Also keep in mind Jim Wendler didn’t squat 1,000lbs following 5/3/1 programming.
In his own words he wrote 5/3/1 after he was done training for heavy lifts and, I’m paraphrasing, wrote 5/3/1 as a simple, easy to follow template for people to be conventionally strong.
His program was never intended to be a hardcore training template and people “criticizing” it, I think, are simply pointing this out. It’s not great for bodybuilding either. I follow Wendler on social media and he says time and again that his program isn’t necessarily for mass monsters or people wanting to look impressive.
It’s literally a middle of the road program by design.
He also says if you’re going to follow it follow the core principles and have fun altering the rest as you see fit, which can lead to more granular goal achievement, but it was never supposed to be an ideal power program.
For me, absolutely nobody IRL questions me at my profession. I teach organic chemistry at the undergraduate and graduate level and publish mechanistic organic chemistry/macromolecular papers. Nobody ever says “I think the most likely site of nucleophilic attack is at the more sterically hindered electrophilic carbonyl group, due to electronic effects at the transition state”. But this is exactly the stuff I teach and publish. It’s actually great to have this separate from my non-academic life, and to specialize in an area that literally nobody other than practicing academics and scientists have any opinion about or care at all.
I’ve noticed that being twice or 3 times removed from the general public definitely removes the common criticisms that those who are in direct contact may have.
I dont know where you’d fall in that chain of once, twice, etc. removed, but I don’t forsee any flack from the general public coming your way any time soon.
I generally avoid doctors. All they usually have to offer is cut you up or pills. When those things are actually needed, great. Otherwise I avoid at all costs. Had knee surgery at 19. Tore stuff in my hip and needed MRI to confirm the severity. This past year I’ve been to the Dr more than the past 20yrs combined.
I went to a urologist recently and they confirmed my feelings. Could barely finish going over symptoms before they’re pushing pills.
I did recently go to a GP who was pretty good. Similar age man as myself that understood my thoughts. Listened completely to how I felt and didn’t jump to conclusions.
I trust doctors essentially zero, unless we’re talking strictly procedural like a colonoscopy or cavity filling.
In the last 10 years or so, I have not had a single doctor accurately diagnose any of my issues and was left to figure them out on my own. And we’re not talking about rare diseases.
Some examples…
Last spring I went through the ER and then to a referred ophthalmologist who couldn’t even figure out pink eye. At the ophthalmologist office they ran a million obnoxious tests, dilated my eyes and shined ultra bright lights in my eyes even though I warned them I have hypersensitivity and a history of optical migraines. For the next 48 hours, I was vomiting from the pain of the lights and eventually had a full blown migraine. All for a simple case of pink eye that cleared up in less than a day. The doctor even legit yelled at me for wasting his assistant’s time, because I kept flinching whenever she tried to use the bright lights and told me “there’s no such thing as having hypersensitivity to light” even though I was literally crying and vomiting from the pain of the lights.
Recently I’ve been dealing with several months of abdominal bloating and cramping, had doctors put me on almost 3 months worth of antibiotics and 2 months of antifungals! I figured it out on my own that I was lactose intolerant. Sure I stopped dairy and things got dramatically better, but now I’m suffering a hell of a time healing my gut thanks to nuking it with so many unnecessary meds and continuing to eat dairy after I clearly became allergic and before figuring it out on my own.
Back in grad school I went into ER with terrible pain in my head and severe loss of coordination. After a CT scan they determined I had a bad case of sinusitis and gave me some Amoxicillin through an IV. Within SECONDS, all the veins in my ankles were flaring up and my skin looked burned. A few nurses checked it out. One told me it was probably the soap I was using. The other said “I dunno, we don’t really know what your ankles looked like when you came in, let me get the doctor.” When the doctor looked at it, he said “Yeah, looks like an infection. But good thing we got you on Amoxicillin…it’ll clear it right up!” A few days later the rash worked it’s way all the way up my legs almost to my groin and I could barely walk on my own. My roommate drove me over to student care center, where the doctor I saw only tested me for STDs! When I asked why, she said “because sometimes they manifest themselves in the joints.” Nevermind the fact that she didn’t even ask me any questions about my sexual history or even check my genitals. “Do you think this is an obvious allergic reactions to a new med?” I asked. “Mmmmm, nah…reactions to Amoxicillin don’t look like this.” Idk how else to describe it less bluntly, but this was 2 ER nurses and 2 separate doctors now that were nothing short of literally retarded.
I eventually barged into another doctors office when he was with another patient a few days later. He was the one doc I had visited in the past at that student center that didn’t seem completely inept. By this point, I could barely walk or stand more than a few minutes at a time and I told him he had to help me with my legs immediately. He took it very seriously fortunately. Explained it was a severe and life threatening allergic reaction to the meds (DUH!) and that the vasculitis would have eventually made its way to my heart in a few more days and probably induced a heart attack. So yes…a sinus infection + complete ineptitude of several healthcare professionals almost killed me. Good thing they ruled out STDs though! To this day, I have permanent scarring on my ankles, but it’s a nice reminder to never take any doctor at their word ever again.
I few other small examples I’ll spare you, but in general, the handful of medical issues I’ve had to deal with in the past decade or so have actually lead to doctors making me much MUCH worse than I originally went in for, ranging from ignoring my medical history and causing me to have a migraine, destroying my gut, and to nearly killing me with an antibiotic for a simple sinus infection.
