I just come off of a 5x5 plan. I was doing regular plan I developed myself, but I didn’t feel my strength was going anywhere. I started a 5x5 and my strength took off.
I stopped after 2.5 months, I was doing 365 bench, a 395 squat ATG, and a 455 DL. My standing OHP was weak before, I didn’t do much shoulders. I worked that up to 225.
The biggest issue I had was I didn’t feel the same “pump” that I was previously.
I modified it a little bit to get in some additional work and noticed my numbers weren’t going up.
Example, after bench pressing and doing bent over rows, I would throw in 3 sets of inclined dumb bell presses to get that final burn. Then knock out my squats. On OHP day, I would toss in 3 sets of shoulder flys.
By adding the additional exercises, my numbers stalled, but I could see the difference in overall size.
The 5x5 helped get my numbers up, and by incorporating an additional exercise to get more burn out of it, the modifications help me gain more size.
Prior to doing this, I never OHP at all, my may bench was 315 for 3, and my squat was 325, and my DL was a weak 315.
These numbers, I don’t feel are too bad for someone that’s only 5’4’ tall and weighs 202.
One thing I did notice as well, was my body weight never changed, but my waist size did dramatically.