 things start to pick up and that it becomes harder to progress until you hit a point that you either reset back a couple of weeks or stay at that weeks reps/weight until you get over it. For those who have ran this program before, when did you get to this point?
[/quote]

I’ve had 4 weeks (5th-8th week hit PRs) of progression, twice. I’ve had 6 weeks of no progression - 6th week was supposed to be PR week, and did not get my reps. I think I reset back… I forget. :wink: I really ran this, or a variation of it, many times. :-/ When you stall, I say switch programs. If you run it again, I would change the lifts, or rep scheme.

Anyway, I think 4 weeks of PRs is pretty good. If you gain more body weight, you’ll go further.

[quote]kion wrote:
One other small question, but how accurate have you find the spread sheet provided on the website to be in terms of what it says to do vs what you actually did especially as the weeks progressed. [/quote]

I only ever used the spreadsheet for the advanced version, and that went well (I did lower my maxes by 5 for bench, and 10 for squat & bench, however).