5×5 in DropSet: the climb, the stall, and the comeback

Starting the program

The finder asks three questions — goal, experience, days per week — and returns a shortlist. This program pairs five compound lifts on straight 5×5 with a handful of accessories for size.

There are no training maxes to work out. Linear progression runs off a working weight per lift, so the app asks what you can currently do for five solid sets and starts there — 40 kg on the squat here. Start conservatively: the whole method depends on having room to add weight for months, and the app adds it for you every session.

Two sessions alternate. Workout A is squat, bench and row; Workout B is squat, overhead press and deadlift. Training three days a week you get A-B-A one week and B-A-B the next, so each workout comes round three times a fortnight. You squat in every single session — which is why the squat is the lift worth following through this article, and why the numbers below count sessions, not weeks.

The climb — 2.5 kg a session, decided for you

Squat opens at 40 kg for five sets of five. Complete all five sets at five reps and the app adds 2.5 kg to the next session. You don't tell it you succeeded and you don't do the arithmetic — it reads the sets you logged and moves the weight.

The chip beside the exercise name reads "↑ LP · 52.5 kg", so the rule governing the lift is visible while you're training rather than buried in a settings screen. Six sessions in, squat has gone up 2.5 kg every single time. The PREV column shows what you did last session, so you turn up and the weight is already on the screen.

Not every lift moves at the same rate, and the app doesn't pretend otherwise. Squat, bench, row and overhead press all run 5×5 at 2.5 kg a session. The deadlift runs a single set of five and goes up 5 kg — it's the heaviest lift and the one that takes most out of you, so it earns less volume and a bigger jump. Each lift carries its own rule; you don't configure any of it.

The stall — three sessions that don't go up

At 55 kg the wheels come off. Five sets are prescribed at five reps and only three reps go up — a genuinely failed session. This is the moment that matters, because the obvious mistake is for an app to look at the heaviest set you logged, see a completed set at 55 kg, and add weight anyway.

DropSet holds. The weight stays at 55 kg for the next session, and the one after that, because the target was five reps on every working set and three of them fell short. Nothing advances on a session you didn't complete.

Look at the two numbers at the bottom of that screen: PREV reads 55 × 3, and volume reads 0 vs last. That's the stall stated plainly — you have just repeated the previous session exactly, because the weight didn't move and neither did the reps. Three of those in a row is the app's cue to act.

The deload — the app backs you off

Three missed sessions in a row trips the rule, and the app drops the squat by 10% — 55 kg becomes 50 kg — then restarts the climb from there. You didn't decide that, calculate it, or remember to do it. The program specifies a deload after three failures and the engine applied one.

Here is the part people get wrong about deloading: it isn't lost ground, it's a run-up. Six weeks of squatting — eighteen sessions, not eighteen weeks — look like this. Six decisions to add weight, three to hold it, one to cut it by 10%, and then a rebuild that carries you straight back through the weight that stopped you. By session 12 you're back at 55 kg. By session 13 you're past it, and you finish with 70 kg on the bar — 15 kg above the ceiling that beat you, and 72.5 kg already prescribed for the next session.

The accessories run a different rule entirely

The compounds run linear progression. The accessories don't — they run double progression, and both rules are live in the same session. On double progression the weight is fixed and you chase reps inside a range first: 8, then 9, then 10, then 11, at the same weight. Only when every set reaches the top of the range does the weight go up.

The chip spells the rule out in place — "↑ DP · 12 kg · hit 12 reps → +2.5kg" — so you know what the session is asking of you before you start it. Hit 12 on all three sets and the next session is heavier, back at the bottom of the range.

The prescribed range never changes: it stays 8–12 for as long as you run the program. What moves is the weight. And reps inside the range are not a failure — grinding out 9 where you managed 8 last time is progress, so the app holds the weight and lets you keep climbing rather than counting it against you.

What it looks like afterwards

Eighteen sessions across six weeks fill the History calendar from the start date, and the squat's own Estimated 1RM chart draws the shape of the block: a straight climb, a flat stretch where the weight held, the dip at the deload, then a longer climb through the old ceiling. That sawtooth is what linear progression actually looks like once you train long enough to stall — the honest picture, not a line that only goes up.

The session-volume chart underneath tells the same story from the other side: bars stepping up, three short bars through the stall, then a taller run than before. Six weeks of training, no spreadsheet.

The payoff — where the squat started and finished

Two screenshots of the same squat, six weeks apart: the same five sets of five, the same lift, the same screen. Session one opened at 40 kg; the later shot has 70 kg on the bar, after a full stall at 55 kg, an automatic deload to 50, and a rebuild straight back through the ceiling. Nothing in between was typed in — every weight was decided by the engine from the sets that were logged. That is the case for the app in one screen.

Session 1

40 kg → 70 kg

+30 kg

Same squat, six weeks apart — 40 kg opener to 70 kg on the bar, with 72.5 kg prescribed next. The stall and the deload are in between, and the app drove every weight.

Session 18