Quote:
Originally Posted by 00Snitch
In fact, I'm sure no where in his book he uses the expression "leave one in the tank", we've just kinda added that on around here because it's an easy way of saying "don't go to failure".
It's so strange, because while I've spent the last 20 minutes reading through the book looking for where I recall him writing something to the effect of "I've always felt I've made the greatest gains when I had a little left in the tank", I simply can't find it.
As some of you may know, I'm currently doing 5/3/1, and I really like it thus far. With regards to the high volume assistance exercises (I'm doing the "Boring But Big" template with a couple little tweaks) - while he doesn't necessarily state any of this, my thoughts are that it works on a lot of levels. Doing 5 sets of light bench after I've already exhausted the bigger muscles
involved forces me to really concentrate on form and allows me to feel some of the smaller muscles involved. It also increases blood flow to the spent muscles which was the basis of some other program I read about a while back titled "Need and Feed" wherein you immediately follow a big exercise with some small, high rep exercise to feed your spent muscles (is it broscience? maybe, I'm certainly no doctor).
What I really HATED about the book were the testimonials. For the first 70 pages he's pounding into your head 'Slow Progression, SLOW PROGRESSION' - and then you get to the testimonials:
Let’s call this three cycles of 5/3/1 – September until December:
Bench: 154 to 200
Squat: 242 to 275
Deadlift: 300 to 375*
Military Press: 122 to 154
Another
”Three months of 5/3/1:
Bench: 185x7 to 225x5
Squat: 285x5 to 340x3
Deadlift: 360x2 to 420x2
Military: 180x1 to 225x4
Wtf? Am I missing something, or do all of these examples go against the whole system?