Planned Variety for Steady Gains in Size and Strength

A Bill Starr-Inspired Method for Making Consistent Progress

     When many lifters think of Bill Starr (assuming they even know who he was), they often think of his 5x5 heavy-light-medium system, a system of training that I have used at times, and have often touted, over almost the entirety of my lifting and writing career.  You can probably do a brief, cursory search right now on “Bill Starr training program” or something similar, and you will, in all likelihood, find more than a few training plans, and almost all of them—or so I would bet a hefty sum—will outline a week or two of training using 5 sets of 5 reps.  But if you take the time to read a lot of the training articles that Starr actually wrote—he penned hundreds, if not thousands, of articles for almost all of the major bodybuilding magazines and training journals during his lifetime—you would find that there was a lot more to his system of training than what he is typically known for.  This is not the essay to get into all of those varied nuances of his H-L-M methodology, but, rather, I want to discuss one particular aspect of his training programs—his use of “planned variation” when it came to sets and reps—and how this can be applied to, not just Starr’s methods, or those inspired by his mode of training, almost all training programs.

     Once an athlete reached the intermediate or advanced stage, Starr recommended that the lifter rotated set/rep ranges on a weekly basis over the course of 4 weeks of training in order to help ensure continued progress.  The typical recommendation was this:

Week One: sets of 5 reps

Week Two: sets of 5 reps, followed by sets of triples

Week Three: sets of 8 reps

Week Four: heavy singles

     The exact amount of sets depends on your strength level.  If you do 5 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps the first week, then the 2nd week would be 3 or 4 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps followed by 2 or 3 progressively heavier triples.  The 3rd week, you increase the reps but drop the sets, so that you would perform 4 progressively heavier sets of 8 reps.  And on the 4th, and final week, you would do 3 or 4 progressively heavier sets of 5 reps, followed by progressively heavier singles until you reach a near max.

     Some lifters—and I have applied it this way in several programs that I’ve written—like to do 2 or 3 weeks at each set/rep range before moving on to the next variation.  I think that there are just some lifters who respond well to less variety, not more, though this is something that you have to experiment with yourself to know if it’s true for you—or not.  In fact, I believe that variety and volume are two things that sort of go hand-in-hand in reciprocal ways.  Some lifters respond better, or so it seems, by increasing volume over the course of two or three weeks, all the while keeping their reps the same; in other words, even though they respond better to less variety, they need to utilize more volume to compensate.  While other lifters seem to respond better to less volume.  I often refer to this subset as “low-volume lifters,” in fact; guys, or gals, that just seem to always get better gains by doing a little less than their mass-building compatriots at their same “level.”  However, it does seem that low-volume lifters need more variety.  (It must be noted, however, that eventually, when the lifter becomes highly advanced, he/she will need both more variety and more total volume.)

     The genius of Starr's method—and part of that genius lies in the fact of how simple and common-sense it is—is the order in which the sets/reps are performed.  Doing heavy sets of 5 reps itself will build strength.  Then you follow it up with sets of 5s and 3s the next week, building even more strength.  However, after doing a couple of weeks of 5s then triples, something will typically happen: even though you are getting stronger, you will start to get slower.  Athletes—even purely strength athletes—don’t need to get stronger at the expense of speed.  To combat this effect, Starr has you follow up the heavy triples with a week of 8-rep sets.  The 8-rep week has sort of a “tonic” effect on one’s strength, allowing you to be even stronger on the following week, where you will work up to a heavy single.  After the 4th week, you simply repeat the process, subbing in “same but different” exercises as needed, depending, once again, upon how advanced you are.

     If you’re an advanced lifter, several months of training with Starr’s H-L-M program might look something like this if you were to utilize 2-week set/rep blocks:

Weeks 1-2: 5 sets of 5 reps

Heavy Day: squats, bench presses, conventional deadlifts

Light Day: reverse lunges, barbell overhead presses, power cleans

Medium Day: front squats, incline bench presses, high pulls

Weeks 3-4: 3 sets of 5 reps; 2 sets of triples

Heavy Day: squats, bench presses, sumo deadlifts

Light Day: walking lunges, incline dumbbell bench presses, power snatches

Medium Day: barbell hack squats, bench presses, Romanian deadlifts

Weeks 5-6: 4 sets of 8 reps 

Heavy Day: squats, bench presses, deficit deadlifts

Light Day: overhead squats, one-arm dumbbell overhead presses, hang cleans

Medium Day: bottom-position squats, weighted dips, thick-bar deadlifts

Weeks 7-8: 3 sets of 5 reps, followed by 3 to 5 progressively heavier singles

Heavy Day: squats, bench presses, conventional deadlifts

Light Day: reverse lunges, barbell overhead presses, power cleans (no heavy singles for this day - simply do 3 sets of 5 reps for each exercise)

Medium Day: front squats, incline bench presses, high pulls

     Since the devil is often in the details, you may notice something unique about how the program above is set-up.  Although there are 4 different set/rep ranges, there are only 3 different 2-week training blocks, which means that on the 9th week of training, you will return to using 5 sets of 5 reps, but you will be doing it with the exercises that you originally used during the “weeks 3-4” training block.  Which means your next 8-week training block would look like this:

Weeks 1-2: 5 sets of 5 reps

Heavy Day: squats, bench presses, sumo deadlifts

Light Day: walking lunges, incline dumbbell bench presses, power snatches

Medium Day: barbell hack squats, bench presses, Romanian deadlifts

Weeks 3-4: 3 sets of 5 reps; 2 sets of triples

Heavy Day: squats, bench presses, deficit deadlifts

Light Day: overhead squats, one-arm dumbbell overhead presses, hang cleans

Medium Day: bottom-position squats, weighted dips, thick-bar deadlifts

Weeks 5-6: 4 sets of 8 reps

Heavy Day: squats, bench presses, conventional deadlifts

Light Day: reverse lunges, barbell overhead presses, power cleans

Medium Day: front squats, incline bench presses, high pulls

Weeks 7-8: 3 sets of 5 reps, followed by 3 to 5 progressively heavier singles

Heavy Day: squats, bench presses, sumo deadlifts

Light Day: walking lunges, incline dumbbell bench presses, power snatches (no heavy singles for this day - simply do 3 sets of 5 reps for each exercise)

Medium Day: barbell hack squats, bench presses, Romanian deadlifts

     

     As mentioned, however, you can use this system for programs other than a standard full-body program ala Starr.  When I was powerlifting, after using Starr’s methods for some time, I decided that I wanted to try the methods of Westside Barbell.  Better known today than they were then—this is the late ‘90s—the Westside methods were already becoming the stuff of legend in the lifting community, however.  Anyway, at first, I really didn’t get good results with Westside, at least not by training in the “traditional” Westside manner.  With Westside, for those of you who don’t know, you rotate exercises on a weekly basis that you “max out” on, but you don’t usually use the standard three powerlifts except on rare occasions.  Although my lifts I trained on got stronger, my three powerlifts really didn’t go up any. (Westside is simply designed for the heavily “equipped” lifter; and I competed either raw or in organizations that only allowed single-ply suits or bench shirts.  So if you’re a raw powerlifter, or someone who simply wants to get really friggin’ strong, but doesn’t want to compete, the following might be more to your body’s liking.)  But I liked the Westside “template”—a speed day for bench, a speed day for the squat and deadlift, a “max effort” day for the bench, and another “max effort” day for the squat and deadlift—so I decided to rotate rep ranges instead of exercises on the max-effort day, making it more of a traditional “heavy” day.  And I primarily utilized Starr’s recommendations for set/rep variation.

     A week of workouts for your bench press using this method might look something like this:

Sunday - Speed Day

Bench Presses: 10 sets of 3 reps with 60% of one-rep maximum

Lying Barbell Extensions: 4 sets of 10 reps

Overhead Presses: 4 to 5 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Chest-Supported Rows: 4 to 5 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Barbell Curls: 4 to 5 sets

Wednesday - “Heavy” Day

Bench Presses: Week One: progressively heavier 5s; Week Two: progressively heavier sets of 5s and then 3s; Week Three: progressively heavier sets of 8s; Week Four: progressively heavier singles, working up to a near max.

Follow this with the same amount of assistance work as the Sunday workout, except use a heavier rep range (sets of 5 to 6 reps).

     For boosting my squat and deadlift, I simply rotated between squats and deadlifts on the “heavy” day, and then I did 8 to 10 sets of 2 for squats and 5 to 7 singles on the deadlift for the lower body “speed” day.

     I hope this essay has given you some ideas for how you can incorporate Starr’s set/rep variations into your own training, whether you use a full-body workout, a powerlifting program, or even a “bro-split” bodybuilding program.  Actually, bodybuilders need to do this sort of heavy training periodically, anyway.

     If you want more article ideas, you could actually “plug” this method into almost any program calling for a 5x5 or one of its variants, which means my recent article “5x5 Training Variations” would be a good read if you’re looking for even more workout templates where you can use this system.

     If you want even more mass-building, strength-gaining workouts, be sure to get a copy of my latest e-book: “Ultimate Mass and Power: A Collection of Training Programs for Getting Massively Big and Incredibly Strong.”