This past fall, Swede, and Greg Panora came out to Hellbent Barbell in CT to give a seminar. I had a commitment that day, but luckily I was able to stop by for a bit and was very impressed with the presentation. In the back of my mind, I still had the hope of making a return to the platform for a full meet. These guys definitely helped trigger the urge I had to fulfill that bucket list item after over a twenty-year injury-induced layoff.
Right after attending the seminar I bought Swede's 5th Set and the 5th Set Evolutions books. Just like the seminar, I was very impressed by Swede's written work. The books are informative and well thought out. After reading them, you can easily put together a very comprehensive program on your own.
If you are not familiar with 5th set, it's purely for powerlifting training. It's based on nine-day microcycles. I have to be honest, I was not too keen on that, but it does make a lot of sense for recovery purposes. However, I have a standing bench date every Friday night with my boys Drew and Karsten. That does not work with the nine-day rotating microcycle.
Fortunately, enough people must have fallen into the more rigid seven-day microcycle that it caused Swede to create a seven-day prpgram in the Evolutions book. So whether you want to follow his traditional nine-day microcycle or the seven, there are plenty of templates to choose from.
I started training 5th Set over two months ago. I wanted to run through a few mesocycles before I made any judgments and did a write-up. Anyone can get a little gung-ho starting a new program. Just changing things can rejuvenate stale training, but nothing matters unless you can show solid progress.
The first thing I love about the program is that it focuses solely on powerlifting. I often get caught up in what work I should be doing other than the squat, deadlift, and bench. There's usually too much leeway in programs for me to pick and choose. That's when I start overanalyzing things and try to find the perfect movement. Swede lays out very clearly the exercises, reps, and sets you should be doing. There's also a very easy progression to follow for choosing your weights for "all" lifts.
After just a week of following the program, I took notice that there was no fluff. Every movement had a purpose. It felt like each muscle important to the big three lifts was getting pounded with work.
I also realized each following week I was getting increasingly proficient with my lifts. The training percentages on the squat, deadlift, and bench are arranged so that the weight is enough to stimulate and hone technique. I felt improvements set after set. Then when those are completed, you finish the lift off with the all too familiar, but brutal AMRAP.
By the way, Swede is clearly a sadist! He combines many different set and rep schemes for assistance and his "MSM" mechanically similar movements. The dude has some work sets of 30 in the program, that's not right! It makes sense though, getting bigger should go hand in hand with getting stronger. Damn, those sets of 30 sure become humbling pretty quickly.
I am only a few weeks away from my peaking cycle. At that point, I will be crunching the numbers so I can write the exact percentage increases on my lifts. Make no mistake though, I have improved on my rep maxes for all lifts from the first to second mesocycles so far.
The greatest testament I can make about 5th Set is, it's the most challenging program I have ever done and I have always trained as if each day on this earth would be my last. Swede emphasizes outpacing fatigue. He's not kidding. My nutrition and recovery are dialed in and I still feel brutalized. For the first time in my life, I'm wondering why the hell I'm putting myself through this. In a very masochistic way, this makes me happy.
I can't say enough about the program. My lifts are going up and I'm actually putting on some quality size and I wasn't even looking for that.
Again, Swede has taken the thinking out of programming. That makes me happy. Just point me in the right direction so I can work my ass off. I highly recommend Swede's 5ht Set, so make sure to check it out.