Goals:
- Get bigger and stronger


Stats:
- 181 or 182cm (5'11" or '6 or something. I dunno your Ameritard heights).
- 90kg (198lbs)


5RMs: (All performed over the last 2-3 weeks)
squat: 140kg
bench: 90kg
dead: 145kg
press: 60kg


Estimated 1RMs (using: http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/OneRepMax.html)
squat: 158kg
bench: 101kg
dead: 163kg
press: 68kg


Will use these (90% of these obv ) for calculating my 5/3/1 weights.

Probably going to do this variation. It's one of the suggestions from the book, with GMs subbed for powercleans...


Monday:
- Press
- dips
- chins


Tuesday:
- Deadlift
- Powerclean
- Hanging leg raise


Thursday:
- Bench
- Dumbell bench
- Dumbell row


Friday:
- squat
- Leg press
- Leg curl

Iteration 1, Week 1, Monday

Press:
10x20
5x40
5x45
10x52.5

Dips
15,15,15,10,10,10

Chins
5,5,5,3,4,3

Press is too easy, chins and dips are too hard. /sigh

It's ok, that leaves you some slack for later on or subsequent cycles.

You might want to power clean before DL's. I mean, I've never done cleans after DL's but I imagine they would suck big time. Unless you just use a medium-ish weight. I dunno. How were you going to perform your power cleans (as in sets/reps/weight etc)?

If I were doing them, I'd work up to a few heavy singles (select weights by feel), and if I wanted more volume drop down a bit more and do like 3x3/5x3 or something of that sort. In which case, I'd work up to the heavy singles before DL's, and then get the volume in after DL's, which would save some energy for heavy DL's.

Yeah, I'm hoping this. Wendler repeatedly emphasizes start light, progress slow. So we'll see what happens. Hopefully I'll add 60kg to my squat and deadlift 5RMs in 12 months. tbh, I would be stoked to get them up even 30 or 40kgs.

Um, yeah, you're right, I should be doing them before deads. I like the sound of the bolded.

Or what about doing heavy singles before deads, then getting some volume in after squats on squat day? tbh, I'm pretty keen to not do leg curls.

My cleans are prob not as trained as my other lifts. I've worked up (again) to 5x3x80kg. Could maaaybe do 90kg for a single. All time PR is 92.5kg. Done a few months ago.

That would probably work better as far as increasing skill/strength/power/whatever on power cleans. But I think what power cleans lack, due to their explosive nature, is muscular loading relative to slow lifts. I mean, they're not under a whole hell of a lot of load for very long.

It depends what your goals are. They could probably help bring up the major lifts quicker than doing other things. It's something I don't know yet, but I'm not sold either way. Haven't done many power cleans lately.

Well, I guess my power clean goals are really just the same as for my other lifts. Lift more.

For now I will try doing heavy singles before deadlifts and triples for sets across after squats.

If that is your goal that is what I would do as well, more or less.

F leg curls imo. How about good mornings or possibly RDLs as assistance instead? Both hit the hamstrings. RDLs might be a bit heavy to recover from, I dunno. Good luck on the program, if you get discouraged after a cycle as well I'm calling shenanigans on 5/3/1.

I'm always wrecked for days from RDL's, likely due to the eccentric component of the lift. I also use much heavier weights than GM's. GM's don't leave me wrecked as long, and there is a bit more upper back work imo, which is nice.

tbh, I don't want to do GMs, RDLs or leg curls... I think I'll end up doing Tuesday: powerclean, deadlift, leg raises and Thursday will be squat, leg press (lol, dont want to do these either ) and power cleans.

I might get jack of all this ****** sh*t and just do the 5x10 of the main exercise as the assistant exercise for deadlift and squat days.

All this leg pressing and GMs and sh*t are ghey.

...but I do like the dips/chins and db benches and rows, so they can stay

Looking ahead is really ghey... it is going to be 2 months before I am lifting what I know my current 5RM to be... what tha sh*t imo, feels like it is going to be two months lifting for no progress.

Also worried that it's just not enough volume on the big lifts... that said, I was getting too much volume on the big lifts trying to keep up ss... w/e... gl to me too imo.

so you looked at the program decided you didnt like most of it but carried on anyway :P

i really like 5/3/1.

Jim can be really convincing.

I figure if I add 5kg to my squat/dead and 2.5kg to my presses per month, in a year I can add 50kg+ and 25kg+ which would make me happy.

I know it's not going to happen because I'm going to play rugby again starting in Feb and do some travelling in April/May, but even if I can add 15kg and 7.5kg over the next 3 months, I'd be happy with that too.

The last set allows you to hit rep PR's so don't start whining yet.

Iteration 1, Week 1, Tuesday

Deadlift
5x70
5x80
5x100
5x112.5
8x125

Back raise
5x10

Incline crunch
3x10

Did 5 deads at my work weight double overhand, then basically dropped the 5th one from full extension, so I re-chalked, switched to mixed grip and did 3 more. I'm counting it as 8. I guess I've probably never done 8 reps at 125, so I guess that counts as a PR...

Did back raises instead of GMs, did incline crunches instead of leg raises. I don't think it matters much.

This program is wack.

Iteration 1, Week 1, Thursday

Bench
10x20
5x40
5x60
5x70
10x77.5

DB Bench
5x10x20

DB Row
5x10x20

I did this in like half an hour and felt lost, so went and did like 10min of jump rope.

Dissing the program after two workouts, new record

If I were running this program I'd be using the squat and DL to assist each other, and the same with the bench and the press. Because really, who wants to do each exercise only once per week?

To be fair Wendler almost mandates including hill sprints and/or prowler work in his program, which I don't think I've seen any running 5/3/1 on here do. There probably are though, in the rather voluminous amounts of logs here.

It looks like your assistance stuff is way too light

I'm thinking about this. There is a variation outlined in the book where you just do high volume, low intensity squats and deads as assistance for the real squats and deads. Like you say, squatting once a week sucks bawls. I woke up all psyched this morning because I get to squat for the first time in a week lulz.

Might do squatz n deadz for assistance for squats and deads and keep doing the db presses/rows and chins/dips for the pressing assistance work.

I've been doing a couple of light conditioning workouts a week (jump rope and rowing) because I will be starting rugby training again in a couple of weeks which will be all conditioning/speed work (including sleds and hills)... after months of doing almost zero cardio, drinking and smoking my ass off... I am going to die.

They probably are a little light, but I thought I would start easy. Been a while since I've done any db work at all.

Iteration 1, Week 1, Friday

Squat
8x20
5x60
5x100
5x112.5
11x125

Leg Press
5x10x160

Leg Curl
5x10x "6"

Iteration 1, Week 1, Saturday

Didn't clean this week, so thought I would chuck some in on Saturday.

That said, it was after a fair bit of cardio, so I wasn't super fresh.

Powerclean
3x60
3x70
3x75
3x80
3x80
3x80
1x80
1x80

Iteration 1, Week 2, Monday 8. November

Press
8x20
3x45
3x50
9x55 ...rep PR I guess.

Dips
5x10

Chins
6x5
1x4

Dips are way easier than chins, probably going to add some weight to them next week.

Will keep working on sets of 5 chins until I can get 10x5 I think. Then I might start working on sets of 10s.

Move chins in front of dips since they are much more difficult, imo. One's affecting the effectiveness (saythatfastfivetimes) of the work more than the other .