 Hey everybody I'm Lance Coyke. Today we're going to discuss some of the drawbacks of our very popular 5x5 program. So we talked a little bit about the benefits and the first drawback that I want to tell you about was actually also a bit of a benefit. So one of the good parts of it is that you spend a lot of time on your multi-joint exercise. You really practice those movements, you get really good at them, and you get stronger and more muscle. The issue is it requires a lot of time. So most 5x5 workouts, unless you're only doing that primary exercise and you're not doing any assistance exercise after, most 5x5 workouts are at least an hour long. And so it requires that you're going to block out more time, you're not going to be interrupted, and you're going to be able to maintain your focus for a longer period of time. That just doesn't work for everyone. Another drawback is that since I am placing such a big emphasis on these multi-joint exercises, I need to be able to do those multi-joint exercises pretty well. I saw a guy at the gym at Google a few months back, you know, it was at least a year ago, and he was doing 5x5, and you could tell that, well, I could tell that his something was going to hurt in a few sessions. He was doing his squats, and he was falling forward a lot onto his toes, his feet were collapsing, and I was just like, you poor guy. And then he commented to his friend that he was feeling that exercise in his low back. Is this a low back exercise? I feel it a lot there. Well, no, you shouldn't feel it there. You should try to be sitting back, and you should keep your feet flat, and you should drive through your heels the entire time, demanding mobility from your body in multiple joints at the same time, while putting a lot of force up through those joints into the bar. It's complicated. If you've never, like if you didn't play outside when you were a kid, and you played a lot of video games, and maybe you were sick when you were younger, and maybe you didn't have that many friends when you were younger, all of those things can prevent you from becoming athletic and having nice healthy workout habits later on in life. That's why I'm so passionate about kids working out, and physical education classes, and getting recess time. I mean, there's tons of reasons for that, even academic reasons. But the biggest ones are, you need to set these kids up to be successful later on. And if you never had that, if you don't have that experience playing a little bit of sports, or climbing around in trees, or playing tag with your friends, then 5x5 is going to be hard to pick up quickly. You're probably not going to be able to just download StrongLifts 5x5 and do that workout and have a bunch of results, right? You're going to need to sit there with a trainer for six months and learn how to squat, learn how to bench, learn how to deadlift, learn how to do pull-ups, and really do those movements effectively. Those types of people who have these drawbacks of 5x5 would probably benefit from a more traditional bodybuilding program where you're doing a lot of isolation exercises. Yes, so it takes a lot of time. It requires a lot of athleticism. We like that 5x5 is nice and simple, but to an extent, it only gets you so far. So once you become an advanced trainee, you need some more advanced methods. Now, this takes at least two years of very diligent training. I would say at two years, you're probably only on intermediate anyway, but 5x5 is meant to be simple. It's not meant to be I'm loading with chains and bands and I'm altering my weights so that I can move some of them faster and some of them slower. That stuff is required for advanced trainees to move along through their plateaus. They don't make the same gains as a newbie does when they first pick up 5x5. So it doesn't work forever. The drawbacks are there, yes. The benefits are there as well. So try to evaluate if 5x5 is right for you.