I know in his original article, Jim Wendler said not to f*ck with his program. But, being the incorrigible I am, I done tweaked it to a 7/5/3 (same percentages) but based off my 90% 2 rep max. I’m not a big guy (nor do I care to be), and find that training for a balance between strength and endurance suits my personal goals better. Just wondering if anyone else has done the same, and what their results have been? Frankly, Wendler’s program has worked great for me, tweaked and all.
I’ve been doing 8-6-3, something similar to this article:
The percent of training max used for the reps each week are the original 5-3-1 percentages minus 5% (this matches Prilepin’s table pretty well).
I still go for PRs on the + sets and have been hitting them pretty consistently. After the PR set I take 10% jumps in weight and do heavy sets of 5 or 3 depending on the week.
This has worked decently well for me in terms of gaining size and strength. The only thing was that deadlifts were a pain and I had to switch back to the 5/3/1 rep scheme for it so i could keep better form.
To me, 5/3/1 usually ends up being something like 8/5/3 on the “+” sets. The 5/3/1 is just for the days when you don’t have it and just do the required reps. Unless you guys are changing the reps on the first two work sets, I’m not sure you’re really doing anything that different.
To the original poster, do what thou wilt. Though I’m glad that the tweak is working for you it’s inconsequential in my mind. For instance, I tended to hit 8 to 10 reps on my 5s week, 5-6 reps on my 3s week and so on. Sometimes more depending on the lift. Doing an extra 2 reps (7/5/3) will not make any difference if you are doing the original program correctly because these are the kind of reps you should be hitting anyhow. Just food for thought.
I haven’t done that - but my goals are to be strong, fast, flexible and in-shape. Vastly different than your goals.
[quote]Jim Wendler wrote:
I haven’t done that - but my goals are to be strong, fast, flexible and in-shape. Vastly different than your goals. [/quote]
I’m sure that’s an indirect insult due to fear of confrontation (see what I did there?) but as a wise gunny once told me, never get in a pissing contest with a skunk.
To everyone else, thanks for the feedback. I haven’t been active around here for a long while, and that 8/6/3 looks rather interesting. Going to be educating myself tonight.
I’m working on creating “7 Minute Abs”…
[quote]npr386 wrote:
[quote]Jim Wendler wrote:
I haven’t done that - but my goals are to be strong, fast, flexible and in-shape. Vastly different than your goals. [/quote]
I’m sure that’s an indirect insult due to fear of confrontation (see what I did there?) but as a wise gunny once told me, never get in a pissing contest with a skunk.
To everyone else, thanks for the feedback. I haven’t been active around here for a long while, and that 8/6/3 looks rather interesting. Going to be educating myself tonight. [/quote]
Jim Wendler is the creator of 5/3/1. You are posting in his forum. You were ignorant to this fact and that’s okay. Own it.
Well skunk, he just pissed in your face, now what? It wasn’t as much of an insult as it was, do the damn program as is until you have some level experience to manipulate it yourself.
Some serious nut hugging going on in here.