5/3/1 Retrospective

Back in 2011, I ran 5/3/1 for a few cycles, shortly after finishing up a linear periodisation program back when I first started strength training. I made great progress for a year on the original 5/3/1 template, and then, for some reason (fun, mostly), I swapped to other programs (mostly my own, because I knew everything apparently) where I made mediocre progress for a couple of years. The only decent progress I made in this period was actually a program somebody else gave me.

And then, at the end of 2014, I realised that I didn't, in fact, know everything, and wound up back on 5/3/1, using Chase Karnes' 5/3/1 for Strongman template, and lo and behold, after a couple of cycles I got stronger again, built a little more muscle and felt much better for it. So for the past year, I've been training on some kind of 5/3/1 template.

5/3/1 for Strongman

Chase Karnes' 5/3/1 template was fantastic for a few reasons:

1. It's an upper/lower split, which was how I was training at the time.
2. Doing two main upper-body lifts on the upper-body day and two main lower-body lifts on the lower-body day gave me a really nice volume boost, which translated into some quick, early strength and mass gains since most weeks I can only train twice a week and only doing one main upper/lower lift per week wasn't enough volume for that.
3. Events are trained on their own day, rather than amongst regular training days. I know the norm is to have a separate events training day, but I had been training with an event tacked onto the end of my regular training days for a while up to this point, which had the downside of training days taking at least 2 hours.

Eight weeks of this template saw me through to my first competition of the year, which went pretty well.

Joker Sets, First-Set-Last Volume and Deadlifting Again

After getting my hands on Beyond 5/3/1, I experimented with joker sets and first-set-last volume work.

One of the reasons I'd previously moved on from the original 5/3/1 template was because I hated never really getting to test out where I was at with heavier weights, and I absolutely despised the Boring But Big volume work. So these two additions seemed perfect.

Having previously had success with paused overhead presses and with the general recommendation in my strength trainee circles that paused variations were awesome, I added in paused first-set-last volume work first; 5 sets of 5 after the regular 5/3/1 sets.

After a cycle of paused volume work, I added in the joker sets, after the regular 5/3/1 sets but before the volume work. I cut the volume work down to 3 sets and really pushed the joker sets. A cycle of this saw me through to my second competition of the year.

At this point, my pressing strength had never felt stronger; it was around this time of the year that I strict pressed 100kg for a solid double for an all-time PR, and was regularly strict pressing 100kg for a single most weeks.

During this training block, I started training my deadlift again, since I'd had some lower-back issues from a leftover injury that put my deadlift out of action for a while, but I didn't want to program the deadlift with 5/3/1 and really hammer it just yet, so I kept it to sets of no more than 3 reps at no heavier than 80% and followed it up with a lot of prehab work (hyperextensions mostly). Partial pulls from the knees felt fine though, for those days when I had to scratch a really heavy itch.

More Volume Variations

At this point I was totally sold on joker sets and first-set-last volume; it kept training interesting and I walked out of the gym feeling like I'd done some good work.

For this training block I alternated the movements that I used for the volume work each 5/3/1 cycle, e.g. after my strict press 5/3/1 and joker sets, I did my volume work with either paused strict presses, or I incline benched, since incline benching had translated pretty well to my overhead strength before.

Bodybuilding work also got a massive push after the volume work. There's never enough muscle and I'm way behind the strongmen that I compete against on this front.

My lower-back felt good at this point and my deadlift was feeling solid, so I ran a Mag/Ort peaking cycle. I stopped squatting so that my legs were always ready for the Mag/Ort onslaught. In hindsight, I wish I'd kept squatting, but the 8-week Mag/Ort cycle went well and I finished up with an all-time 2RM of 235kg.

The end of that 8-week block saw me through to my third and final strongman competition for the year.

Full Body, Full 5/3/1

After the last competition, I wasn't too happy with my performance and I'd stopped feeling athletic. I was stronger though, so at least I had that going for me. But I looked fat and I felt slow. My food intake had been pretty terrible (high calorie, low quality). So the first step was to clean up my diet and then sort out my training.

When this article (sort by "oldest first") popped up on T-Nation a few years ago, a full-body 5/3/1 template where I squatted every gym day was something I wanted to try, because squatting is awesome, but for one reason or another, I never did it. Wendler modified the full-body template and added a couple of variations to the Beyond 5/3/1 book and that's where my current training template has come from and I'm just finishing up my second cycle now.

I'm squatting again, I'm benching again, my deadlift is programmed with 5/3/1 again and my strict overhead press just keeps on truckin'. I'm enjoying squatting every time I walk into the gym.

I'm still using joker sets, and I'm still doing first-set-last volume, although a little different to earlier in the year:

• The squat and deadlift get one first-set-last rep-out
• The bench press and overhead press get a rest-pause first-set-last set

Programming the drop sets with these parameters has the added benefit of some conditioning upkeep and a huge pump.

Going into the new year, as I prep to qualify for, and compete in, the Australian Arnold Amateur Strongman competition, I'll tweak this template a little bit, but maintain the full-body principles.

I'm happy to be back on 5/3/1. Training hasn't felt this good in a while.