Am I Doing Too Much? Program Critique

Training Powerlifting
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[quote]Acyren wrote:

[quote]gorangers0525 wrote:
There are tons of options. If you like sheiko/high volume I’d try to contact someone who runs it and also work on recovery. I’m pretty sure there used to be a sheiko thread so give that a search. Foam roller, extra workouts, icing, contrast showers, eating enough and stretching. You could probably still make some progress with more basic programs like the texas method,madcow,etc.

Try to pick a program you can use for the rest of your training career and only adjust slightly to your needs. 5/3/1 has worked for me so far so if ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Also don’t think you can’t get strong naturally. Just look at Mike Tuchscherer who isn’t much younger than you. One of the strongest raw powerlifters in the world and he got that way by training intelligently and recovery techniques.[/quote]

I think main reason i was not recovering was the negative of the cleans cause i could not drops the bar, tomorrow is where the 6x6 80% cleans are, i just pray not a fly is in the gym or my back will be fubar. I am doing this till about feb, then i am cutting, this is the exact reason why i never made huge progress in numbers. week 3 now, 3 more weeks, then 1 week off, then one week of lighter exercises, at that point i will decide between the same program deadlift and snatch or the new bench press program i saw few weeks back, it also seems to be another Russian one, was on this site actually oct 11th i believe. that one is also good. as long as i can hit 250 bench and 250 cleans by feb i made great progress imo. smolov stuff is also good.

5/3/1 is good, i just don’t understand why it has fail final sets and no advice on keep one in the tank like all other hardcore programs, it actually encourages it. for some reason i always end up over training with it. my chest does not recover well at all, never has, as soon as i get cocky and add one more exercise i know over training comes within two weeks. still have not really figured it out. we’ll know after i finish this program that is testing me recovery ability. true test week is week 5 when i have to hit my max 2 sets of 2 reps, then i will know if this program was good. gained about 10lbs past few weeks, which means calories are good.

I like the russian style mainly because the strongest people are generally manual labourers, which makes sense, they do the same thing almost every day. not the biggest fan of do heavier and hope to recover by next week.
[/quote]

The 5/3/1 program was designed so that you could hit PRs whenever you feel ready. You aren’t supposed to push to failure every session. I made this mistake in the past. What has worked well for me is to get only the required reps for sessions 1,2,4,5,7,8,10,and 11. I only go for rep PRs on sessions 3,6,9,12. I lift 3 times a week so that means I go for a rep PR every Friday. Training this way has allowed me to recovered and run the program for 8 cycles and I am not resetting my training max for squat and press. I have also found that I make the best gains using high reps so I’ll move around 3s week and 1s week for the squat and press. My training cycle looks like this:

3 Weeks:

5 - Press, 5 - DL, 5+ - Bench, 5 - Squat
1 - Press, 3+ - DL, 3 - Bench, 1 - Squat
3+ - Press, 1 - DL, 1 - Bench, 3+ - Squat

4 Weeks:

5 - Press, 5 - DL, 5+ - Bench
5 - Squat, 1 - Press, 3+ - DL
3 - Bench, 1 - Squat, 3+ - Press
1 - DL, 1 - Bench, 3+ - Squat

I include 2-3 assistance lifts but the volume varies depending on how I feel that day.

As a lifter, you should limit blaming external causes for your success or failure. If a well known program doesn’t work for you, it’s likely you’re doing something wrong. Russians aren’t the strongest only because they are manual laborers. The strong ones that you hear about know how to train and learned from experience. The reason why you feel better doing Russian programs is because they don’t allow flexibility in varying training intensity from session to session. That could be a good thing if you can keep up with recovery and frequency of work or it could be a bad thing if you have an unpredictable life style and stresses interfere with your training. For 5/3/1, it could be a good thing if you know how to regulate or a bad thing if you push too hard.

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ITT: nobody ever got stronger or bigger without the internet, ever

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lift206 how often are you hitting new PRs?

And I never blamed anything external for me not making progress, i actually do believe 90% programs work, but it only works for some people.

you pretty much push your third week. so do you leave one or two in the tank on 5/3 days?

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I only push every 3rd workout (the ones with ‘+’). Everything else I do the minimum requirement regardless if I have one or five in the tank. My maxes were 305/245/405 at the end of last summer. I then started training singles and I made gains the first two months but it all went downhill after that. I took a break and from February through April I did the 5/3/1 BBB Challenge which was more of a bodybuilding routine to take a break from all the high intensity work. It was pretty frustrating going back 6 months in strength but I had to try a new approach. My maxes were probably what the were the previous year. My PRs in the past couple months are 315x3/210x7/335x15. I’ve made PRs every cycle for DL but the gains have slowed down for Squat, Bench, and Press because the weights are getting heavy. I’m resetting my Squat and Press this cycle to get the progress going again. The biggest improvement is that I’m always going forward instead of backwards. I feel fresh at the beginning of each cycle.

I’ve come to terms with my body responding much better to high reps than low. I can train singles but after a couple cycles I have to go back to high reps for the majority of my strength gains. I love training heavy but I’d rather train reps if it gives me better results.

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1-2 reps should be kept in the tank for the last exercise of every set. Jim Wendler mentions multiple times in his e-book and articles TO NOT GO TO FAILURE. 5/3/1 isn’t for everyone but a lot of the complaints i see from people about the program are due to them not following it correctly. Which is sad since the concept is really simple.

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[quote]gorangers0525 wrote:
1-2 reps should be kept in the tank for the last exercise of every set. Jim Wendler mentions multiple times in his e-book and articles TO NOT GO TO FAILURE. 5/3/1 isn’t for everyone but a lot of the complaints i see from people about the program are due to them not following it correctly. Which is sad since the concept is really simple.[/quote]

I know the concept of strength is saving few reps in the tank, but i read both versions of his books and never really saw the emphasis on saving a few, and if there was then why does it tell you go to failure or max, all of the templet say till failure, specially the REST PAUSE version.

those are good lift206, i respond best to 5-7 rep range, and make best progress, i think the 10-15 high reps are what halts my progress when i do the assistant work, as i said i really like this russian method now. today went through the 6x6 clean day like water, so it was really good, i think i am getting used to it, lets see if the 2x2 with previous max works out on week 5. 5/3/1 is pretty much same when it comes to percentages, all are personalization from the block scripts. have you looked up Juggernaut method? that one makes a lot of sense, might be something that works for you since you like reps. i think in long run might be more complete than 5/3/1, just more boring.

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Haha I won’t be switching programs for a long time. At least not for squat and DL. It’s likely that I won’t have to reset for DL until the end of next year or later. The DL PRs feel easy and I’m going to milk these gains. I went from struggling to pull 295x15 five months ago to pulling an easy 335x15, there’s no way I’m switching to another program. My squats are still going up too. The only thing that I might possibly change next year is what I do for bench if I don’t make progress by my second reset. I’ll always have smolov to fall back on if I need to pull up my squat number more quickly in the future. I’ll look into the Juggernaut method but that program could be a couple years out if I decide to do it.

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[quote]lift206 wrote:
Haha I won’t be switching programs for a long time. At least not for squat and DL. It’s likely that I won’t have to reset for DL until the end of next year or later. The DL PRs feel easy and I’m going to milk these gains. I went from struggling to pull 295x15 five months ago to pulling an easy 335x15, there’s no way I’m switching to another program. My squats are still going up too. The only thing that I might possibly change next year is what I do for bench if I don’t make progress by my second reset. I’ll always have smolov to fall back on if I need to pull up my squat number more quickly in the future. I’ll look into the Juggernaut method but that program could be a couple years out if I decide to do it.[/quote]

Sounds crazy, but take out heavy OHP, might help your bench, my problem was front shoulder over training for most!