You are green.
The best program is the one that was written for you.
The next best is one that works for you.
YOu need time in the gym and time on the platform.
HEre is what you need to focus on most of all. Listen to your body and watch your traning logs. IF PR’s slow, you need to make changes.
Thanks for the support! Means a lot coming from someone who broke multiple world records!
Time is what I need, and it’s on my side
I completed my first cycle of close grip bench yesterday and I was wondering if I guessed my max wrong. I got 20 reps on 5+ week, 15 reps on 3+ week and 12 reps on 1+ week. I’m using 185 as my main bench 1rm even though I doubled it (all paused) and I guessed that my close grip (tng) 1rm was 175. I’m now realizing that this is probably wrong, but I don’t know if I would be getting such high AMRAPs on my other lifts because I’m using 5’s progression for them. I also set my training max as 87.5% instead of 90% because I took time off. Anyways I was wondering if it would be appropriate to increase my training max by 10lbs instead of 5 or something for this next cycle. Thanks
@chris_ottawa
Maybe just reset your training max based on the set of 12. There is no point in doing sets of 20, that is for sure, and even 12 sounds like too much.
Ok I just checked what my estimated 1rm would be (according to the bodybuilding.com calculator) they say my max is 214 which seems weird because my best bench is 185x2 paused. I’ve been using 185 as my training max on bench to be conservative and it’s easier than my squat and deadlift training, but I doubt I could ever have benched over 200. Maybe I should just make my close grip max the same as my paused max and try that for a training cycle?
That’s the problem with basing things off percentages, some people can do way more than others at the same percentage.
Sure, why not. See how that works and adjust if necessary. Maybe you are stronger than you thought.
Hey a quick question I’ve been wondering about: why is my program set up with 5’s progression? The way I’m running it now, I hit a 5 rep PR every 3-4 weeks, with the first week (and somewhat the second week on bench) isn’t particularly challenging. (I might increase my tm a little with bench and close grip bench to deal with that after this cycle) Wouldn’t 5/3/1 with rep maxes enable me to hit PR’s more often along a variety of rep ranges? I know I should stick to the program, which I intended on doing, unless you recommend otherwise, but I’ve been wondering about this because when I read about 5/3/1, I see people say that setting rep PRs is one of the advantages of 5/3/1
@chris_ottawa
Try this:
Run 5’s Pro then assistance work for 6 weeks (ie. 2 cycles of 531), then take a deload. Then resume with a cycle of Original 5/3/1 with the PR sets. A good rule of thumb is if you get at least 5 reps on your “1+” set, you can increase your TM’s.
Don’t worry if the the 5’s Pro feels easy, eventually you will stall out. But if you keep increasing slowly that is a ways away! Enjoy the easy gains while they last!
That sounds pretty good to me.
Then why don’t you do more joker sets until it is challenging?
Because rep maxes are not a good way to learn proper technique, they teach you to lift the weight by any means necessary which means using bad technique with light weights that won’t work with heavier weights. I have seen plenty of newer lifters do 5/3/1 for a while and their technique looks like complete shit. It happened to me as well.
It keeps you motivated more than anything, what you really need is continuous progress but setting small PRs along the way makes things more exciting. Again, you are setting a new 5rm every 3-4 weeks which indicates that you are making progress at a decent rate.
In the end, you can do whatever you want. I’m not a big fan of 5/3/1 but it’s convenient for people who don’t know how to write their own program because the progression of working weights is predetermined and there are a lot of different templates to choose from depending on your goals. However, it wasn’t originally intended to be a powerlifting program (Jim came up with it after he quit PL). For powerlifting there is not much use in doing sets over 5 reps on the competition lifts unless you are focusing on hypertrophy, and even then you don’t need to do high reps either. What I came up with for you is what I think is the best 5/3/1 option for someone looking to get into PL and what, in retrospect, I think I should have done myself.
The question is, what do you really want to do? Are you bored with your current program? If something is working then normally you wouldn’t want to change it, but if you are losing motivation with your current program then at least switch to something else that makes sense. Rep maxes together with 5x5 first set last would be OK, but I still don’t like the idea of rep maxes as the base of a program.
Ahh that’s why. I forgot about that. Makes sense
I wouldn’t say I’m bored with my current program, I look foreword to every training session (I look foreword to 5rm sessions for longer unsurprisingly)
I haven’t been doing joker sets because a 10% jump from my programmed last set in week 1 ties my new 5rm I’m scheduled to hit on week 3. A 10% jump in week 2 exceeds the 5rm. Maybe I could try 5% jumps for joker sets or something
Sure, you could try that. Or if 10% if higher than your 5rm then you could do a triple instead.