I wanted to take a stab at giving this template a review. Before choosing to run this I had a quick look through google and couldn’t find a single review or mention anywhere and having spent the last 9 weeks running it I think one needs to exist.
For some context I picked this out of the 5/3/1 forever book for a strength based programme to run after doing the Krypteia programme. I was looking for a template which was four days and ran each lift twice per week. I’m not going to run the minutiae of the template out as I firmly believe anyone whose interested in 5/3/1 should purchase the book if they can afford to.
The main lifts I’m running aren’t necessarily the traditional ones but after a few years of lifting and 20 years on and off playing a high contact sport I choose lifts that I can best recover from and suit my injuries. Krypteia final week PR’s and estimated 1rm’s:
SSB Squat – 138kg x7 = estimated 1rm of 170kg
Swiss Bar Bench – 82kg x9 = estimated 1rm of 107kg
Trap Bar Deadlift – 181kg x8 = estimated 1rm of 229kg
Viking Press – 65kg x8 = estimated 1rm of 82kg
For the layout of the template (and the way I like to programme all 4 day templates) I went with the following
Sunday – Main lift TBDL, secondary lift Bench
Tuesday – Main lift Viking Press, secondary lift SSB Squat
Thursday – Main lift Bench, secondary lift TBDL
Friday – Main lift SSB Squat, secondary lift Viking Press
Hard conditioning done as either Sprints or WOD on Mondays/Wednesday
Easy conditioning done Saturday and post hard conditioning as weighted vest walks plus whenever there was an opportunity post lifting
Weeks were run on a 3/5/1 basis, Viking Press and Squats were supersetted. Bench and TBDL I couldn’t due to lack of space in my home gym.
I programme the Sunday and Tuesday workouts as full body sessions meaning I can use more challenging accessory work and go to town a bit more, Thursday and Friday requires more thought and less intensity.
Obviously the main objective in this template was to get stronger. Second objective was to put some size on. Third was to get more parity between left and right side upper body pressing strength and size after a shoulder injury on my right side a couple of years ago.
Jim mentions in the programme notes that this can be incredibly boring and the TM’s are set across the board at 80%. This meant I was reducing my TM’s from finishing Krypteia. Luckily I learnt long ago to park my ego which as I train on my own in my shed is pretty easy. You find out pretty quickly during in the leader why the TM is set at 80% with 5 sets of 5 at the top set % whatever it is for that week, and following that up with a rep goal of 3-5 with your TM on the secondary lift. Each secondary lift the aim was to hit the 5 reps but had a couple of workouts where I didn’t feel great and just took the 3 reps but this was literally twice over the entire leader. With an 80% TM hitting 5 reps shouldn’t be taxing. Coming off the back of Krypteia I’m fairly well conditioned but the first week or so hits you in the feels a different kind of way conditioning wise. Doing two heavy lifts per workout takes something out of you in an entirely different way to hitting plenty of reps on Krypteia in between the compounds does. I honestly never felt bored at all throughout the template, as I’m getting older I’m learning to appreciate simpler templates/programmes, and, if something works who cares if it’s boring.
Doing relatively heavy pressing and either a squat or deadlift each session meant that I had to tinker a little with the accessory routine and quickly found that maintaining the habit of doing plenty of pullaparts each day as a form of “Daily Work” (stolen shamelessly from @T3hPwnisher and @SvenG ) kept my shoulders relatively healthy. Whilst on the subject of daily work I hit pushdowns, curls, neck work and press-ups most gym sessions and majority of other days for pushdowns and pullaparts. This has helped with the overall aches and pains in my joints but found that with the pushdowns I’ve built up some tricep size, majority of the curls and all pushdowns were with bands. I also found doing chins, pullups, DB Kroc row and chest supported or T bar rows kept my lower back in check. As a massive plus doing all of this I found my chins/pullups numbers have gone up considerably even as I’ve put body weight on over the course of the template. At least a couple of the pressing accessory movements were unilateral with a particular focus on the DB Bench variations to try and restore the balance of strength between each side.
I was looking forward to running each of the main lifts twice per week as this isn’t something I’ve done before on a four day week programme. I found however that due to the programming of TBDL’s the day before squat volume in the leader and then PR sets in the anchor probably had a knock on effect on squat performance. I actually reduced by squat TM by 10kgs as my bar speed on the top set wasn’t consistently crisp enough and some of my form on the last couple of sets was compromised. This was in all likelihood due to the carryover of the quads being used in both lifts IMO, I found that in the anchor on 5’s week when I reduced the volume of FSL sets of TBDL’s my PR set on squats the next day was considerably better and then again in 1’s week when I took out the TBDL lift the day before squatting entirely my PR set was better than I anticipated. I do think that benching twice per week and squatting twice per week have improved my lifts as I’m in better control of my technique, paused squats maybe something I look at programming going forward. Not sure given the ease of the Viking Press and TBDL whether I got much value of doing these lifts twice per week.
So my results on the final week of the anchor across the lifts were:
Trap Bar Deadlift 185kg x10 = estimated 1rm of 247kg +18kg from start of programme
Viking Press 67kg x13 = estimated 1rm of 96kg +14kg from start of programme
Swiss Bar Bench 89kg x9 = estimated 1rm of 116kg +9kg from start of programme
SSB Squats 128kg x12 = estimated 1rm of 179kg +9kg from start of programme
The Swiss Bench and Viking Press are new PR’s, the only caveat with the dramatic increase of the Viking Press is it’s a fairly new lift for me so I’m tempering these results with the fact I was probably at the end of my easy gains phase with the lift. I could feel my right hand side letting me down on the bench however so need to continue prioritising unilateral pressing on accessory work. I also think the daily press-ups didn’t help recovery as I was adding +1 rep each day (sometimes more if I added press-ups to a WOD or did Walrus training) to the overall volume. The TBDL and SSB Squat aren’t far from all time PR’s, I think what really worked for me on the TBDL was the volume of 5x5 at the top set each week. But from an overall perspective I’m pleased with the results given I’ve been lifting a while I think these are solid strength increases.
This isn’t a sexy template and is fairly simplistic and doesn’t get the recognition it deserves against some of the better known 5/3/1 templates. I’ll be honest, I loved it. You just have to rock up and do the work. I think that has taught me how I respond to certain training stimuluses on some lifts better than others, with that in mind I’m running pervertor next after a cycle or 2 doing 5s pro with a view to putting together a combination template later on this year based on what stimulus brings each lift up.