Something is Missing in My Training

Training 5/3/1
1

Hey folks!

I am looking for help in setting up my training template. Training for 5years and the way my training has been over the last 6 months has left me stronger than ever before, albeit fatter than I’d like to be. Something needs to change.

I’ve been using 5/3/1 protocols for 2 years and enjoy the structure.

5’7" 210lbs 27y *way too fat
1rm Squat 495
1rm Dead 495
Strict OHP 185
Bench 215 (weak point in my training)

I try to set up my workouts to include weekly: push, pull, squat, hip hinge, loaded carry.

  • I want to do more conditioning but have trouble finding the right time.

My current weekly training looks like this:

Monday morning:
Back squat 5/3/1 (wrestling shoes, efs knee sleeves, inzer belt)
Front Squat 5x10 (oly shoes, knee sleeves, no belt,
Back extension (bodyweight) -50reps
40min 45lb weighted vest walk (if a treadmill is free)

Tuesday Afternoon:
Bench 5/3/1
OHP 5/3/1
Dips (bodyweight) -100 reps
Band pull-apart face pulls
40min 45lb weighted vest walk

Wednesday Morning:
Mandatory circuit training

Wednesday Afternoon:
Sled dragging with Spud magic carpet (with harness, waist belt, or ankle cuffs)
Farmers carry

Thursday Afternoon:
Lat pulldowns
Chest supported row 5/3/1
1 arm landmine meadows row (100 reps)
Face pulls (100 reps)
40min 45lb weighted vest walk

Friday Morning:
Deadlift 5/3/1 (wrestling shoes, efs knee sleeves, inzer belt)
Back extension (bodyweight)-50 reps
40min 45lb weighted vest walk (if a treadmill is free)

Two weak points right away are conditioning, and bench press progress.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

Just from a basic observation, the only thing you are doing for your bench is the 531, and OHP 531, and both on the same day without any assistance, or FSL, Jokers, etc. that in and of itself could be the problem. Are you going AMRAP on the last set?

Edit–I missed the dips.

3

I try to max out reps on the last heavy work set on all exercises.

So far my mentality was to keep push/pull exercises clustered together for simplicity.

4

A couple things that will help:

First, the bodyfat issue is 100% diet-related and that’s where the focus needs to be. The way I’d set up conditioning is hard on lower body days, easy on upper body days. This consolidates big stressors to two days/week and facilitates better recovery. Hard conditioning would be heavy prowler work, sprinting and the like, easy would be walking, bike, light prowler work.

Second, split the bench and press up over two days, and do more benching or closegrips as your second exercise on press day. This gives you more volume and more frequent exposure and will get you strong. One pressing session a week at that volume is not going to get it done. Doing your first set last for a couple sets will get you some more easy volume which will help.

Some kind of vertical pull would be good too, if you can’t handle pullups/chinups I should think remedying that would be a high priority. Until then, maybe some band-assisted chins and lat pulldowns for higher volume. I’d do this after presses (5/3/1/FSL) and closegrips (any assistance scheme), or knock out sets of pullups in between sets of presses. Same for rows, I’d do these on bench day for higher volume rather than with the 5/3/1 scheme.

Best

5

@Ramo: thank you for the advice. Forgot to add lat pull downs in my first post. Edited.

I definitely agree that splitting up my afternoon workouts may elicit the increased volume I’m looking for. I respond very well to high volume/high frequency training.

I used to do 5/3/1+10x10@50%TM for my bench, ohp, etc for about a year. I only stopped so I wasn’t in the gym 2x/day-6days a week.

Thoughts???..
I find Monday morning-Squat and Friday morning-Deadlift to be ideal for me personally. They are my strongest lifts by far and I love training them.

Monday morning: Squat
Back squat 5/3/1 (wrestling shoes, efs knee sleeves, inzer belt)
Front Squat 5x10 (oly shoes, knee sleeves, no belt,
Back extension (bodyweight) -50reps

Monday Afternoon: Horizontal push priority
Bench 5/3/1
Close grip bench 10x10@50%TM
100 rep face pull
50 Dips
Sled Dragging

Tuesday Afternoon: Horizontal pull priority
Horizontal rowing variations (chest-supported, 1 arm) -High weight/high volume
100 rep face pull
Weight vest walk (3mph,5%incline)-60mins

Wednesday Afternoon:
Farmers Carry
Sled dragging-hard session

Thursday Afternoon: Vertical push/vertical pull priority
A1-OHP 5/3/1
A2-Lat pull downs 10x10
B1-OHP 10x10@50%TM
B2-Pullups using selectorized weight machine (I have bands but don’t like using them for pull-ups)
Weight vest walk (3mph,5%incline)-60mins

Friday Morning:
Deadlift 5/3/1 (wrestling shoes, efs knee sleeves, inzer belt)
Back extension (bodyweight)-50 reps
Weight vest walk (3mph,5%incline)-60mins (if treadmill is free)

Thankfully where I work has a fully equipped weight room, so staying after work an extra couple days a week won’t be terrible.

6

This is what my typical diet looks like pretty much. My girlfriend gets a kick out of my boring meals. I never bothered to learn creativity in the kitchen.

Breakfast: 2cups granola with ~2 cups lactose free 2%milk=around 1300kcals

AM Lifting

930am: 1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.

Noon- Lunch: Usually a couple of egg sandwiches: 6 eggs, cheese, mayo, pepper.
1 banana

3pm:1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.
1 apple

Dinner: 3 or 4 chicken breasts, then 1 cup of potatoes/basmati rice/whole wheat pasta. bunch of leafy greens like spinach

I eat fairly boring but a lot of calories

7

[quote]fromabove wrote:
This is what my typical diet looks like pretty much. My girlfriend gets a kick out of my boring meals. I never bothered to learn creativity in the kitchen.

Breakfast: 2cups granola with ~2 cups lactose free 2%milk=around 1300kcals

AM Lifting

930am: 1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.

Noon- Lunch: Usually a couple of egg sandwiches: 6 eggs, cheese, mayo, pepper.
1 banana

3pm:1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.
1 apple

Dinner: 3 or 4 chicken breasts, then 1 cup of potatoes/basmati rice/whole wheat pasta. bunch of leafy greens like spinach

I eat fairly boring but a lot of calories[/quote]
You are definitely going carb heavy with 2 cups granola, 3 cups ground oats, cup potato, and bread on the sandwich, plus a banana. I don’t gain easy but I would start putting on the fat eating like that. Seems like you are missing eating any fat, and that might be why you are feeling the need to eat so much. But, everyone responds differently to different macros.

8

@Ecchastang

I have been thinking about cutting the carbs from my shakes to start. Do you think it’s worthwhile adding in some healthy fats like avocados during lunch, and a small amount of olive oil to my shakes instead?

Lately I eat red salmon right out of the can if I feel like a snack between meals/shakes

For fats though I have been supplementing 5g of omega 3 fish oil 2x a day.

So far I’ve found no real benefit to eating a ton of carbs aside from never feeling depleted/tired.

9

[quote]fromabove wrote:
This is what my typical diet looks like pretty much. My girlfriend gets a kick out of my boring meals. I never bothered to learn creativity in the kitchen.

Breakfast: 2cups granola with ~2 cups lactose free 2%milk=around 1300kcals

AM Lifting

930am: 1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.

Noon- Lunch: Usually a couple of egg sandwiches: 6 eggs, cheese, mayo, pepper.
1 banana

3pm:1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.
1 apple

Dinner: 3 or 4 chicken breasts, then 1 cup of potatoes/basmati rice/whole wheat pasta. bunch of leafy greens like spinach

I eat fairly boring but a lot of calories[/quote]

My first thought is that this is incredibly carb-heavy for someone who describes himself as too fat. More important than a list of what you eat would be a tally of macronutrients/day (which you should be able to compose from this list since it’s so precise). Then it’s a matter of tweaking those til you get it right.

Dumping fat will just be a matter of eating less overall, but I’d make the majority of the cuts from your carb choices and keep the protein in there.

10

[quote]fromabove wrote:
@Ecchastang

I have been thinking about cutting the carbs from my shakes to start. Do you think it’s worthwhile adding in some healthy fats like avocados during lunch, and a small amount of olive oil to my shakes instead?

Lately I eat red salmon right out of the can if I feel like a snack between meals/shakes

For fats though I have been supplementing 5g of omega 3 fish oil 2x a day.

So far I’ve found no real benefit to eating a ton of carbs aside from never feeling depleted/tired.

[/quote]
You aren’t feeling depleted/tired just because you are giving yourself a massive sugar rush every two hours. I bet you would feel different initially if you weren’t doing that. Avocados are great, but don’t be afraid of animal fats either. I eat pretty much only animal, fruit and nut fats. Salmon right out of the can is a fine snack with protein and DHA. Don’t overlook coconut oil either. If you are looking to lean out a bit, definitely toy with cutting out some of the granola/oats/potato/rice that you are consuming.

11

Sounds like an excellent place to start tweaking my diet. Thanks for the advice gentlemen!

12

Yeah, the first thing I would change on your diet is cut the breakfast granola at least in half and replace the calories with bacon/ham/sausage and eggs.

13

[quote]fromabove wrote:
This is what my typical diet looks like pretty much. My girlfriend gets a kick out of my boring meals. I never bothered to learn creativity in the kitchen.

Breakfast: 2cups granola with ~2 cups lactose free 2%milk=around 1300kcals

AM Lifting

930am: 1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.

Noon- Lunch: Usually a couple of egg sandwiches: 6 eggs, cheese, mayo, pepper.
1 banana

3pm:1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.
1 apple

Dinner: 3 or 4 chicken breasts, then 1 cup of potatoes/basmati rice/whole wheat pasta. bunch of leafy greens like spinach

I eat fairly boring but a lot of calories[/quote]

This is the reason. One of them anyway.

Did you read the nutrition guidelines to the programming? It’s on my website and its pretty clear what to do.
Don’t be scared to eat real food with substance. Until you get rid of your eating disorder, you will never reach your goals.

14

I put it here just to not overload the board…
Lets say that I screwed with the numbers in the previous cycle, what is better for me once I have to calculate the new numbers, take a step back and work with lower weight or use the numbers I trained with to find the new percentages?And with this program we still use the same golden rule of calculating all the percentages on the 90% of our real max, right?Greetings from Italy.

15

[quote]John Spartan wrote:
I put it here just to not overload the board…
Lets say that I screwed with the numbers in the previous cycle, what is better for me once I have to calculate the new numbers, take a step back and work with lower weight or use the numbers I trained with to find the new percentages?And with this program we still use the same golden rule of calculating all the percentages on the 90% of our real max, right?Greetings from Italy.
[/quote]

What do you mean by screwed with the numbers?

16

[quote]John Spartan wrote:
[/quote]

Demolition Man? Love that movie!

17

[quote]fromabove wrote:
This is what my typical diet looks like pretty much. My girlfriend gets a kick out of my boring meals. I never bothered to learn creativity in the kitchen.

Breakfast: 2cups granola with ~2 cups lactose free 2%milk=around 1300kcals

AM Lifting

930am: 1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.

Noon- Lunch: Usually a couple of egg sandwiches: 6 eggs, cheese, mayo, pepper.
1 banana

3pm:1.5cups ground oats, 75grams whey isolate, water.
1 apple

Dinner: 3 or 4 chicken breasts, then 1 cup of potatoes/basmati rice/whole wheat pasta. bunch of leafy greens like spinach

I eat fairly boring but a lot of calories[/quote]

That’s over 5,000 calories per day with almost 500 grams coming from carbs.

18

my favorite nutrition quote of all time… Dick Notmeyer via Dan John:
"Good breakfast: meat, egg, and other stuff.

Bad breakfast: not meat, eggs, and other stuff."
19

[quote]John Spartan wrote:
I put it here just to not overload the board…
Lets say that I screwed with the numbers in the previous cycle, what is better for me once I have to calculate the new numbers, take a step back and work with lower weight or use the numbers I trained with to find the new percentages?And with this program we still use the same golden rule of calculating all the percentages on the 90% of our real max, right?Greetings from Italy.
[/quote]

I would ask this in it’s own thread but…

For me, it would depend on how I stuffed the calculations.

I would take one of my PR sets from the last cycle and plug that number into a 1RM estimator then work out the new TM.

If the new TM is greater than the old TM, I’d just add the 5/10lbs to the last cycle (unless we’re talking like 60lbs difference or something like that).
If the new TM is less than the old TM, I’d go with the new TM (again, aslong as it’s not off by a crazy amount).
If the new and old TM are pretty close, I’d just pick whichever (probably just stick with what I had done)

Then focus on crushing PRs for any weight I need to lift which is similar to the previous cycle.

20

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]John Spartan wrote:
I put it here just to not overload the board…
Lets say that I screwed with the numbers in the previous cycle, what is better for me once I have to calculate the new numbers, take a step back and work with lower weight or use the numbers I trained with to find the new percentages?And with this program we still use the same golden rule of calculating all the percentages on the 90% of our real max, right?Greetings from Italy.
[/quote]

What do you mean by screwed with the numbers? [/quote]

I answer also to Santos here.
When I’ve calculated all the percentages for this new program on the home page, I’ve used an application on my tablet but then I’ve found that all the percentages were based on the TM and not on the 90%.
So to put it simple, in the cycle before my 75% with bench press was 88kg (and I can easily do 10-12 reps withe tahta weight)but with the right numbers now I should use 82.5kg so I’m a little bit confused.