I get three lunch breaks a week and 45 minutes each including changing, so realistically 35 minutes under the bar. I want to get visibly stronger and I'd also like to put on some muscle, and every programme I look at either wants four days or assumes I have 75 minutes. Currently doing a 5x5 template and the squat sets alone eat 20 minutes with the rest periods.
Neither as written. With 35 usable minutes, the deciding factor isn't strength versus hypertrophy, it's rest periods, and heavy 5x5 is the worst possible fit because it needs three minutes between sets and you can't afford them.
What I'd run in your slot:
That gets you roughly 6 to 9 hard sets per big movement per week, which is enough for both strength and some size, and it fits. The 5x5 template isn't wrong, it just costs more minutes than you own.
Supersetting the non-competing pairs is the thing I'd been avoiding because it felt like cheating on rest. Trying it this week.
It only costs you if the two lifts share muscles or leave you out of breath. A row between press sets is basically free and it buys you back six or seven minutes a session.
Practical time savings that have nothing to do with programming: set up your bar height and pin height before you change, keep the same rack every session, and write the workout down before you arrive so you're not deciding anything on the clock. That's easily five minutes, which is a whole extra exercise.
The deciding-on-the-clock thing is real. I lose ages standing about with my phone.
Slight disagreement with the anti-5x5 crowd. If you're relatively new, 5x5 at weights that aren't yet brutal doesn't need three minutes of rest, 90 seconds is fine and the session fits. It's when the bar gets genuinely heavy that the rest requirement blows up your schedule. So it may be a good fit now and a bad one in six months.
Fair, and that's a good reason to pick something you won't have to abandon at the exact moment it starts working.
@deload_dom · 9mo ago
If you want to keep the 5x5 feel, run it as one heavy set of 5 plus two back-off sets at 85%. You get most of the strength stimulus from the top set and you cut the session in half. I ran that for a year on limited time and my numbers went up perfectly well.
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