5x5 Workout – 3-Day Beginner Strength Program

5x5 workout is the simplest way for a beginner to get strong: three full-body sessions a week, five compound barbell lifts, five sets of five reps, and a little more weight on the bar every single workout. It is the 5x5 workout program that StrongLifts 5x5 made famous, and Hardy runs it for you as a free 5x5 app. Hardy tracks every set for you: log your reps, and the app raises or lowers your working weights automatically according to the rules below, so you never touch a spreadsheet.

Weekly structure

Alternate two workouts on three non-consecutive days with at least one day off between them (most people train Monday, Wednesday and Friday), so one week runs A / B / A and the next B / A / B.

• Workout A: squat 5×5, bench press 5×5, barbell row 5×5
• Workout B: squat 5×5, overhead press 5×5, deadlift 1×5

All sets of an exercise use the same weight. Deadlift is one heavy set of five after the warm-up sets, because it comes at the end of a session that already had heavy squats and presses. Rest about 3 minutes between sets: 1–2 minutes is enough while the sets are easy, 5 minutes when they get hard.

Progression

This is 5x5 strength training at its simplest. Starting weights: StrongLifts suggests 20–40 kg (45–95 lb) for squat and bench, 20–30 kg (45–65 lb) for the press, 30–40 kg (65–95 lb) for the row and 40–60 kg (95–135 lb) for the deadlift, and an empty bar is fine for the first three, so the first weeks are technique practice with plenty of room to grow. Hardy takes the weight of your first logged set as the working weight. Every time you complete all 25 reps, add 2.5 kg (5 lb) to squat, bench, press and row and 5 kg (10 lb) to the deadlift for the next session. Miss a rep and Hardy keeps the weight for the next session by itself; fail the same weight three workouts in a row and it drops by 10%, staged for your review before it applies, and you build back up. If you own fractional plates, lower the barbell weight step in Hardy's settings and a lift's increment to 2.5 lb (1.25 kg), as StrongLifts suggests for bench and press once 5 lb jumps stop working.

Tips

• Warm up with the empty bar and two or three progressively heavier sets before your first work set; it takes about five minutes.
• The 5x5 workout goes back to Reg Park (1958) and the Bill Starr 5x5 of 1976, The Strongest Shall Survive; StrongLifts 5x5 (2007) turned Starr's ramped sets into straight sets across five lifts and cut the deadlift to 1×5, and that is the 5x5 workout routine here.
• This 5x5 program is for beginners. When the same lift stalls, resets 10% and stalls again at the same weight, usually three to six months in, per-session progression is done: move to 5/3/1 Boring But Big or to Madcow 5×5, the traditional next step. 5/3/1 vs 5x5 explains when to switch and how to set a training max from your 5x5 numbers.