5/3/1 for Different Goals

Training 5/3/1
1

I guess my main question is, if I just keep doing what I’m doing forever or will it cause problems somewhere down the road? Is there anything I should change? There is a bunch more detail below that may or may not be relevant.

I’m basically following the two day per week 5/3/1 program:

Mondays
Squat
Bench
Pull-ups

Thursdays
OH press
Barbell delt rows
Deadlift

I added the pull-ups because I’m vain and want bigger biceps but felt I needed a solid compound movement so that it’s not a complete waste of my time. The delt rows are because whilst screwing around in my 20s I was doing push-ups regularly for a while and feel like I have an imbalance in my shoulders and once that gets corrected, I’ll drop that lift or replace it with…something but I don’t know what.

Here comes the wall of text with all the details.

My main goal is to avoid becoming a feeble old man.

I’m 33 now and about two years ago I decided that I wanted to stay active and healthy for as long as possible. With that in mind, I turned to strength training.

There are certainly a bunch of other goals wrapped up in there. I want to lose some weight, I’m 5’9" and 235Lbs and have been losing a little bit of weight and getting a lot more dense (so I’m trading fat for muscle, yay for me), I want gain some strength, look more muscular and all that fun stuff.

So I bought a good weight bench/squat rack with a set of olympic weights off of craigslist and started with starting strength. Started stalling out on a couple of lifts and made the switch to the program above.

My current 1 rep max on the deadlift is 300Lbs (and I’ll just be upping reps until I can snag a deal on some more weights) and my tentative plan is to work my way up to 500Lbs or so and then up the reps for as long as my body will let me. I’ll figure out similar goals for the other lifts when I need to since I’m still a long ways off (190Lbs - Bench, 240Lbs - Squat, 145Lbs - OH press).

I actually don’t really like lifting weights. I mean, lifting up heavy things is kind of cool but I don’t really like it for it’s own sake. I just LOVE the results. I figure that the best program is the one that I’ll stick with which is why I have a weight bench in my basement rather than a gym membership. I don’t really have the time to work out more than two days each week and every other kind of exercise would take more time than what I’m doing now though I could maybe add in one other exercise (SS had me doing three lifts per workout after all). I feel like I can keep this routine up forever, body permitting.

I don’t really care how long it takes to hit my goal so if I stall, I’d rather just repeat a cycle rather than add assistance work possible and wait for whatever muscles are holding me back to catch up.

I’m just concerned that I’m missing some muscle group or something and I’m going to end up deficient in some area or, worse, I’ll injure myself as a result.

Is there anything that I should add or change?

2

5/3/1 is definitely capable of being tailored to just about any goal you want, however; you should try and focus on one goal at a time. You mentioned you have several goals wrapped in there; it’s hard to do more than one at a time. If you can only train twice a week then that’s fine, just train the hell out of those two days. Make sure your training max is set correctly, and you’ll have no problem being successful as long as your working hard and eating correctly. Google Jim’s article on the 5/3 reset as well as this will help you with long-term success as well. Make sure you’re constantly working on mobility as Jim indicates in his books, DeFranco’s Agile 8 or Limber 11 or excellent. Lastly, try not to think of this as muscle groups (i.e chest, traps, etc) but rather training each movement (bench, deadlift, etc) and train the heck out of it.

3

Well, the tertiary goals are all things that will be consequences of meeting the primary goal (hitting 500Lbs deadlift and increasing in reps until I’m 150 years old), except for the fat loss part which is mostly diet.

4

-Your honesty is refreshing

5

This template will help anyone that wants to be more awesome/NOV, which seems to be your main goal, so that’s great. Maybe save the rear delt until after deadlift (unless you are super-setting it with your pressing), but in the grand scheme of things, not sure even that matters all that much. You’re hitting all the important parts with your main lifts, so the assistance stuff is purely preference. Wanting to do rear delts to even out an imbalance is the right way to think about picking assistance. Pull-ups, too, because you’re thinking along the lines of “solid, compound movements that don’t waste your time.” If it doesn’t do one of those two things or help your main lifts get stronger, sack it.

Keep it up! Get after it.

6

The only thing that stands out is the lack of ab work. They’re stressed isometrically by most of your movements but nothing is really working their range of motion. Both the ab wheel and hanging leg raises are my go-to movements.

7

Do what you’re doing and keep doing it for ages. Sort your diet out. You’ll get where you want. 35 here, age is kind of irrelevant. Progress/progressing is what counts.

Anyway, I was wondering if there was something (physical/training wise) you do like doing. Maybe incorporating that into program, using 5/3/1 to help you get better at it, etc. That can help keep motivation up as well.

8

If you are getting in the gym and putting some effort in; you are already WAAAAY ahead of most people. That alone will keep you out of the ‘feeble old man’ category.

As for enjoying the act of lifting for it’s own purpose? Not a big deal if you don’t. When you lift long enough, you learn to hate all the movements. Really. You hate them.

Finding your motivation, which is very personal to YOU, is important. That is what will keep you hitting the gym, doing the training.

If you are doing the basic 5/3/1, even if it’s the “I’m not doing Jack” version (the most basic of them all)… you will not be “deficient” in any areas. The only spots could be biceps (easily solved by adding pullups/chinups) or additional work for the abs (since most of the heavy lifts only work the abs isometrically). The main compound lifts will do everything you want them to do. It’s efficient use of your time. That’s very useful for us guys that are past teen years or college age when we had hours per day to spend on hobbies. Older people tend to have plenty of responsibilities tugging at our every minute of every day, so programs that let us get in the gym–> hit the main compound lifts–> and get out? Perfect fit, and stays that way for as long as you want it.

9

[quote]Heloc wrote:
I guess my main question is, if I just keep doing what I’m doing forever or will it cause problems somewhere down the road? Is there anything I should change? There is a bunch more detail below that may or may not be relevant.

I’m basically following the two day per week 5/3/1 program:

Mondays
Squat
Bench
Pull-ups

Thursdays
OH press
Barbell delt rows
Deadlift

I added the pull-ups because I’m vain and want bigger biceps but felt I needed a solid compound movement so that it’s not a complete waste of my time. The delt rows are because whilst screwing around in my 20s I was doing push-ups regularly for a while and feel like I have an imbalance in my shoulders and once that gets corrected, I’ll drop that lift or replace it with…something but I don’t know what.

Here comes the wall of text with all the details.

My main goal is to avoid becoming a feeble old man.

I’m 33 now and about two years ago I decided that I wanted to stay active and healthy for as long as possible. With that in mind, I turned to strength training.

There are certainly a bunch of other goals wrapped up in there. I want to lose some weight, I’m 5’9" and 235Lbs and have been losing a little bit of weight and getting a lot more dense (so I’m trading fat for muscle, yay for me), I want gain some strength, look more muscular and all that fun stuff.

So I bought a good weight bench/squat rack with a set of olympic weights off of craigslist and started with starting strength. Started stalling out on a couple of lifts and made the switch to the program above.

My current 1 rep max on the deadlift is 300Lbs (and I’ll just be upping reps until I can snag a deal on some more weights) and my tentative plan is to work my way up to 500Lbs or so and then up the reps for as long as my body will let me. I’ll figure out similar goals for the other lifts when I need to since I’m still a long ways off (190Lbs - Bench, 240Lbs - Squat, 145Lbs - OH press).

I actually don’t really like lifting weights. I mean, lifting up heavy things is kind of cool but I don’t really like it for it’s own sake. I just LOVE the results. I figure that the best program is the one that I’ll stick with which is why I have a weight bench in my basement rather than a gym membership. I don’t really have the time to work out more than two days each week and every other kind of exercise would take more time than what I’m doing now though I could maybe add in one other exercise (SS had me doing three lifts per workout after all). I feel like I can keep this routine up forever, body permitting.

I don’t really care how long it takes to hit my goal so if I stall, I’d rather just repeat a cycle rather than add assistance work possible and wait for whatever muscles are holding me back to catch up.

I’m just concerned that I’m missing some muscle group or something and I’m going to end up deficient in some area or, worse, I’ll injure myself as a result.

Is there anything that I should add or change?[/quote]

I think you should read the Beyond 531 book. It answers questions such as these.

10

Okay, so I moved the rear delt raises to after the deadlifts and that was a good move. My thinking had been that stressing my back a bit isometrically with the rear delt raises would work as a bit of a pre-warm up warm up for deadlifts and that those muscles would be totally fried after the deadlifts but I think it helps as a bit of a cool-off even better. I’ve since dropped the rear-delt lifts.

I’ve started doing the defranco agile 8 daily as well as a few other stretches. I found a 10-minute yoga routine that is supposed to be a full-body mobility routing that I might do in addition. Some research has suggested that stretching is good for not just mobility and flexibility but can help with muscle growth by stretching out the facia around the muscles. In essence, muscles can only grow as fast as the sheath (the facia) around it does and stretching helps it grow faster therefore allowing the muscle it contains to grow faster.

I started really struggling on the 5/3/1 days, I’ve only been able to squeak out 2-3 reps on the 1+ set for a few cycles, I was only able to hit 1 2 cycles back and on the last one had to take some weight off the bar instead of hitting a new PR. So I reset the whole template (as described in the book) and added the de-load weeks, it feels a bit like cheating but I think they’re worthwhile. I couldn’t have done it before but I could totally see myself hitting some joker sets now, probably on the 3/3/3 weeks. Otherwise I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.

A small matter but, in the book, you suggest the function “CEILING” in excel for rounding but you should be using “MROUND”. CEILING will always round up which isn’t usually a huge deal but if like me, you’re a bit of a nerd and use excel in your professional capacity, and you created your own spreadsheet where you only have to put in your real 1RM for each lift, you end up rounding numbers up, then taking a percentage of that number and rounding it up. I found I was occasionally taking some BIG jumps up in weight. MROUND will let you round to the nearest multiple (which you define). Mr. Wendler, let me know if you want a copy of the spreadsheet I made.

Although I don’t really like lifting weights, it’s the exercise that I’ve tried that I DISlike the least. It shouldn’t be a problem for me to stay motivated, I’m pretty religious about hitting the weights every week, other than the week that I went on vacation I haven’t missed one by more than 24 hours (IE: I worked out Tues/Fri instead of Mon/Thurs) for well over a year.