I catch that there’s a trend of inexperienced lifters taking good programs and modifying them because they think that they know better and then complaining when they don’t get the results that they’ve been promised. I’m starting 5/3/1 and wanted to avoid this sinful temptation, but.. here we are.
My snag is that while I care about each of bench, press, squat, and deadlift, I probably value weighted chinups above all of them and tbh I would be willing to sacrifice some optimality in my other lifts to make my weighted chinups stronger.
As I understand it, 5/3/1 traditionally does not have an upper body pull as a main lift, but remedies this by saying “do something like 5x10 or 10x5 or 5x5 or whatever you want of chinups or rows or whatever you want” and that is fair (especially if you are a powerlifter). But since I value chinups more than my other lifts, this feels a bit like being back to my own programming. I was approximately doing 5x10 with chin-ups already and frequently felt plateaued or would push too hard and feel injured.
So my question is essentially, would I be bastardizing 5/3/1 and degrading it effectiveness if I made weighted chinups a main lift? I would set my true max to body weight + max additional weight, then add additional weight to match each of the prescribed loads as a total. I weigh 160lbs and have a 1rm chin-up of +90lbs, so I can pretty much follow the numbers as prescribed for everything except deload weeks (and I can use bands to do sub-bodyweight loads when deloading or replace with inverted row).
To keep things at 4 days per week, I put deadlift and overhead press in the same week and lift every other day so a week is actually 8 days.
Why not pair them with another exercise? Given it’s an antagonistic exercise to bench, press etc. You could always do some lower rep/heavier resistance one day and higher rep/lower resistance/BW on another day.
If your elbows can handle that, I don’t see why it would be a problem. You’re squatting, deadlifting, pressing and pulling; I think that’s the main point (as a non-5/3/1 expert).
I say why not? I have seen a template in the past from Jim programming barbell rows as a 531 lift. Why not chin ups?
You could also look to other program that are using weighted chin ups as a main lift with specific sets and reps and % for them. I use Tacticall Barbell now and weighted chin ups are programmed in most of the template. There is probably other program using those as a main lift.
Thanks! Yeah I guess I was just curious if anyone would see something silly I’m doing in my programming and give me cause to change things up. My elbows are in fact something that have gotten me in the past which is part of why I wanted a program like 5/3/1 that tells me how much weight to use so that I’m not allowed to be over eager.
Honestly, they’re just my favorite rn. I could try to justify it by saying they are useful for this thing or that thing but so are all the other major lifts too. I used to climb a lot and plan to get back into it eventually and I’m kinda motivated by a goal I have of doing a chinup with my wife on my back. I think that’s fine as long as I’m not throwing away the other lifts?
I’ve done a few. I’ve done 4x8, 5x5, 5x10, and most recently I was doing a pyramid which on a typical day may look something like sets of 15, 10, 8, 6, 3 with increasing added weight. All of these schemes worked fine tbh, but I wanted to move onto something more structured. The pyramid sets were honestly just me randomly grabbing more weight each set and then going to 1-2 rir
Yeah, fair question. Basically I figured I needed to group two exercises together and I think I picked deadlift and ohp because I remembered seeing them together in a template from the original 5/3/1 book. Also I wasn’t necessarily planning to do 5x10 BBB sets of deadlift anyways so there was room. I did add some pullups on the benchpress day which I plan to keep bodyweight but use variations (archer, typewriter, high pull, etc) if recovery allows.
Thanks! I hadn’t seen rows in a 5-3-1 template from Jim yet so that’s encouraging to hear. I always wondered why he left them out of the main lifts but figured it had something to do with the lifts required for competitive powerlifting.
I haven’t looked into Tactical Barbell but I’ll check it out for sure after work. Appreciate the recommendation!
I don’t think you have ruined a god thing but my only concern would be how well a movement like weighted chin ups will work wit the 531 methodology. Realistically how likely is it that you are going to hit rep PR’s with weighted chin ups in the third week of a block. Then jump forward 2 more blocks with weight increases, how many reps you going to get now. I just don’t think this movement will progress well with this method. Happy for you to prove wrong.
Why not just keep the overhead day and do the weighted chin up on this day. You can still push it pretty hard and build in either a weight or rep progression over the 3 week block.
In my experience, chin ups respond best to volume, so i would probably have weighted chin ups with some kind of progression model on your Press day, and use chin ups as your pull assistance on as many other days as your elbows can handle.
If you’re set on using 5/3/1 as a progression model for chins I’d look at using the SST template for it and do it as a secondary lift on OHP or Bench day - just my 2 cents
Good question, and I guess I’m not totally sure. I also have the option of increasing the weight more slowly each cycle for chinups than for my other lifts which would maybe negate some of the issues? A thought I had, but it’s more of a hunch then anything else and could be dumb, is that my chinups are actually heavier than my bench and overhead press by a decent margin when you calculate it as bodyweight + added weight, and I guess I sort of figured that lifts where you move more weight can add weight faster than lifts where you move less weight, so I figured that surely my chinup gains will at least keep par with overhead press for example, where I move about half as much weight.
I like these ideas as well and maybe I’m convinced to go ahead and make the swap to chinups on bench or press day. I’m kinda curious though, and maybe this is a dumb/noob question but why would different movements progress best under different schemes, like if 5/3/1 is great for benchpress but suboptimal for chinups, I find that really fascinating. Not doubting that it could be the case just wondering what’s behind that mechanistically.
If you’re asking for our approval, it sounds like YOU May believe it’s a bastardization. There are no hard and fast rules to training. You alter it to fit your personal needs
If it was me I would throw the BB rows on day one in place of the pull ups and take all rowing and pulling, minus deads, out of day 5 to give me biceps a break.