Given the additional information you've posted, it sounds like you are simply hitting a wall. Those are good numbers on the squats and deadlifts, so it's possible that you're not recovering (perhaps from too little sleep?), but it doesn't sound like that's the case.

I would see if switching to 3x5 instead of 5x5 allows you to progress. When I started with 5x5, the heavy squat sets would totally obliterate the rest of my workout. Removing the last two sets immediately gave me more energy for the upper-body lifts. My deadlift progress was unaffected. (Perhaps the upper body is more susceptible to fatigue caused earlier in the workout?)

Doing the additional volume in a 5x5 program is necessary when at lower weights. As the weight increases, 3x5 is plenty of volume. You sound like you hit a solid plateau consistently though a few deloads, and you're probably eating enough. Backing off to 3x5 (along with a small deload in the presses and rows) should give you more energy, both during the workout and during recovery days. Good luck.

Keep in mind that the bench and rows are using smaller muscles than the squats and deads. However for the rows to be that far behind the bench tells me you started the bench higher than the program would otherwise specify. In truth your rows should be another 20lbs heavier than your bench.

There are usually two reasons why you can't make a lift:

• The last workout wasn't strong enough to induce any change
• You have too much fatigue to get the lift up

Now, StrongLifts is a beginner program, and you are still in your beginner gains. What that means is that just about any exercise will cause you to adapt. The SL program has more than enough volume to get you to rebuild your muscles stronger.

So let's start looking at recovery and fatigue. I have my theory on what is going on, but I'm going to throw this out there just in case: you need 8 hours of sleep a night. Much of the body's muscle growing happens while you are sleeping. Natural testosterone peaks at REM sleep and remains at that level until you wake up. Natural human growth hormone peaks at deep sleep and remains at that level for about 1 hour. So let's look at the other possible culprits:

• You don't have enough rest between sets. Your presses are usually the first ones to need extra rest.
• Your warmups are sapping energy from your main lifts. In short they are not warmups.

StrongLifts recommends a very certain way of warming up, and Starting Strength is not too different either. I'm going to present the commonalities:

• Start with the empty bar. 2 sets of 5
• Increase in even increments up to 5 times to your work weight.
• Taper off the last two sets, second to last set would be a set of 3 reps, and last set would be 2 reps.

For example, bench press at 117 is really too small to need a whole 5 sets of warmup. In this case the warmup would look like this:

• empty bar 2x5
• 57lbs 1x3
• 82lbs 1x2
• 117lbs 5x5 (or 3x5 if you are on that for this lift)

You can play with the numbers and adjust them a bit, but understand that you start with an empty bar, and taper off at the end. If you don't taper off, you are taking energy you need for your lifts and using it on your warmups.

You also may need to adjust the time between sets a bit longer on your presses.

Lastly, a good tip with bench press and rows is to do the lifts explosively.

• Your back should be tight
• Your butt in contact with the bench, but a bit of an arch between the shoulders and the butt.
• Bring the bar down controlled (safely) to your chest
• Explode it up all the way. This minimizes fatigue, and sends the right signals to your muscles that you want as many of them involved in the lift as possible.

Also considering where your squats are, it can be that the squats are robbing your energy for the bench press. Switching to 3x5 even though you didn't stall will make it a whole lot easier to make more progress on your bench press and rows.

I'll bet anything you have long arms and a fairly small chest. As a result, both the bench press and the row are a lot harder for you than for someone with shorter arms. Just set lower goals for those two movements, you'll never push/pull as much as a guy with T-Rex arms and a Donkey Kong chest.

I would also highly recommend to add chin-ups as an additional exercise. This will help with the lats development needed for both bench press and barbell rows and grip strength needed for deadlifts. The original Stronglifts 5x5 had chin ups after deadlifts and dips after barbell rows.

I will try to add additional information. Maybe these are not your cases, but it might help someone who has these problems and probably will allow you to think outside the box and will give an interesting direction to your thought. Do not think that everything goes down to reps, counting weight, eating right, etc. When you want to go to the max, you need to dig deeper in understanding how your body operates.

You know that muscle contraction is somehow related to electric field. The more electricity comes through the muscle, the harder it contracts.

1. Our central nervous system is the supplier for that electricity. The signal that comes from it is pretty weak, so that our muscles do not rip themselves apart. Electrical muscle stimulation ( EMS ^[1]) uses this fact to increase the power released by muscles. If this procedure helps you increase weights, then you should check whether there are any issues with the nervous system.

2. Ions create electrical difference between inner world of the muscle cell and the surrounding. One of these ions is potassium. Increased stress can result in increased aldosterone production which will wash potassium away from your body (and, by the way, increase sodium). I occasionally discovered that this was my case. I tried to find what caused high blood pressure and hormonal analysis showed I have twice as much as recommended dose of this hormone floating inside my blood. This suddenly explained a lot of seemingly unrelated symptoms: headaches, arrhythmia and ... stagnation of the weight on the bar. So, check out your hormones :)

@Joshua - I read your question, your updates, the response (I completely agree with Dave and Berin) and kept coming back to your #'s. It seems your out of balance between the different lifts and being 200lbs + the bench is far below where it should be - especially based on your systematic approach, focused diet, etc. What is missing from your information is: what part of the bench press is the biggest sticking point, what accessory bench exercises are you doing (narrow grip? band/chain presses, etc.) - it sounds very much like a technical/execution issue and/or specific muscle group lacking....the interesting thing is your row is lacking also....could it be a weakness in your upper back muscle chain? Lats/Delts? Do you do dips/pull ups? any issues there? Here's a few articles that might help - Pressing Power: http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/pressing_power

How to blast through your weakest link!: http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/sticking_point_therapy

Don't move away from the great progression you're making, but don't get caught up in any one program. I'm a firm believer of the 5x5 Rippitoe, but also deviate to keep things interesting and see what others do and how I can incorporate different (new to me) ideas. One of the better bench accessory exercises I do is swinging the sledge hammer...why does it help? I think it helps with the explosive power and lat work...good luck

Upper lower imbalance

It's actually quite common on stronglifts/starting strength/etc

Few factors at play here.

1. You are consistently doing a heavy lower body lift first every single workout. The first exercise you do in a workout when you're fresh will tend to be the most effective. For some that means that latter exercises progress slowly because they tire themselves on the first one. This might be happening to you.
2. Squats are notorious for sucking your energy. Meaning you have less effort left to apply to bench and rows.
3. Most importantly and quite obviously: you are squatting and deadlifting a lot more than you are working upper body

The result of all of this for SOME PEOPLE (not everyone) is imbalanced lower body development compared to upper body.

I had the same issue on Starting Strength and similar 5x5/3x5 programs. The result for me was huge thighs and not much else. It was only when I started prioritising upper body have I begun seeing actual chest/shoulders/back development.

So you will probably notice your legs and hips and glutes growing faster than your upper body if you keep going. If that's cool with you then keep doing what you're doing. If however you want to prioritise your upper body development then you need to change stuff up.

It's about your goals.

I think I might know the problem - exercise order. The exercises that you do first will probably progress the most and the exercises that you do last will probably process the least. The ones in the middle will probably show medium improvements. The solution is to change the order.

I have experienced difficulties with the 5X5 program also because of the squats. I am older (over 50) and decided that my legs were getting enough exercise with running and regular work. The size of my leg muscles are ok and I was getting lower back pain from squating so much so I shifted the program a bit. I do squats once a week now and I picked compound upper body exercises from the bodybuilding.com database to replace the squats. I only choose exercises that are rated above 9.0 for which I have the equipment at home. Good luck

Link to database: https://www.bodybuilding.com/exercises/finder/?mechanicetypeid=1&muscleid=1,10,12,15 ^[1]

Your program is missing volume. As in, total weight moved. Weight x Total Reps.

I recommend either this:

POWERLIFTING; Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday ^[1]

ATHLETICISM; Monday, Wednsday, Friday ^[2]

or this:

Everyman Routine ^[3]

The everyman routine is simpler and effective. It can be scaled long-term by simply doing more of each exercise.

The powerlifting/ athleticism split is more complicated but most people won't train very hard if you tell them to do 1 set of a list of exercises every day and to do them as slow as possible (1 minute push-up for instance) or will only slow down the easy parts generally, even after a year. The powerlifting movements help train people to engage their "power" hence the name -- horsepower is one way of thinking of it.

Stronglifts, Starting Strength, and most weightlifting programs are barely enough for most people to progress to the level of "Trained" and very slowly, "Trained" being about where the goal ##s for the thread creator are. The conditioning and amount of heavy weight lifted is pretty low.

All those "5 - 15+ minutes of repetitions" conditioning sets found in the Powerlifting program I linked are CRUCIAL, and must not be skipped. With the Powerlifting/ Athleticism program the last powerlifting day is before the rest day on Sunday on purpose. The grip training must not be skipped.

As you progress you will want to pay attention to how you're NOT training more and more. For instance: Arm wrestling. The movement involved with it is rather specific. It trains the bones and tendons very well due to the fact it provides torque (Spiral Resistance) and in a large range of motion -- it is best to condition yourself with endurance arm wrestling type movements first or you may fracture your arm. The same movement in reverse is also very good and important for body training. These movements can be replicated with a cable machine or on a table with a dumbbell. Lean left and right to get a full range of motion for a big stretch and big contraction for total training. They train the shoulder, torso, and arms.

Training is not complete without torque movements. The piriformis good morning in the athleticism part of the program is an example of some leg torque. The inverse would be a squat with feet set wide for the hips to open up, toes pointing way out and knees tracking somewhat forward while the upper body leans back like limbo.

Simply doing one of the above programs will do though. The above can be incorporated after one has made great progress.

Lastly, as a final note, there are other torques that should be incorporated if you take your training very seriously.

Feet planted and twisting the body starting the momentum of the twist with the points furthest (shoulders or arms) from the anchor (feet), and getting a stretch or going for power(speed) or using some form of resistance for strength; momentum may be started from the waist or legs too. Starting the twist from the feet and legs and hips is also quite good, and is definitely for strength. Either way let the points furthest from the anchor spin around and give the waist and whole body down to the feet a good stretch. Wrist weights or a weight vest can be used.

Similar can be done with a handstand and from the pull up, and from hanging upside down, by the feet.

This twisting can be done for the individual limbs too. With 1 arm a person can hang from a pull up bar and twist back and forth. With the leg, burying your leg or legs deep in sand and twisting them would do it. If you do this explosively and intensely the first time you try it and hurt yourself, don't blame me.

This comprehensively covers exercise selection and the general order in which one should incorporate exercises into their program. The powerlifting/athletic program, and the Everyman routine both specify what order to perform the exercises contained therein. The order is important.

This comprehensively covers introductory programs and how to evolve the program so that it evolves with them.

In any 5x5 training regimen, the two first sets are the warm-up sets, the repxset per se is then 3x5. you should have read mehdi's report before doing the program, which is the right thing to do.