I’ve been doing 5/3/1 for coming up on two years now and am very happy with my results. My bench is up by 80 pounds, press by 75, and lower body lifts by similar amounts. I have been obliged to reduce weights on occasion but generally have continued to make steady progress without injury. Some observations:
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I have enjoyed seeing weights come around on deload week that used to be work sets.
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I seldom spend more than 30 minutes at the gym.
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I find myself using the deload week to refocus on form and technique.
To help me out, I have created the attached spreadsheet (adapted from one I found online). You can see the spreadsheet via the link above, and hit the download button at the top of the screen to put a file on your computer that you can open in Excel (this file does have macros). It has two features that I find helpful.
First, it makes calendar appointments for each workout in a cycle which you can easily import into your iCal or Outlook. The code puts every workout at 7:00 AM, but feel free to edit it and move it to a time of your choosing if you want.
The second feature is that it will automatically generate a new tab with the increased weights for each new cycle. Just go to the last tab, hit the button in the upper right, and away you go.
Please feel free to edit, change or distribute the spreadsheet however you want, and let me know if you find it useful. Thanks!