Let’s see what Jim recommends…
Interesting! [quote=“mjgebhard, post:5, topic:223561”]
Wow, did not expect a reply from the man himself! Thanks so much for taking the time. I’ll be deferring to your expertise in what i do
[/quote]
Great! We should be all done here then.
Uh oh…
Savvy. I’m going to do “Jim’s program” and follow “Jim’s advice” except for when I want to do something different.
Tremendous.
Yup.
OP, live long and prosper.
Hahaha alright, you’re a lost cause who hasn’t even done the program so has a fundamental lack of understanding.
Every insight from people on here who have done the program is against you. And it seems you’ve done alot of critical reading without a lot of critical practice. These insights from me are from someone with a degree in Exercise and Sports Science and who trains multiple athletes. Believe it or not we are actually trying to help you.
If you want to highlight that I used a higher increment for the OH press than recommended, this actually proves my point more in regards to your method moving faster. Using the NSCA coefficient makes little sense also as again estimations should always be taken at face value and never followed to a tee. Basing off your last week alone is inherently flawed due the variability or setting rep records on a consistent basis. You don’t understand because you haven’t done it. And I like how you felt the need to point out you don’t use pre workout hahaha.
Bottom line:
You haven’t done anything.
You don’t understand the principles of the program and why it is the way it is. No amount of reading of other official coefficient’s and correct % ranges to work for strength as opposed to hypertrophy will make up for that.
The designer of the program advised you that it is a bad idea and i’ve clearly explained why in terms that if you had experienced what it’s like to set rep records on a consistent basis you would understand, but you haven’t. If you’re not going to listen to the guy who made it why do 531? Just do your own thing and design your own ultimate program. Too much faith in the written word and not enough faith in the weight room.
By all means do it. This is your choice and is perfectly fine The first thing I do when I’ve thought something out clearly is to get in the weight room and try it out. But when people who have done it and know what they are talking about try to help, try and understand why. It’s not our job to prove you wrong without a shadow of a doubt, It’s your job to listen to the help offered. This is why Jim doesn’t break anything down beyond a small response, because if you won’t take the time to step back and listen why bother?
So do it. Do it for 6 months straight and tell us your progress. And if you don’t make it 6 months without having problems with your form, bar speed (this will be huge for you) and have oto readjust TM’s. Don’t say you weren’t warned, this is on you not the program.
Also double bottom line here:
You can’t even deadlift 3 plates and you want to tell me about the NSCA coefficient and argue the best % floor based approach to progression. This is the very definition of getting ahead of yourself. This is not something that normally needs to be pointed out, but you are so insistent on your knowledge and argumentative standpoint.
Do the work first, ask the questions later.
As a backdrop, that maybe would have been useful, i lifted in high school and college a lot. I’ve taken a year off (kind of alluded to this in my intro post)… but i was doing 315 for reps on deadlift in high school. That number was fairly proportionate to the rest of my lifts, and increased when i came to college. I’ve since taken a year off and obviously lost a lot of that strength… But i’m in no way new to this. I have real experience… and i’m a physics major so i know all about the limits of applied science…
But I mean you’re more or less agreeing with what i’ve put forward. Where is the room for me to blow you off?
Truthfully, i don’t think i’ve modified anything… if i had a point it’d be that. Its like a refinement of whats already there. which i mean, i do not care i anyone gets upset with me calling it that. Thats what it is.
So like, if Jim says to come in at 90% or 85% or your e1rm, then it doesn’t matter what program you’ve been doing, or where and how you acquired your strength, thats where your at, and thats where you start. So if you used his program from a month, it does not matter if you use a bigger increment so long as that increment is proportional to where you are presently at. (I get the train for longer without stalling thing, i’ve heard it before, i don’t think what i’m putting forward would make stall sooner or earlier. but who, really, is to say?)
He also recommends using as small increments as possible, so once you turn the corner, and your lesser gains would mean you use a smaller increment, you would actually be using those smaller increments which he recommends! It’d be proportional to your own progression. Imo, you would probably not stall until you reached your genetic potential, because you’d never train in a region that would stall you. You’d always be training at something like 75-85% of your e1rm.
So its by his own logic that you would use it as a floor. Its just more consistent that way, and yeah of course that doesn’t account for the profoundly complex physiology of human beings, but whats wrong with arguing for a self-consistent template?
And we can all stop getting so heated, this shouldn’t bother anyone that much.
Jim Wendler.
The guy that wrote the program.
Honestly, i do appreciate your taking the time. But i still don’t think my point is getting hit. (I used to lift a lot btw, i hit max’s well above 315 in high school so i have enough experience to at least challenge what you’re saying). And I have thoroughly read and contemplated what you’ve said so please don’t just discount me as being stubborn.
As an example to clarify the premise of what i’m saying:
Take someone who has a dead max of 300. By Jim’s recommendation, he should use 90% as a max to start the program (or 85% but lets just use 90%).
So this guy’s TM would be 270.
Now he does a cycle and his e1rm is around 310, for which a 90% TM would be 279. So his increment is actually a lb less than the recommended 10lb jump.
Now say that instead of using 5/3/1, he used some other program for a month, like say westside. and he had the same gains. so e1rm went from 300-310. (that isn’t arbitrary btw.)
But what would Jim recommend if he wanted to now switch to 5/3/1? he’d recommend taking 90% of that (which would be 279) and going from there.
So my point is that is doesn’t matter where the strength came from. The strength doesn’t care about Jim’s program… Its just there. And Jim would say, whatever you got, start at 90%.
He would also say that you should use as small increments as possible. So there’d be a time when you turned the corner on using +10 lb increments and went below that. Which would fit your point of progress.
And i get that they’re estimates, and they’re just a tool, thats how i’m using them here. I just think using 90% (or 85%) of your e1rm should be taken a little more seriously, and i think it would be if the whole thing got structured around that. Not just “eh, add ten pounds.” i mean where is the precision in that? Its got nothing to do with where anyone is in there progression. Its more haphazard than what i’m proposing, its just that the truth there is a bit more subtle.
Furthermore, I don’t think the TM is a weak point in the program, i think its the strength of the program and i think it should be a bit more exact.
Regardless, i’m gonna try it this way. And will let everyone here know when and if i stall within the next year. I’d hope there is at least some interest in what happens if it gets done this way. Egos aside.
[[[So were clear on the difference between what i’m doing and what the program recommends, is that instead of using the increments listed like 5/10 and 2.5/5, i will reassess my e1rm every 3rd week, and use that to calculate my TM for the next cycle.]]]
Go for it! The beauty of lifting is we can go back and forth all we want, but there’s always the option of going in the weight room and seeing what happens. In my experience, coming from a Exercise and Sports Science background, I had a tendency to overthink things, and go,“well we learnt this so if I apply that…” Never worked. Every time I tried to add too much science to tried and true methods my progress failed. The best aproach is to keep it simple.
That is my main inherent problem with this method. Yes it sounds good on paper, and yes you’re right about where to start if switching problems. But it doesn’t leave much room for autoregulation when basing new TM’s off something with so much variability. That’s the point of using 5/10lbs as a standard. If the weights weren’t moving as good as you’d hope, use 5, if you got 15 reps on 1+ use 10. Autoregulate. Jim would recommend 90% as a start when switching, but would never recommend it thereon out. Also whilst 279 is a smaller increment, you would be rounding it to 280 anyway as we only work with usable numbers, so this benefit is negated. And as stated before will lead to inconsistent and varied jumps.
To be perfectly honest I don’t think there’s much interest. Everyone’s pretty happy with a tried and true method of consistent progress. And something else that hasn’t been mentioned is this idea isn’t exactly new. In fact what you are proposing is essentially how most programs ran before Jim changed things with the TM. Albeit i’ll admit your idea is more conservative and will probably work better than most of those others. But all programs used to work like this and many still do, run a cycle, test at the end and base weights off where you are currently at for the next cycle. But there’s a reason you don’t hear anyone say they’ve been on any of those programs for more than a few months and most people have stuck to 531 for years at a time.
I’ve done this with 5/3/1 before. You mentioned “floor”. Let’s use the word base. Doing it this way will dramatically fuck off your base of volume. You are going to run out of being able to increase that volume base very quick, let alone match previous volumes. What you essentially end up doing is testing, rather than building. You may have success over a few cycles, but without a doubt you will hit a brick wall quick. A volume base has to be built up slowly over time. What you are trying to do is come up with a better way of auto-regulating a percentage based program, which is pointless IMO. My advice is either do the program as written or find another program that allows more flexibility for auto-regulation.
I think its funny how you have everyone in a tizzy, yourself included, over your hypothetical numbers that don’t mean fuckall until you actually lift them consistently for months on end. Good luck to you!
“That’s the point of using 5/10lbs as a standard. If the weights weren’t moving as good as you’d hope, use 5, if you got 15 reps on 1+ use 10.”
See to me this is basically what i’m proposing, just in an arguably less precise version. I’d say you’re example of 15 reps on 1+ brings into question the prior TM more so than the next one. but if were switching between 5 and 10 based on how we felt we did, doesn’t that seem less precise than taking an e1rm and then using an exact increment based on that (say 7 lbs or 3 lbs or 12 lbs)?
Imo thats even less vulnerable to ego than would be approaching this the 5/10 way, because whats real is what you put up. and perhaps this is the point of tension right here, but i think your e1rm is more real than your thoughts or intuitions on how you should progress.
Those things can be susceptible to your state in life. This is exact, theres no choosing. You are where you are, and you move from there. I think it involves less ego doing it this way. Early on you can argue otherwise, like if i do it this way, i’ll move up 15 lbs on my TM (for deadlift) for cycle 2. But that will change to sub 10 increments by around the third/fourth cycle i would guess. And it will probably stay quite low from there on, which is whats recommended right?
And you can always go to home depot and glue washers together, Jim even recommends it in order to do smaller increments. So its not hard to get exact weights to fit a 279 TM.
“something else that hasn’t been mentioned is this idea isn’t exactly new…”
Alright could have saved the whole thread with this bit right here… I thought i had something novel to offer!
Anyway, maybe I am stubborn… I’m gonna do it this way anyway. If my progress sucks and i stall, i’ll start things over and do it exactly as its written.
I will also confess my ignorance at the alter of 5/3/1 should i be found wanting in the way your reverence implies i will.
yea i did mention that i wouldn’t be using Jim’s formula for 1rm. I’d be using the coefficients given by the NSCA. They’re a lot more conservative.
There is also an imposed limit to using that. so you can only calculate up to 10 reps. whatever weight you used. So if we took your dead example. or any example since you keep editing your post… 300 for 14 reps would mean an actual max of around 440 using Jim’s formula. And you wouldn’t use so that anyway since its got too many reps. clearly its well below 80-85 % of your true max.
Now for what i’m saying, i have an implied limit to rep count since I’m using the nsca’s meter. so i could only use 10 of those reps, and i’d have to use their coefficient for deadlift at 10 reps. which is 1.24. So the the max would be 300*1.24=372.
Far more conservative. And that would pretty much remain through the early stages. So theres plenty of time in the beginning to build up your “base of volume”.
So, are you planning on scrapping the amrap sets completely just because the nsca formula only charts up to 10 reps or just recording up to 10 reps? You say you are experienced, so I’m assuming you’ve maxed out your initial improvements gained from neural efficiency and if not, why not just do something like Starting Strength first? I don’t want to come off as sounding like I’m trashing your thoughts. I’ve made far more progress both physically and intuitively through experimentation in the gym, than following a cookie cutter program up to a point. I’m not big on totally percentage based programs to begin with, unless I’m using it as a governor to throttle back intensity/volume, etc. I understand that you are trying to optimize the progression protocol. What I don’t understand is why you don’t just jump on a program that allows you to work up to a rep max for the day instead of gutting one of the core principles of the 5/3/1. It would be a hell of a lot more simple as you would know where your strength stands on that day for every single session.
I see where you are coming from here and that’s the way I approached it in regards to fractional plates. It’s a lot less practical to make bigger jumps forward in percentage based programs, because you are stuck with those percentages for the whole cycle.
“So, are you planning on scrapping the amrap sets completely just because the nsca formula only charts up to 10 reps or just recording up to 10 reps?”
Well what i’m saying is that if you get 315 for say 14 reps on your week 3 amrap, you can only use 315 for 10 as a call for your next TM. If you got only 9 reps, you’d use all nine reps. So it makes for a self-regulating and conservative system which won’t allow for jumps to be too high.
Take another example tho, cuz i think this gets interesting when you actually put the numbers in…
How about a lifter doing amrap week 3 on 315 for dead. He gets 6 reps here. And remember his TM would have been exactly 331 for the cycle. I’m proposing the use of more precise training maxes and percentages.
Now if you take that weight and multiply it by the NSCA coefficient for that exercise’s rep count, you come out to an e1rm of 372.015… so 372. (coefficient at that rep count is 1.181)
Your new TM would be 334.8. Now you can round that however you find appealing. I would round down to 334. That’d mean my training max for cycle A was 331, and for cycle B it became 334.
3 lb increment in a completely reasonable scenario.
I think its actually a really sensible approach, but of course, i’ll test it myself.
Using a constant of 5-10 pounds accounts for good/bad days. It could cause problems to use one day of lifting to program the next 3-6 weeks.
I also think using a constant increase is better for motivation.
Your ideas make sense, especially if you stick with making smaller increases. It may even be an optimal way for robots to run 5/3/1. I don’t think that it will work better for you than the standard way, but I’m glad you’re trying it and won’t be completely shocked if it works out for you.
Yea, that’s nothing new. In the nearly year and a half that I ran 5/3 did a TM ever end up a completely rounded whole number. Google poteto’s 5/3/1 Excell spreadsheet. It rounded your working percentages up or down to within at least 2.5lbs. Estimated 1rm’s and tm’s were just rounded to the nearest odd or even number. Not sure if the option allowed for actual working percentages below 2.5lbs though. Honestly, taking it to that point in a percentage based program is pointless in the end anyways and isn’t going to make much of a difference, especially intentionally keeping it conservative. An estimated rep max and an actual max have little correlation. My estimated 1rm max says I should be able to pull 600. A year later and ive yet to pull 600. It means jack shit other than a number might be in the cards in the near future if I play my cards right. And then, I may never get it. I sure as shit will, but it’s a possibility I won’t. I don’t think it will make a difference either way. You’re already seeing what equates to 85% only once per cycle, unless you’re programming in jokers. Give or take a few lbs here and there on your main work sets aren’t going to make a difference on your actual 1rm in the first place.
What are you using to calculate that?
Like i did 234 for 10 reps last week on deadlift, if i used Jim’s formula, i’d have an e1rm of 312. But if i used the NSCA’s coefficient, i’d have an e1rm of 290, which i think is a lot closer to what i can actually do.
Also what do you mean by “base of volume”? could you elaborate on that a bit for me?
It wouldn’t be that big of a deal to err on the conservative side at all. In terms of progress, too huge of jumps have always made me stall quicker and jumps for TM over 10% can set you up for injury. This I learned from experience in the form of patellar and elbow tendonitis. There’s evidence on the net out there, but I cant recall exactly where or the search keywords I used, but it shouldn’t be hard to find. You may use Google scholar also. I’ve used bryzcki’s as well as Jim’s equation in the past. I don’t put too much faith or time in 1rm equations that often anymore honestly. Speaking on volume base, say you are on 1’s week with a TM of 300. Rounding for ease of explanation. Your first set will be 5x225, second set= 3x255 and third set=285 for let’s say 8. Weightxreps= 4,170lbs. When making jumps too big, very soon it begins to get too hard to get enough reps on your amrap set to match/beat volume totals of previous cycles. In that scenario, you can either 1) accept that your training max is too high and lower it or 2) Do more sets at your top set, second set or first set to keep your volume progressing. I stick to prilepins chart. Say if I’m working up to a 5rm for the day. Prilepins chart dictates that I need 10-20 reps in the 80-90% range with 15reps being optimal. 1st things first, I want those 15 reps in that range first, before dropping down if need be. Keep in mind that prilepins chart was based on Olympic weightlifters, but it serves a lot of people really well as a baseline of recoverable volume and keeping bar speed up. Another thing is you should be able to get 5 reps on every top set of every week. The 95% set on 1’s week equates to about 85% or a 5rm. If you can’t get 5 reps, your TM is too high. I personally prefer not go about life deciphering back and forth between a training max and my true rep max. I would rather work up to a rep max for the day and know exactly where I stand for the day every single session. I’m not knocking the program. The TM principle is there to act as a cushion for unforseen variables in life. I think the reason everyone gets so worked up over posts like these, other than the fact that people feel strongly about what they believe in is that so many people look past the main philosophy and principles of programs and then come back a few months later and say the program doesn’t work. It obviously works or the program wouldn’t be as successful as it is. He’s trained in some of the strongest circles in the world, as well as the collegiate setting. Not saying that thought shouldn’t always be challenged, but I would bet he’s put more thought into the program than anyone. I would agree with everyone else and try it out, before you tailor it. Good luck either way.