I have been running 5/3/1 for about 8-9 cycles and its been rough. The program worked amazingly but ive had medical problems that stopped me from lifting heavy for a while. I ended off on bench on my 5+ hitting 165 for 12 reps. Came back a month and a half later and hit it for 10. Fast forward a month, I used this to program my new template (coffinworm) doing 226 as a 1rm and 190 as a TM. After all my sets, i did my topset of 100% tm for 3 rep. 3rd rep was a grind. Should i reset my TM? And how much?
Do be fair, I accidentally did 5x5 bench @ 70% two days prior, and coffinworm has a lot of sets working up to the TM, so I was pretty fatigued.
You can never have too low of a TM, but you can definitely have too high. Jim has recommended a TM that is a weight you can hit for 5 solid reps: it’s a good guideline.
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I also fall into the camp of “it’s harder to train too light than too heavy,” but this seems like too much worry over a single performance within a program that’s supposed to take all the thinking out of it. I typically would try to see a trend, vs. an instance, before changing something.
Yeah i feel that. My training has been all over the place due to medical stuff and now im in limbo where my strength is wack. Ill probably reduce my deadlift 1rm to 391 instead of 406 and reduce my bench to 210 instead of 226.