5/3/1 and Long Distance Running

Hello, I wanted to ask Jim a question regarding his 5/3/1 program as it relates to endurance athletes.

I am not really a weightlifter. In fact I am the opposite of that, I am a long distance trail runner who specializes in ultra-marathons and have for a few years now.

This past year has seen me ebb and flow from healthy to broken and back and I think it has a lot to do with having a major lack in overall strength so I started to research a program that was easy to follow and would help me build a better overall chassis and hopefully do away with all my injuries. I might gain some weight and loose some speed but I think overall it will no doubt help me in my mountain adventures.

I have started your training and am through my first cycle after trying some other programs that felt overly complicated and didn’t really have any progression (crossfit style stuff) and as a runner I like something that I can see steady progression.

The question I have is can I train moderately hard on the Tue\Thurs\Sat\Sun and still maintain decent efforts with the lifts? I would ideally be doing Hill workouts on Tuesday and a hilly tempo run on Thursday and Saturday is mostly really long runs in the mountains at a easy pace. Sunday is recovery where I bike/row or what ever.

Thanks again for inspiring me to try something different and not give a shit what other people think, as I have heard from a running friend once, we are all an experiment of one.

Check this out
Endurance athlete goes 531

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Thanks man

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Admittedly I am about 175 lbs, I don’t think that even in my heavy training periods for 100 mile races did I ever get “that” skinny.

Scroll until thetoward end of his log. It wasn’t so much meant for a direct comparison, rather how he @NCFox managed to incorporate both lifting & running successfully in his training.

I think the biggest issue will be proper recovery and fueling.

I have a background (sort of) in both powerlifting (teenager into college as a football player) and distance running (in my mid-20’s to late 20’s, I ran a bunch of 5k, 10k, half-marathons, and a few marathons).

Until recently, I had never really done both at the same time, but for the last four months or so, I have been. You can check out my training log for a brief read, and I’m happy to discuss.

I think it’s hard to do both things REALLY WELL at the same time, but I certainly do think it is possible to run 3x/week and lift 3x/week and maintain respectable efforts on both sides of the ledger. I’ve been doing a fairly long-ish run on Saturdays and heavy-ish deadlift on Sundays and it seems to be going OK (I probably cost myself 20 pounds or so on my top deadlift set on Sunday due to the residual fatigue, but it’s not as though my legs are so trashed that I can’t lift at all).

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Train 2 days/week

5’s PRO and 5x5 FSL for all lifts - two lifts/day.
Superset ONE assistance exercise between all main lifts.

Squat and Deadlift - dips
Bench press - DB Squat
Press - DB SLDL

TM at around 80-85%. All workouts should be done in such a way that you are never, ever worn out after.

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So essentially,

Day 1:
Squat 5/3/1 / dips,
overhead press 5/3/1 / DB SLDL

Day 2:
Deadlift 5/3/1 / dips,
bench press 5/3/1 / DB Squat

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Hi, I like the look of this 2 day template. I have a question though: It´s no direct back training in this template. How come? Is it in your opinion a good idea to add some direct back work or should I stick to the general template as described above?

Because his main goal is RUNNING. That is the goal. If you want to do chins, replace (not ADD) an assistance exercise.

Thanks a lot Jim, really appreciate it!