I thought I'd make a quick post for anyone thinking of this system or for anyone already doing it. 531 is an intermediate training system, which as Jim Wendler explains it: There's already a pretty thorough Q&A on Elite FTS, so I won't go into too much detail, plus a T-Nation article which I pinched the quote above from. A friend of CosmicFish produced a nice spreadsheet to save you turning each warmup into a maths session, and I've produced a slightly prettier version with an updating max to save revisions further down the line which I wouldn't mind some feedback on if anyone wants to try it out.
So do you guys calculate a new training max from your rep maxes ever week or just stick with the first training max and add 2.5 kilos each cycle?
I thought jim said to add weight every cycle. So say Week one: 100x5 Week two 117x3 Week 3 123x1 Week 4 deload: 70x5 Would you repeat that cycle 2-3 times before adding weight? My thoughts where that you added 2.5lb to press and bench and 5 lb to squat and dead every new cycle.
If you follow the first spreadsheet it'll do that for you, incrementing by a few pounds each cycle. Obviously if you're not managing the minimum or getting a ton of reps for the final set you need to recalculate your max.
Lol, reading comprehension fail, so we're saying the same thing but I'm a bit slow. Awesome. Start 531 soon, got some fun ideas to shake up assistance and get my strongman implements in there.
It's good fun, plus the loosely defined accessory work let's you hit any other goals or bring up weak areas.
I'm on my second week of 5/3/1 and it's been okay so far. Let my chinups and dips go so they've been painfully hard, maybe more so than the max reps set. Adapted my spreadsheet to include a row for warmup weight/reps and some columns at the end for Accessory exercises (inc chins, dips etc) I was thinking after 4 weeks to put in my best sets in. So it's early days and working on 90% but Squat 10reps @ 65kg (wk1), Deadlift 10reps @ 91kg (wk1), Bench 10reps @ 37kg (wk1), Press 10reps @ 30kg (wk2) Sure I've seen a reps/weight 1RM calculator somewhere on line but forget where?
Technically you don't need to do test a 1RM on this, as long as you have an approximate figure. It'll quickly become apparent if your value is too high or low by the final set reps. Personally I like this a lot, most of my serious injuries have been done testing one max or another and it's only one indicator of strength and very dependant on your condition on the day. The normal 1RM calculators are usually off by a bit anyway since people have different fibre compositions, people favour different muscle groups and some people are just plain better at lifting heavy. I've also modified my initial version to include a graph to display my predicted max lifts. Due to the 90% values used it naturally declines for future weeks, I like to think of this as what will happen if I don't train!
I'm adding about 10lbs to squat and deads per cycle and 5lbs to bench/military. I'm finding squats/deads are getting easy I might take a 15lb jump next cycle.
10 reps @ 69kg today, more than I expected on current Squat form but at my best last year fairly sure I'd done 10 at 70 if only once or twice. I'll be amazed if I do 10 reps @ 39kg on Bench, can't remember doing more than 5 at 42.5kg, but I'm going to aim at 8 and see what happens
