Yeah it looks like you’ve made a lot of progress. If you need to reset it won’t hurt you’ve made a ton of progress already. If your missing reps I would deload and reset.
Buy the book and read from it, there are many variations for deload week. I don’t start telling you should do this and you should do that, I think that it would be good to do deload when you can’t get the reps that you should get. But, it is not necessarily, just thinking why do you train with 531 if you don’t use program correct way?
Depends on a lot of things like your strength levels and ability to recover. Sounds like you might be at a point where the deload will help you supercompensate more effectively. I find the deload weeks help me quite a bit. Then again, my testosterone levels are shit…
Anyway, just try it out next time you reach the end of a cycle and see what happens. Pretty sure you won’t get weaker. You may even surprise yourself and be a lot stronger in some of the lifts.
I’ve been doing it by the book and I don’t miss reps. Been going for 2+ years and my weights keep going up. I find them useful, but I’m 42. To each their own but I don’t think it would hurt to do the deload.
I don’t deload and I also organize my weeks as 3/5/1 instead of 5/3/1. The 5 week is done as required reps only. This is how I’ve honed the system to work best for me.
When’s your next meet? If it’s a long way off why not just reset your numbers with current maxes and destroy some rep records and put on some size between meets. If you’re missing reps than you’re no longer training in a submaximal fashion the way the program is laid out. When I did a reset I just worked up to 90% for a couple of singles every 3 and 1 week to ensure I didn’t lose a feel for heavier weights.
If you are older - and probably for younger lifters too - the secret is to never “need” a de-load - i.e. if you take them you will never “need” them. Once you take one, maybe two, you will never have to ask this question again because you will come back so much stronger it will seem silly to even entertain the idea of going 10 cycles without one. Besides, if you are using 5/3/1 for powerlifting and using Jokers, up-down ladders, 1st last, etc., you will need it. I actually view my 65/75/85 week, the middle week, as a mini de-load
I go for broke on weeks 1 and 3 and stay real vanilla on weeks 2 and 4 with week 4 being the programmed de-load. I even gave the Freq. 2.0 a run and if I were to do it again, I would de-load every other week - if you are familiar this variation you will know what I mean.
I’d take the deload week, then reset bench 'n deadlift (5 forward/3 back approach). Furthermore, I’d just do the prescribed reps on the bench for the next two or three cycles after the reset on the bench - especially if I was still making progress on the press w/o resetting it; I’d focus on riding that wave.