[quote]DF85 wrote:
Ha We were infasted with copperhead snakes 3 years ago I coulnt walk through my yard all summer long. they were everywhere. This summer its huge black snakes. I found 3 that are over 6 foot long and a couple shorter ones right behind my house. [/quote]
Goddamn Mandingos.
[quote]Rape Weight wrote:
So Jim… when are you going for a world record bench attempt?[/quote]
Pretty much sums up bench meets…a smart man would open with 135 and pass on the next 2 attempts.
[quote]DF85 wrote:
conorh - If you wouldnt mind can you go in to detail about how you set up your 5/3/1 + crossfit? I too am looking to get into better shape.
I have been running hills behind my house but the last 3 times I was nearly bitten by snakes. Seriously, one litterly chassed me today. So I am going to take it easy on the hills for now.[/quote]
Here’s what I’m doing.
Monday
Military Press 531
superset with weighted pullups - I add weight to equal my heaviest bodyweight (272ish) so I added 20 pounds last time
Deadlift 531
Crossfit - last time this was power snatch 95lb and 25 reps of sumo deadlift high pull (substituted for rowing) with the bar, four rounds for time. It could be anything, but I try to pick stuff that’s congruent with what I am doing that day.
Tuesday
Whatever I feel like - yesterday I did some barbell pushes, a poor man’s approximation of the Prowler. When the weather is nice I might do car pushes, sandbag carries, hill sprints, whatever.
Wednesday
Box Squat with loose briefs 531 (Briefs and box squat because I like box squatting, I’ve seen good carryover from it in the past and since I’m not doing raw meets anymore I can take advantage of gear to protect my hips)
GHR
leg prss
Crossfit - I’m definitely going to do some buddy carries across the gym floor here. Again, anything is game, but lower body intensive since I did lower body work.
Thursday
Whatever I want - probably another CrossFit MetCon
Friday
Bench 531
close grip bench
some kind of row
CrossFit - something with an upper body emphasis, think military press, pushjerks or pushups.
Saturday
Whatever I want
Sunday
Off/arms
The idea is I’m going to severely limit volume of traditional accessory work and try to make the CrossFit overlap with whatever body part/movement I did that day. So, for me this is one or two accessory movements and then some huffing and puffing stuff.
I call it CrossFit, but when I was in school we called it “conditioning” or a “finisher”. Just something hard to get into shape, suck a lot of wind and finish up the session. I only try to make it line up with the split ie rowing or pulls on deadlift day, bodyweight squats or lunges on squat day, pushups or overhead stuff on bench day, etc.
I have a log that I am somewhat good about updating at conorattack.wordpress.com
Thanks.
Someone was asking about setting their max for pause benching, and I was going to comment, but then reading my answer made me question myself.
Is it possible to have been overly-conservative when choosing our maxes? For example, my best bench is 300. I chose 270 and took 90% of that giving me 245 for my “training max.” I know the idea here is slow and steady, but I am planning on competing again in September.
That is essentially 3-4 cycles of 5/3/1. If we are adding 5lbs to upper body lifts each cycle, I will be at 260-265 as my training max. I feel like I need to be a little more aggressive.
Another example: Best squat is 430. I made my max 350 because I was worried about form (knees cave all the time). So my training max is 315 right now…
Thanks
[quote]coolnatedawg wrote:
Someone was asking about setting their max for pause benching, and I was going to comment, but then reading my answer made me question myself.
Is it possible to have been overly-conservative when choosing our maxes? For example, my best bench is 300. I chose 270 and took 90% of that giving me 245 for my “training max.” I know the idea here is slow and steady, but I am planning on competing again in September.
That is essentially 3-4 cycles of 5/3/1. If we are adding 5lbs to upper body lifts each cycle, I will be at 260-265 as my training max. I feel like I need to be a little more aggressive.
Another example: Best squat is 430. I made my max 350 because I was worried about form (knees cave all the time). So my training max is 315 right now…
Thanks[/quote]
Holy shit. What? That sounds like overkill, honestly. I took 90% of my press training max, and hit 10 reps on it for the first “5 rep” day. I think that starting point is going to set up many many weeks of progress. How many reps are you hitting on your 5, 3, and 1 days? 245 * .85 is like 210 pounds. I coulda repped that 20 times when my max was 300.
Jim,
I have a quick question for you, if you have the time…
I’m on my second run of 5/3/1 now. The first time I hacked 10% off my maxes, and ended up getting a few too many reps on my last all-out set. In fact the whole thing was a little too easy. Having said that, my max deadlift went up around 10lbs, so it certainly worked.
This time around, I’ve been a little too aggresive, and am using 95-100% of my maxes for my calculations. I find that now and again I am unable to hit the prescribed number of reps.
Now, this is still probably fine, and the simple answer is to probably drop a couple of %. Will I hinder progress by doing this or keeping things as they are? Or should I stop worrying? My guess is the latter, but I thought I’d check with the boss.
Thanks for all your posts here Jim, they’ve been very helpful.
This isn’t a program for people in a hurry. If one starts conservatively it’ll take a while to get to old maxes. That said, you will have a long string of successful training sessions up to that point and likely surpass your old maxes.
But if you set your working maxes too high and can’t make the prescribed reps why not just back off 5 or 10 lbs on those and work back up rather than figure some more percentages?
I’ve come also to the realization that I don’t HAVE to rep out on the final set. The decision to do so or not is based on how I’m feeling and whether I think I can recover from it before the next session. I’ve recently decided not to rep-out my deads, because it tanks my bench day to do so. I’m picking and choosing which battles to fight.
This thread is awesome. Thanks for all the time and replies, Jim.
[quote]skidmark wrote:
That said, you will have a long string of successful training sessions up to that point and likely surpass your old maxes.
[/quote]
Solid advice regarding the repping out issue.
Anyway,guys,what would be your definition of a successful 531 session? Hitting the prescribed reps?
(Yesterday,I was aiming for 10 reps on the OHP(2 rep increase from previous PR,I got 8 but I wasnt disappointed at all because I still exceeded the prescribed reps by 3.Nowadays,I told myself not to be over ambitious-I will be satisfied with 1 rep over the prescribed reps-this would be my definition of a successful 531 session.Not saying that I am lazy and just do 6 reps when I can do 10 but I will play by ear and listen to my body.)
[quote]goochadamg wrote:
coolnatedawg wrote:
Someone was asking about setting their max for pause benching, and I was going to comment, but then reading my answer made me question myself.
Is it possible to have been overly-conservative when choosing our maxes? For example, my best bench is 300. I chose 270 and took 90% of that giving me 245 for my “training max.” I know the idea here is slow and steady, but I am planning on competing again in September.
That is essentially 3-4 cycles of 5/3/1. If we are adding 5lbs to upper body lifts each cycle, I will be at 260-265 as my training max. I feel like I need to be a little more aggressive.
Another example: Best squat is 430. I made my max 350 because I was worried about form (knees cave all the time). So my training max is 315 right now…
Thanks
Holy shit. What? That sounds like overkill, honestly. I took 90% of my press training max, and hit 10 reps on it for the first “5 rep” day. I think that starting point is going to set up many many weeks of progress. How many reps are you hitting on your 5, 3, and 1 days? 245 * .85 is like 210 pounds. I coulda repped that 20 times when my max was 300.[/quote]
Haha. I am thinking that a little bit as well. I am contemplating adding 10 to my bench and 20 to my squat for the next cycle and then revert back to 5 and 10lb increases. For my OHP, Squat, and Bench days I hit over 10 reps, and I think the only reason I did not do more was because I suck at repping (only done singles and doubles for over a year).
Also, I am not in this for the quick gain. I just figured I wanted to do 2 more competitions before my 24th birthday when I am out of the juniors. 2 competitions being 1 raw and 1 geared…
[quote]DF85 wrote:
conorh - If you wouldnt mind can you go in to detail about how you set up your 5/3/1 + crossfit? I too am looking to get into better shape.
I have been running hills behind my house but the last 3 times I was nearly bitten by snakes. Seriously, one litterly chassed me today. So I am going to take it easy on the hills for now.[/quote]
I had enogh with these motherfucking snakes in this motherfucking hill!
-Samuel Jackson
[quote]Doenitz79 wrote:
Anyway,guys,what would be your definition of a successful 531 session? Hitting the prescribed reps?[/quote]
Getting the goal reps for the day is, well, the goal. If I get anything more, then that’s the cherry on top.
I also try to break my previous rep records for the given weight, but it doesn’t always happen.
Jim,
Any news or update on which or what your next project? Ebook coming soon(yoke,conditionning) or maybe something else your working on?
I just finished the third week of 5/3/1. I calculated my deadlifts according to the specifications in the ebook. However, I am up to 9 deadlifts on the last set. Should I add weight even before finishing the month out? Before now, I have never EVER done more than sets of 3s with deadlifts and I am wondering if it is wise to go so high in reptitions for a lift like the deadlift.
[quote]entheogens wrote:
I just finished the third week of 5/3/1. I calculated my deadlifts according to the specifications in the ebook. However, I am up to 9 deadlifts on the last set. Should I add weight even before finishing the month out? Before now, I have never EVER done more than sets of 3s with deadlifts and I am wondering if it is wise to go so high in reptitions for a lift like the deadlift.
[/quote]
those are not outrageous numbers to get for the first couple cycles, even on the third wave
stick with the plan as laid out
[quote]TheDudeAbides wrote:
entheogens wrote:
I just finished the third week of 5/3/1. I calculated my deadlifts according to the specifications in the ebook. However, I am up to 9 deadlifts on the last set. Should I add weight even before finishing the month out? Before now, I have never EVER done more than sets of 3s with deadlifts and I am wondering if it is wise to go so high in reptitions for a lift like the deadlift.
those are not outrageous numbers to get for the first couple cycles, even on the third wave
stick with the plan as laid out
[/quote]
agreed, you more or less answered your own question - you’ve never done more than triples. That’s the beauty of 531, and why I strongly suspect that so many of us are seeing such immediate gains: it takes us out of our comfort zones and forces us to use rep ranges that we havent done in a while, or for some of us, ever.
[quote]Magarhe wrote:
Is the last set for rep max the most important set of all?
yes, but they are all important sets
even the warmup sets
Do all the working sets - the last isn’t the most important, only the most fun (or awful).[/quote]
Oh, that is interesting Jim that you say the last set is not the most important, I would have thought that it was. But I can see that it is not the most important, that they are all important together.
I have done 2 cycles. I have been getting more reps on the last set than prescribed, but not much more, and sometimes, just the prescribed reps.
Also, I have been finding the deload week quite heavy, which is embaressing, even after throwing out all accessory work on deload week and just doing the main lifts.
Oddly, I have often found the warmup sets heavy, but then still managed to surprise myself on the last set.
Now, it is possible I have had a mild cold that has been knocking me around a bit.
But are other people finding things heavy? Feels heavy. And these are not heavy weights, not really. On the 1+ rep final set of the 2nd cycle, 95% of 90% of your maxes is 85.5% of your max. THAT should not be heavy. You should be able to get 5-6 reps with it. But I suspect there is quite a bit of accumulated fatigue from the previous weeks. Which is fine - but do most people find it quite heavy going?
Note also I used the damned stinking 5% increments wave … which I will not use in future because I think that was not as good as doing the 10% increments. Jim why did you even put that in the book dammit. Don’t you know all us idiots will pick the harder one thinking it is better?
My big problem now is many holidays coming up that whill throw my schedule all over the place. Need to rework cycles to fit in between. 10 points to Jim for presenting so many combinations of days/week etc… for this 5-3-1 because it makes it a lot easier to come up with a working solution. I like the 4 days a week but it ain’t gonna fit into my holidays.
[quote]Dave_ wrote:
Jim,
I have a quick question for you, if you have the time…
I’m on my second run of 5/3/1 now. The first time I hacked 10% off my maxes, and ended up getting a few too many reps on my last all-out set. In fact the whole thing was a little too easy. Having said that, my max deadlift went up around 10lbs, so it certainly worked.
This time around, I’ve been a little too aggresive, and am using 95-100% of my maxes for my calculations. I find that now and again I am unable to hit the prescribed number of reps.
Now, this is still probably fine, and the simple answer is to probably drop a couple of %. Will I hinder progress by doing this or keeping things as they are? Or should I stop worrying? My guess is the latter, but I thought I’d check with the boss.
Thanks for all your posts here Jim, they’ve been very helpful. [/quote]
Well, the obvious answer lies somewhere in the middle. I personally think the 90% rule works well for almost everyone - you just need to get it out of your head that you have to kill yourself all the time in the weight room to make progress.
Operating at your true max means absolutely nothing - people are in such a hurry to improve tha number that they forget the process.
[quote]
I’ve come also to the realization that I don’t HAVE to rep out on the final set. The decision to do so or not is based on how I’m feeling and whether I think I can recover from it before the next session. I’ve recently decided not to rep-out my deads, because it tanks my bench day to do so. I’m picking and choosing which battles to fight.[/quote]
This is good insight.