Bill Starr was right about a lot of things.
On paper, a lot of his ideas and programs look a little dated. And quite frankly, some of them are.
But the longer I’ve been involved in this game, the more wisdom I see in a lot of Starr’s writings.
Starr’s best known work was The Strongest Shall Survive, which details his philosophy on strength & conditioning for football.
Two concepts that really have stood the test of time are his Heavy-Light-Medium philosophy on programming and his take on the ever-popular “5×5” protocol.
The way Starr worked the “5×5” protocol was with use of Ascending Sets.
The lifter would start with a lighter weight and progressively work up heavier each set until he ended with one heavy set of 5.
So a given workout might look like this:
135 x 5
185 x 5
225 x 5
250 x 5
275 x 5
Heavy sets of 5 are an excellent tool for building both size and strength. Something every athlete needs.
But doing 5 heavy sets of 5 in a single workout creates too much muscle damage for the sport athlete.
He simply cannot balance the demands of sprinting, conditioning, practice, and game play with a protocol that can leave you hobbling for a couple of days.
But doing just 1 top set of 5 isn’t a lot of volume, and most athletes will need more than that to progress.
One of the parts that people never mention when discussing Starr’s 5×5 protocol was his emphasis on SPEED for all those light and medium sets leading up to that top set of 5.
He didn’t expand on it much in his book, but in his words the athlete should be trying to “make the plates rattle on every rep!!”
I love this concept.
And it puts him in complete alignment with guys like Louie Simmons and his Dynamic Effort Method and Fred Hatfield and his CAT (Compensatory Acceleration Training).
All just different takes on the same idea.
And that is the idea that submaximal weights moved with maximal speed are an excellent way to train force production without the fatigue that accompanies much heavier loading.
So whether you want to call it Dynamic Effort, CAT, or simply just “making the plates rattle” don’t forget about this strategy for your volume work!
This can work really well for athletes trying to balance lifting with running, or for lifters who simply have a hard time recovering from lots of heavy sets.
If you want to put your toe in the water with this type of “low fatigue” lifting then I’d recommend my Garage Gym Warrior 2 program.
And if you want an introduction to Heavy-Light-Medium programming, try my Classic HLM Program.
Both programs are excellent 3 day per week intermediate level programs that have produced results for many years!
