I moved from SS to 5/3/1 several weeks ago following this program:
Mon.
Squat 5/3/1
Bench 5/3/1
Chin/DB Rows
Thurs.
Squat 40%/50%/60%x5
Press 5/3/1
Dead Lifts 5/3/1
I dropped all weights I was doing by 10% and workouts are going well except my lower back is felling a little trashed. On SS I was only doing 1 set of 5 and I am wondering if the extra volume is more than I can handle. I am 55 with past issues with my lower back. Is there an alternative way to program them in doing 1 set each week and still make gains.
[quote]Hop wrote:
Yes. I was doing 2 days a week to allow for recovery.[/quote]
Just one man’s opinion, but to me this is backwards. If you can train every day, you should. If you can train 4 days a week, training less does not make sense. To build strength over the long-term you need to build up your work capacity, a pyramid is only as high as its base is wide.
To develop work capacity, you need to challenge it. Even if you are limited to lifting 2 days/week, you should be doing something every day to get stronger. Whether that’s tissue work, mobility/stretching, conditioning, whatever.
Of course if you’re used to low volume, doing more is going to suck at first, but this is a short term problem and your body will quickly get acclimated to more work. The more work you can do (and recover from) the better you will get. If you can barely recover from the miniscule amount of weekly training you described, then that is your primary roadblock and the first thing you need to address.
I’m your age and currently doing 5/3/1 as well. Since you work up too the max weight on the last set of 5/3/1, the total volume for the DL is not much more than you would be doing for SS. I feel DL volume is optimum for 5/3/1, but squat volume is a bit low, so I add paused sets, etc. to the squats as assistance, similar to what you are doing.
I also am doing good mornings as assistance to build the lower back, and I feel they have done wonders for my DL training. You need to start light and slowly work up. And I agree, if you could work out 3 days a week, you could do DLs on a separate day, thus saving you lower back, since you won’t be fatigued from the squats and presses, and will have better form for the DLs.
I don’t think that lifting twice a week is necessarily bad. Jim has many templates that include a two-day split and he actually trains 2 days a week now. If that’s the best you got then just make sure you’re kicking ass when you do it. I prefer to train as often as possible but I may feel differently at 50.
RE your deadlift: You’re experiencing a lot of lower back pain? Double-check your form, make sure you’re doing adequate mobility work (Joe DeFranco’s Limber 11 is excellent), try using an inversion table, and make sure you’re training max is set correctly; it sounds like it could be too heavy. Maybe take your best weight & reps for your deadlift, calculate a new 1-rep max, use 80% of that as your new TM, and then re-calc your template. For your deadlift PR+ sets, maybe cap the reps somewhere between 6 and 8 reps for now. Other than that, if you have a Trap Bar available to you, switch to Trap Bar deadlifts. Just re-find your TM as normal then. Also, try doing a lot of Back Raises in the neighborhood of 50 total reps to help strengthen your back. Make sure you do mobility work on your non-training days too.
I have a lot of lower back pain too, though I’m not in my 50’s. I’ve found that a couple exercises in the Limber 11 specifically help my lower back. That combined with religious use of my inversion table really helps to off-set a lot of the pain I have.
[quote]Hop wrote:
Yes. I was doing 2 days a week to allow for recovery.[/quote]
I train 2 days a week in the gym ( from the 531 second edition ) and I do mobility stretching conditioning 2 days a week at home. Any thing more and I don’t get stronger and I feel like shit. IMO people train way too often. Of course that’s coming from somebody who has NEVER recovered well. If you have trouble recovering, trust me stay with 2 maybe 3 days a week. The other bonus is you actually have a life.
[quote]Hop wrote:
Yes. I was doing 2 days a week to allow for recovery.[/quote]
Just one man’s opinion, but to me this is backwards. If you can train every day, you should. If you can train 4 days a week, training less does not make sense. To build strength over the long-term you need to build up your work capacity, a pyramid is only as high as its base is wide.
To develop work capacity, you need to challenge it. Even if you are limited to lifting 2 days/week, you should be doing something every day to get stronger. Whether that’s tissue work, mobility/stretching, conditioning, whatever.
Of course if you’re used to low volume, doing more is going to suck at first, but this is a short term problem and your body will quickly get acclimated to more work. The more work you can do (and recover from) the better you will get. If you can barely recover from the miniscule amount of weekly training you described, then that is your primary roadblock and the first thing you need to address. [/quote]
I am pretty sure this is one of those things that can vary individually quite a bit. I train 2-3 days per week for lifting. I also train 3-4 days per week for rock climbing, but I always make sure to have at least 1-2 days per week of nothing strenuous, just some leisurely walking and stuff like that.
Training 2 days a week is great. Allows you to be fresh mentally an physically. To the guy who said if you can lift 4 days a week you should. You’re wrong - fact.
[quote]Rupert531 wrote:
Training 2 days a week is great. Allows you to be fresh mentally an physically. To the guy who said if you can lift 4 days a week you should. You’re wrong - fact.[/quote]
Horseshit. Anyone “can” train less. Should you? Depends on your goals. If you want to get strong, then you are undercutting your potential.
Doing both squats and deadlifts in the same workout is totally retarded. If you are going to date two hot chicks you would not do both on the same night, unless it was your birthday. You would double your fun and performance by doing one on, say Monday, and one on Friday. Right?
Deadlifts are the meanest, CNR trashing exercise on the planet. They deserve their own day.
Doing both squats and deadlifts in the same workout is totally retarded. If you are going to date two hot chicks you would not do both on the same night, unless it was your birthday. You would double your fun and performance by doing one on, say Monday, and one on Friday. Right?
Deadlifts are the meanest, CNR trashing exercise on the planet. They deserve their own day.[/quote]
Tell that to Andy Bolton and Gary Frank, two of the best deadlifters and all around powerlifters of all time … or, you know, don’t…
[quote]Rupert531 wrote:
Training 2 days a week is great. Allows you to be fresh mentally an physically. To the guy who said if you can lift 4 days a week you should. You’re wrong - fact.[/quote]
It was me who said it. The great thing about athletic competition is it puts masturbatory debate to bed and just sort of settles questions like this. Obviously the great majority of raw lifters who are worth a shit are training four days per week or more.
The guys training 3x or less putting up huge numbers are the exception and not the rule. And as raw powerlifting gains in popularity, it’s no coincidence that more frequent, more heavy, more specific training is growing in popularity as well. It just tends to work better for most people.
If you’re putting up massive raw totals then congratulations, but if you’re a middling intermediate lifter like most of the guys here, you might think about finding ways to do more work. Like NIck Horton says, more isn’t always better, but it usually is.
Doing both squats and deadlifts in the same workout is totally retarded. If you are going to date two hot chicks you would not do both on the same night, unless it was your birthday. You would double your fun and performance by doing one on, say Monday, and one on Friday. Right?
[/quote]
I enjoy being able to satisfy both at the same time! Great analogy, really. I don’t do OHP and Bench on the same day for that reason.
[quote]Rupert531 wrote:
Training 2 days a week is great. Allows you to be fresh mentally an physically. To the guy who said if you can lift 4 days a week you should. You’re wrong - fact.[/quote]
It was me who said it. The great thing about athletic competition is it puts masturbatory debate to bed and just sort of settles questions like this. Obviously the great majority of raw lifters who are worth a shit are training four days per week or more.
The guys training 3x or less putting up huge numbers are the exception and not the rule. And as raw powerlifting gains in popularity, it’s no coincidence that more frequent, more heavy, more specific training is growing in popularity as well. It just tends to work better for most people.
If you’re putting up massive raw totals then congratulations, but if you’re a middling intermediate lifter like most of the guys here, you might think about finding ways to do more work. Like NIck Horton says, more isn’t always better, but it usually is.[/quote]
I do think that 4 is a good number for most people. But if you can go hard 6-7 days per week, then you probably aren’t really going that hard after all.
The guys training 3x or less putting up huge numbers are the exception and not the rule. And as raw powerlifting gains in popularity, it’s no coincidence that more frequent, more heavy, more specific training is growing in popularity as well. It just tends to work better for most people.
[/quote]
To add on to this, a lot of people who train 2-3 times a week are athletes that have practice sessions for their sport eating into their time. IIRC in Jim’s earliest mentions of the 2day/wk 5/3/1 template, they were presented as options for athletes (or older lifters).
With the template in the OP, the issue i see is not enough volume. 2 main lifts per session, only twice a week, does not leave a lot of time for assistance work. This would be good for building strength while gaining almost NO mass; however, most powerlifters acknowledge the need to gain mass in order to reach their ideal weight for optimal strength. OP’s template seems more geared towards an athlete that just needs to have basic strength and does a lot of conditioning and practice during the week
I actually rotate. Squat an bench one week. Deadlift OH press the next week. Then repeat. But that’s fine you do your shit. Wendler even said some of his best gains have been off of 2 days a week, but hey! What does he know , right? I came off surgery an killed my PRs by a mile this way. Plus i love to train but would like to have a life outside the gym. It’s a win win.
[quote]Rupert531 wrote:
Training 2 days a week is great. Allows you to be fresh mentally an physically. To the guy who said if you can lift 4 days a week you should. You’re wrong - fact.[/quote]
If you only train 2 days and bench is always after squat and deadlift is always 3rd, it seems to me it would make both lifts suffer. I would never squat before bench unless it’s a meet where of course there’s no choice.
Personally I do a 4 day week, with squat, bench, deadlift and standing overhead press starting out each of the 4 days, with squat and deadlift 3.5 days apart from each other and bench and overhead 3.5 days apart. Also, I work a stationary office job so if I only trained twice a week I’d be fat as hell!
[quote]Rupert531 wrote:
Training 2 days a week is great. Allows you to be fresh mentally an physically. To the guy who said if you can lift 4 days a week you should. You’re wrong - fact.[/quote]
If you only train 2 days and bench is always after squat and deadlift is always 3rd, it seems to me it would make both lifts suffer. I would never squat before bench unless it’s a meet where of course there’s no choice.
Personally I do a 4 day week, with squat, bench, deadlift and standing overhead press starting out each of the 4 days, with squat and deadlift 3.5 days apart from each other and bench and overhead 3.5 days apart. Also, I work a stationary office job so if I only trained twice a week I’d be fat as hell![/quote]
I’ll bench Tuesday. Deadlift Saturday, I walk 2 miles with a vest on off days push prowler after lifting days. I’ll always be fresh an won’t have to deload.
You’re only doing two more sets than you used to do on deadlift, and squat at 60% or less for only 3x5 on the same day shouldn’t come anywhere close to hurting your deadlift if your training max is correct. Just deadlift first if it continues to cause you problems.
It always sucks at first to bump volume. You’ll adjust in a few weeks and be better off for it.