Barbell Shrugged - 99- How Jim Wendler's 5/3/1 Training Program Can Benefit CrossFitters in Need of Raw Strength

Episode Date: January 15, 2014

5/3/1 by Jim Wendler explained

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we discuss the Strength Program 531 written by Jim Windler. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Play today. Play today. That's all I needed to hear. Oh, I'm done. I'm out of breath. All right, good.

Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm here. Congratulations. I'm Mike Bledsoe. I'm here with Doug Larson. I'm mixing my words up again. Doug Larson and Chris Moore. I'm also here.

CTP behind the... We're both here. He's here as well Chris doesn't know I never could tell are we recording all right today we're gonna be talking about five three one because we get a lot of questions about it a lot of CrossFitters do do it five three31 is a straight program developed by Jim Wendler basic barbell movements squat press bench press rows yeah yeah all those main lifts main bar deadlifts I know you're leaving out something all the main core strength exercises that will be familiar to any person most people want to get stronger at presses bench presses dead, deadlifts, and squats. That's why so many people find this program attractive.

And that is what we're going to talk about today. We're going to break it down a bit and explain why it's good and how you could implement it in your CrossFit training. But first, make sure to go to barbellshrug.com, sign up for the newsletter, so that way you can learn the eight snatch mistakes you might be making that are keeping you from becoming a world champion weightlifter.

So really a lot of things keeping you from becoming a champion weightlifter. Well, you'll learn, you'll learn eight of them. These eight. After that, there's probably about 50 more things that you're doing wrong, but we won't cover those in the video because it just,

it would get exhausting. It would. I'm waiting. Quick, Doug, say something. I've ran out of shit to say. He's out of movements. I'm out of breath. You're panting like a dog.

Too much 531, not enough CrossFit. So, Chris Moore, I'll direct it to you since you're the powerlifting guru and you actually know Jim. In fact, in the book book if I'm not mistaken you're in the background of some of the photos if you google Jim Wendler 1000 pound squat

or Jim Wendler squat you'll see a picture of Jim at the I remember it was in Zanesville Ohio 2004 2003 somewhere in there we were at the same meet and if you see Jim taking his 1,000-pound lift, which was successful, and it was a great lift,

after which this meet he retired, he had a good run in powerlifting. But behind, over his, was it left shoulder, right? You'll see a very chubby guy, swollen-faced, getting ready to take his attempt, and that person is... Oh, yeah, I got it. I just pulled it up.

That person is me. Yeah, if you go to JimWendler.com, it's one of the pictures that are in the thing. You in the background. It's probably better than what Doug has. That's me at my... Just up and to the right of the spot. Oh, yeah.

I weighed about 360 pounds in that picture. So that gives anyone who is wondering about Chris's credibility, that picture of him in the background, that proves that Chris knows what he's talking about. Yeah, yeah, I was there. No, I mean of him in the background, that proves that Chris knows what he's talking about. Yeah, yeah. That was there.

That was there. No, I mean, I had it all right, man. I think I squatted like 950 at that meet or 900, somewhere in there. Let's see.

So actually, if you don't know anything about Jim Wendler since we pulled this picture up, it actually has Jim's stats right next to it and he wrote this article. So he's a 275 pound lifter,

1,000 pound squat, 275 bench press and a 700 pound deadlift for a 27, or excuse me, 1,000 pound squat, 275 bench press, and a 700 pound deadlift for a 27, or excuse me, 2375 total, which is super impressive. Did you say 675 bench?

675? 675, yeah. I think you said like 275. Maybe I did. 675, which is way better than 275. We know how bros are, man. I don't want to offend anybody

on the bench record. We're not going to go there. I don't want to offend. Yeah, Jim was excellent. Before he was in powerlifting like if you ever watched Jim like go to his YouTube page go to to see his power thing reels and stuff on YouTube just to investigate as you learn about his programming because it gives you some idea of his background but Jim

is really like one of my works pros explosive squatters I ever saw like you just lowered I can warm ups up to like 500 pounds he's lower he's just going boom which is like a like a slingshot before he power up the head she had I think had been the Air Force Academy play some football in college I think it was University Arizona so he's got a really well-developed extended like in high school obviously being a high level football player so he's got a lot of explosive athletic background a huge sort of baseline of strength that he went into powerlifting with. But yeah, watch his lifts.

He was a really good lifter, man. Am I getting this right, too? Did he kind of develop this as he was getting out of competitive powerlifting? Yeah, I don't want to say too. I think he was kind of like getting away from going nuts and just trying to be healthy and strong. And this was like his way to be healthy and strong. Yeah, so Jim talks about it. And hopefully we can have him on the show. like we're talking about before to tell his full

story because i think it'd be fascinating i think we all love to drink whiskey and lift heavy bar bills in his garage why not but uh yeah i think you know if you're in power thing for long enough either keep with it keep with it keep with it until you despite your records going down and your health you're gonna keep fighting for max efforts or you realize that I'm a little too heavy and I want to do other things in my time. I want to train in other styles. I want to be a little lighter. He went through a big weight cutting phase and went back most, I guess, to the idea that

probably a more balanced strength program for general strength is obviously better. So bring the squat stance in and go lower. Probably, you know, probably more of a high bar position less gear obviously more reps in a deadlift sub max programming an emphasis biggest emphasis on the on the shoulder press standing shoulder press which you know most people who are familiar with training popular training program especially power thing that's really non-existent now that's something you actually I've neglected for a long time for years and then when you try to popular training program, especially palatine, that's really non-existent now. That's something you actually neglected for a long time. For years.

And then when you tried to throw it back in, originally I remember it was excruciating. Yeah, because I could only do like 185 pounds for two or three reps. And you're a guy who can bench 700. Yeah, I was benching my best raw

press outside of palatine conditions was like 550 pounds. And I couldn't military press 205 because my mechanics were so bad. So you're going in an extreme direction because that's what you should do for powerlifting. But in terms of being prepared for general strength and general life function, it's really not ideal at all. And you did find also that when your overhead press improved you saw improvements on your bench press yeah so three things i think helped a lot like pressing balanced out my shoulder health a little bit it allowed me to get strong without pushing the bench as much especially the incline press if you have short sore shoulders you need to improve

your standing press do incline i want to bring this up. Uh, one of the reasons, because we have a six month muscle gain challenge and that's a program we run. And I have the guys benching like once a month and the rest of it's overhead work because the focus really is Olympic lifts, but we still bench like once a month. And some, some people feel like it's not very much. It's just out of balance with everybody's program. You do it too much. It's like anything it's, it deserves a place. And that place should be relatively minor. Cause it's just not a very it shouldn't be abused but i'll say two things that help me more than anything in my life training wise one is getting back to shoulder presses and getting better position also working snatch that's one both things are helping my shoulders more than anything i've ever done muscle snatches and power snatches combined with pressing

less benching second thing, getting my back vertical and doing a hell of a lot of pause squats up to max three or four times a week. Well, for you as a powerlifter, you're used to being very bent over and being in that very vertical position. Exactly. Very out of the ordinary for you.

And so because it's so out of the ordinary for you, you made a lot of progress off of that very quickly. Yeah, it was a huge boost in everything. I started started deadlifting more i started being more explosive on box jumps all because i took the time to get good at something i was so foreign to and i got to where i got through the safety bar four or five days a week i'll go out and work up to four or five hundred pounds just as quick as possible with no undue effort just load bar sit squat i'll even breathe a couple times at the bottom without letting myself bend over at all and i'll just casually stand yeah you bring up that sorry because if you keep your back vertical

that's the kind of thing you can do because there's no fatigue on your back it's just teaching me how to be in a better position because if you don't get in that position you pay the price by rounding over and dying yeah you bring it you bring that point of being a novice and i think most people who go oh i want to get i'm a crossf, I want to get stronger. They're novice on the strength side of things, and 5-3-1 seems to be like the pretty much ideal entry-level strength program for CrossFitters who want to get stronger. Yeah, it's got a bare-bones basis.

It's a very novice approach. It's a very effective thing to do if you are a guy who's run to a dead end in a strength sport like I did with powerlifting. What you don't need to do is consider yourself quote highly trained and then keep on trying to go forward from that point. The best thing you can do to get the most progress out of your training is to come back around and repeat the early steps.

I think all of us standing here right now understand that. That's a universal truth. Progress works. You can only push the advanced stuff so far and then you'll get injured progress works by going up and getting more and accumulating work and and intensity and all that and it also works just as well to go back and relearn what you've done with these experiences and do a fucking better job at it yeah those things are very awesome tactics yeah one of the best things about jim that i've learned over the years is that he

he really focuses on making everything as simple as possible. There's nothing advanced or, or, or crazy or really out of the ordinary about the program. It's just a basic program where you're doing all the things that you need to do and nothing that you don't need to do. Yeah. Focusing on the fundamentals. There's one error people make, they'll read Jim's program. Cause look, Hey Jim, dude, if somebody looks at it and goes, it's simple, and I don't think it's very sexy, I want you to keep in mind that look at Jim's history. He was, like most of us, geeking out on training, learning everything he can.

He got into power thing. He got into strength and conditioning as a coach at the University of Kentucky, I think. He read super training. He read all those books. He knows about concurrent, conjugate, and all that periodization models. He knows all that stuff,

and what has he come back to now that he's gotten all that experience, he's learned all his lessons, and he can look back and say what he would do differently? He does the simplest possible thing. Breaks it down. It's not correlated with efficacy. Breaks it down 100 pound, 100 pound, 100 page ebook.

So what's really great about this is you can go to jimwindler.com, and if you want the book right now, all you have to do is go to the website and download it. So you're not going to have to order it and wait a couple days for it to get to you you can do it right away and it's good it's not you're not gonna waste your money with that book what's great about this program for crossfitters um and this is why i really suggest it highly is because the volume is relatively low uh if you're playing a sport football rugby any sport i mean you and you have practice and you already have training volume that week, this is a great way to add strength volume

without it being crazy or really high. I know there's periods of time where crossfitters who are more advanced or have been doing a lot of strength training, they may not like that volume of training, but even Rich Froning was telling me he was doing 531 last year. So it works. Credit where credit's due. volume of training but even rich froning was telling me he was doing 531 last year so it works it works and for credit where credit's due for any program you know when people ask you know i've been doing 531 um what should i do next and then my first question is are you are you still

getting results from 531 are you still getting stronger the answer is yes and it's like the answer i mean that just means you should keep doing 5-3-1. Now you say, hey, I plateaued, I haven't gotten stronger in the last 12 weeks, and it's like, okay, we need to change programs, or we need to change something here. Take all the fruit within reach, and then get your ladder.

And it could be a lifestyle thing. Generally, programming is the last thing that you want to change. You got to make sure you're actually doing the program you say you're doing first. That's one of the big ones. True that, homie. You go, whoa, what have you done this week?

And they're like, well, I mean, I've been really busy at work. I didn't make it for training the last two days. And then you find out they're not even doing the program they say they're doing. That's a good point. Because guess what? Probably one of Jim's major complaints would be, probably one of the biggest mistakes people make, especially CrossFitters, they'll take 5-3-1 and do it.

And then they'll do like CrossFit endurance or something or do main site stuff. And they'll start bolting all this together and go, the result wasn't good. It didn't get stronger. 5-3-1 and do it and then they'll do like crossfit endurance or something or do main site stuff and they'll start bolting all this together and go the result wasn't good it didn't get stronger 5-3-1 didn't work 5-3-1 is a program if you want to maximize your experience with that you should do it and then you should carefully balance the other things you might attach to it

yeah so where the program works is it's got four week cycles you know it progressively gets more progressive it progressively gets more. Progressive. It progressively gets progressive. The volume goes up week to week. On the fourth week, you deload like you do a lot of programs.

Sorry. So, yeah. Doug's there. I'm sorry. I believe Jim called it deloading. I'm just standing up for unloading, man. I'm just saying what he was saying. So, they suggest a deload every fourth week, which is very common amongst many programs. That's how I like the program personally.

That's how we do it in Six Month Muscle Gain. That's how we do it in Road to Regionals. So, you've got this four-week program. And if you're doing CrossFit alongside, and I think doing CrossFit as your conditioning, doing that as your strength work, doing Crossfit for your conditioning is a great idea but what you don't want to do is when you deload the strength you probably that's probably a great time to deload your conditioning as well you know half down figure out how much conditioning you're doing and cut that as well during that week that's not the time i think that would probably be a common mistake with crossfitters it's like oh the strength's going

down now i should really push the conditioning no this is when your whole body needs it's kind of like when people drink drink soda and they're trying to lose weight and they don't count that as calories they don't think of that as being what's making them fat like when you're when you're taking off training you go i'm not training heavy i'm just doing some reps so i'm resting no you're still you're doing more work yeah yeah if you just think about a one week or one month cycle where you're just doing four weeks and you're not thinking about anything Yeah. Yeah. If you just think about a one week or one month cycle where you're just doing four weeks and you're not thinking about anything longer term than that, then you get to that fourth week, train really hard for three weeks on new program, get to that fourth week and you're

still motivated. You think, I don't really want to deload. Like, okay, maybe I'll, maybe I'll deload what he was telling me to deload and then I'll go do some extra Metcons and a bunch of extra stuff. But you think about longterm, you think about doing four week cycles for over the course of an entire year. Well, then taking that fourth week and deloading like you're supposed to makes a whole lot more sense. Because at the end of that year, you're going to need those back-off weeks.

Yeah, nothing makes me want to kick an athlete like a bad dog more than when they go, Coach, take it easy, Coach. When they go, oh yeah, I feel really good right now. So I did some extra heavy deadlifts this morning. I'm like, no, you're supposed to feel really good and fast right now. This is not the time to do that. How do you feel now? Terrible.

Yeah, and like I don't understand why I'm missing my snatches. It's like, I do. I know exactly why. So the breakdown week by week, basically week one, and I think he has a couple different variations. I actually haven't read the program in a couple years, but if I remember correctly, it's something along the lines week by week, basically week one, and I think he has a couple of variations. I actually haven't read the program in a couple of years.

But if I remember correctly, it's something along the lines of week one for your heavy movement. If you're doing heavy squat, heavy deadlift or heavy overhead press or bench press, you're going to be doing something along the lines of three by five for that one heavy movement. And then week two, it breaks down to like three by three. So three sets of three heavy reps a three rm more or less and then week four this is where the name of the book comes from you do three by five three or excuse me yes excuse me week three you do three by five three one so five sets or five reps on the

first set three reps and then it built up to a heavy single on that on that third set there's all percentage base as well like and he suggests that you stick to these percentages, you know, don't, don't go, Oh, I feel good today and go heavier. So go ahead, Doug. Sorry. Right. So, so we'll get to the percentages here in a second. So, so you have the, those first three weeks where you're building up three by five, three by three, three by five, three, one, and then it comes to the fourth week. You built up that heavy single as your last set on that third week. And then you have a deload week. And so take that deload week and then it comes to the fourth week you built up that heavy single as your last set on that third week and then you have a deload week and so take that deload week and then you can start fresh again the next week if you what's the percentage of 40 on the unloading week um

it's pretty i don't remember exactly very low it goes by three by five three by three yeah five three one deload i'm trying to see what what he suggests for the deload week specifically. So you build up to that heavy single at the end of that third week on your five, three, one. And then if you PR, then you deload. And then when you come back and you run your percentages, we're going to get the percentages here in a second, you run your percentages again. You basically, even if you PR by 20 pounds, you still want to progress slowly. And this is what Jim recommends is that even if you PR by 20 pounds, when you recalculate percentages the next week, if it's a smaller movement or a movement with mostly upper body,

like a heavy overhead press or a bench press, you might want to add only five pounds. If it's a heavy deadlift or a heavy squat, then maybe you add 10 pounds. But if you PR by 30 pounds, you don't rerun your max numbers where you get your percentage off of that next week by adding 30 pounds and then running those percentages you just add 10 pounds that way you can progress

more slowly again that'll help with your long-term progress and you won't stall out quite as fast yeah when you start the program yeah he suggests find your max now take 10 off of that and that's how you're going to run the program from there on forward that right there is the thing that even when i did it, I did it a few times. I got some good results out of it while I was taking a break from traditional piloting stuff. The temptation is there to say,

well, you know, man, that minus 10%, I could do more than that shit. And you just put your one limb in and you're already off to a bad start. You really do need to have a conservative estimate to start that you know you could probably lift more than that. And then you take 10 off. You got to be really conservative.

Yeah, you got to think about the long game here. Yeah, it's a long game for you. We've talked about this before. Short-term goals are usually at odds with long-term goals. They're like a sugar rush. They feel really great. And then it's gone and you're confused and you're left crying. Yeah, and this is actually something I suggest.

We do a little bit different style strength training for the six-month muscle gain. But the suggestion is, throughout the entire program, is, hey, we have 26 weeks. It's a 26-week program. You have 26 weeks to get stronger. And you will. And what you do is you sometimes see guys trying to put 20, 30 pounds on their back squat in like a week. You'll pay for that. And sometimes they're successful, but in spite of their long-term results, they've

now screwed themselves. We know you can do it. We know you're strong, man. We know you can do it. That's not the point. Here's the thing is five, if you add five pounds to your back squat for 26 weeks in a row. That's a lot of additional work.

That's 130 pounds in six months. That is huge. That is... And if people would just be a little more patient, they would be safer. Their joints would feel a lot better, and then they would get progress for a lot longer, and their potential would be a lot higher. And on the contrary, if you do the 30 pound jump, you end the year maybe keeping about 20 pounds as being a persistent outcome of your training because you get really tired. You get bummed out and you start hating training.

You take a week off and get back into it and you don't get anything out of it at the end. So here I found those percentages for you. So again, I said week one was three sets of five reps. And so set one would be 65 percent by five and then 75 percent by five and then 85 percent by five or basically as many as you can get. You're kind of am wrapping five. Probably you'll probably get more than five if you really, if you really took your one rep max calculated 90% of it and then took 65% of that, it'll be light and 75% of that and 85% of that.

It'll be pretty light. So when you get to that 85% for that third set, you'll probably get more than five reps. And you're supposed to. And if you get more than five reps, don't think that something's going wrong. Something's going very right. And I think I want to get to this, you know, the different ways that muscles get stronger, a little bit of physiology here and explain why the multiple reps can be really important and why it's probably important for this specific program to be conservative.

We should probably just jump right into it. I was like, we should save it for later. Sounds like now's the perfect time. Everyone's like, no, just tell me. So that was week one. Week one was 65% for five, 75% for five, 85% for five plus. And then week two, you're doing three by three. And you're going 70%, 80%, 90% for three plus on that last set.

The volume comes down a little bit, right? And then week three, you're doing five, three, one. And so it goes 75% for five, 85% for three,

and then 95% for one. Or if you can get two or three or however many, get as many reps as you can again. And then week four is the deload week. And so you're doing three sets of five again, but this time you're doing it very light control down fast, explosive on way up but you're not going to do too many reps so you're going to do 40 for five 50 for five and 60 for five and so there'll be speed reps they'll be easy you shouldn't be overly tired at the end of it you're you're working your technique you're

recovering you're not prescribed reps right that's how it goes like you don't rep on those sets that's that's the trap you don't you know yeah you don't increase the volume not going for a pump there homie right not going for a pump just do the five reps and sit down right the first three weeks when you get to the third set you're gonna do as many reps as possible but the fourth week nope you stop at 60 for five reps and then you rack lower load lower reps equals rest yes all right let's take a break real quick when we come back we'll talk about why this program works so well. And we're back. Oh, now we're back.

Oh, CTP, you know, new camera here. He didn't know when he was recording. He'll get the hang of this new contraption eventually. It looks like the Starship Enterprise. It does. Doesn't it?

I'm waiting for it to shoot a laser at me and just turn me into a pile of dust. All right. Before we left, we talked about how we would talk about why the program works so well. And Chris and I, Chris Moore and I last night got in a conversation about, you know, what makes muscle stronger, what stimulus is involved for that. Probably a lot of people don't understand that. They just kind of know that lifting heavy weights makes you stronger and maybe don't think about it any deeper than that. So we're going to explain a little bit of that.

And I want to talk about, he suggests to not deviate the program too much. And I think that suggestion is because, or he he says don't deviate it at all because you may not know what the fuck you're doing right and the reason that people don't know what they're doing is because they don't understand why like if you if you can understand why the program works then you might have a little insight in how you can tweak it but if you don't understand why something works then you really can't tweak it and that's why i kind of want to talk about like physiological physiology basics of you you know, strength stimulus. You wouldn't take a wrench to your motor without knowing what you were doing.

The best analogy there that I've ever heard from strength coaches is that this right here is a recipe and any Joe can follow a recipe. You can give a recipe to any little kid and he can, he can bake some chocolate chip cookies, but you don't want that little kid going and messing with the recipe cause he's just going to screw it up and those cookies are going to come out tasting like shit or they're not going to taste like shit at all we're going to ask john ben's about that we used confectioner's sugar instead of flour he ended up with just and what like he was trying to make cookies and he thought he was using flour he's using confectioner's sugar i never took home that comment i took home that one

i mean he knows how to read packages. Two sweet pies and pizza during school. All right. So until you have about 10 years of experience, you're not going to be to the point where you can write a program and really be a chef that makes a good program. That's going to work. So just follow it straight up,

have the experience of what you get from the program as written. And then if you want to change it afterward, if you have the experience, I suppose you go ahead and try it, but you probably want to find someone who, who has more experience than you and ask them what they would tweak based on your needs and talk to them in your experience. True that.

Plus, if you do this program and then you do another program and after you've done five, 10 programs, you kind of start figuring out what, what parts of each program are working the best. Program hopping, son of a bitch. Well, you know, what I don't suggest is do this program for a month and then do another program for another month. Do this program for six months and then do something else. You know what I mean? Unless you don't like being stronger.

If you just want to, if you like fucking around and waste your time, then do that. Yeah. All right. So we'll talk about why it works. There's the basic principle of muscles getting stronger is putting tension on them so if you put tensile force on a muscle that's the stimulus necessary for it to adapt to get stronger like you're pulling a cable and putting tension on like that's right hotness of that that's right so for me i think of tension on a muscle three different ways one is time under tension you've

probably heard that before maybe not uh. I'm doing my curls. We think about volume. So there's two different ways to get more time under tension on a muscle. And that is by doing more repetition. Or you could do something like tempo work. You go slow on the way down, slow on the way up, pauses. Things like that. Put more, you know, moderate loads usually with tension on that muscle.

More time. More time. The next way would be high force movements. So 90% or above, just heavy weights. We'll just say that. So putting on, sorry. How old are you? Doug's like, oh, geez.

So yeah, using heavy weights to put a lot of force on those muscles, a lot of tension, that's another way to cause a muscle to introduce that stimulus. That's why squats and deadlifts and presses are good. That's right. Heavy. And then the next one would be speed work. And that is where you're actually attempting to move something as quickly as possible.

So not only are you recruiting as many muscle fibers as possible, but because you're trying to move as quickly as possible, you're causing a lot of tension. It would be like if you're rock climbing and you've got a rope connected to you and you fall 20 feet and that that it's the speed of the fall that's causing all that you know 15 000 pounds of pressure still kills you when he catches you that's right that's exactly right so it's also kettlebell swings make you so sore yeah your high speed deceleration causes a lot of tissue breakdown it makes you super sore that's why plyos make your calves so sore yeah your high speed deceleration causes a lot of tissue breakdown it makes you super sore that's why plyos make your calves so sore if you haven't done anything

in a while if you've never jumped rope and you go jump rope for the first time you're gonna have super sore calves i can buy that yeah i've never not jumped rope so i wouldn't know but you're all mind if i sum up everything you just said go for it so this you're much better at the summing i'm much more better at the rambling. So basically, there's three main methods. You talk about repetition method. Repetition or tempo. I kind of put them in the same category.

Right. I personally do. Other coaches might say, you're a fucking asshole. I know. You just got to take over. You son of a bitch. Too much coffee. Too much coffee.

Let Doug talk. Let fucking Doug talk. So we'll put this in powerlifting terms. I'm not sure who originally came up with all these terms. So you got repetition method. you got max effort method, and you got dynamic effort method. All the Louie stuff. I don't know if Louie actually created it or not,

but he certainly talks about it quite a bit. Of course not. He put the words on it. Soviets. Right. I don't know who named it all. But basically repetition methods, you're kind of like your bodybuilding. It's basically moderate weight.

So you're looking at 60 or 70% of your max three to five sets of eight to 15 ish reps and that way you're getting enough volume enough time and attention to cause some type of muscular growth uh you got dynamic effort method that basically is your your speed training like you said so in the powerlifting world especially the the louis west side ish type things uh you're looking at eight to 12 sets of like singles or doubles maybe triples on bench maybe yeah maybe triples sometimes but control down explode up you're doing it roughly we'll say every minute on the minute you're getting you know maybe 15 seconds of work 45 seconds of rest you shouldn't be tired you should be fresh the whole time that way you

can accelerate the weight and then while you're accelerating the weight, you're putting max tension on your muscle while moving that light load. And then you also have your max effort method. And that's what you're saying with the heaviest weights. You're looking at something like probably between 85 and 100% of your max you're doing, depending on the program, probably between three and five sets of probably one to three reps as heavy as you possibly can. So you're putting max tension. That's not about time under tension. That's about max tension on the muscle. You're contracting as hard as you can against the heaviest load possible.

Man, you're playing corn. You're screaming lightweight and all that kind of stuff. I'll say to that point, any program, there's nothing magic about programs. There are tools, but any program can work so long as it incorporates those elements and you get a bounce corn yeah any porn by the way by the way so like west side you did a beautiful job of summarizing i just want to say that thank you west side has the elements uh gems program which you're going to explain i guess has those elements and you're going to say where that fits right or do you right yeah so i say here to further that point there's really two different ways that that

for the most part you break down your training days. You basically have either a dynamic effort, heavy, excuse me, dynamic effort lift where you're doing some speed work on a main lift followed by all your repetition work. So you would do speed bench or speed squats for eight sets of doubles. And then after that, you're pretty much doing your volume training. You're doing glute hammer raises and whatnot for three sets of five of, excuse me, for three to five sets of eight to 10, eight to 12 reps or whatever. So you're doing dynamic followed by repetition on some days. And then usually your other days you're doing some type of super heavy lift, your max effort

lift followed by again, repetition stuff. So do I say that in the CrossFit world, that's usually when you would wide, you do the kettlebell swings and pull upsups. Could be. Potential solution to that. But it's got to be done the right way. So it gets tricky. It gets tricky. That goes without saying.

Right. So in CrossFit, most of your volume, most of your repetition method is included in the Metcon. So that's where CrossFit's a little bit different. You, using CrossFit, you either do your max effort movement. It's like a heavy squat or a heavy deadlift or whatever, or you do something like a, like a heavy snatch or heavy clean. And that's kind of like your dynamic effort methods, your speed work. It's still heavy because it's a heavy snatch, heavy clean, but it's not so heavy that you're grinding because you have to be able to, to more or less throw the barbell around and get under it. And so it's either a heavy snatch or heavy clean. That's your dynamic effort method. And then you go Metcon and that's your repetition work or

your heavy squat or heavy deadlift or maybe a heavy press maybe weighted pull-ups and then again for your repetition method on that day you would go to your metcon so this is a really important point because i think a lot of people try to do some strength work and they they're doing a strength phase so now they do heavy weights in their metcon too and this is a really good argument to not do that and this is why I've seen the best results with athletes getting stronger by keeping the weights light or body weight light in the conditioning and keeping

sticking with the strength program. And then if you want that assistance work, don't be going over 60% on your barbell movements. You get tired on being heavy and you don't train the other elements. You don't get the volume. You're going from the high tension stuff, the max effort or the high speed stuff,

and then you go to a Metcon, and now you're not going to get the amount of repetition you need to get that third variable. So we talk about variety in CrossFit, and that's what makes it so good. But a good program is going to have variety. And even though you're seeing squat, press, and deadlift, you go, oh, there's not much variety in

those movements well the variety is found in the programming get good at that one movement using the variety of methods of to get stronger right so we talk about met cons which is basically conditioning in the crossword world but actually in 531 as far as conditioning it's not like it's left out all the way he does he's a big fan of it yeah he does his assistance work which is the higher higher rep repetition work for volume that'll help you again get a little more time under tension help you get some muscular growth and help with your strength a little bit big fan of pull-ups i think other maybe a little bit of curl for bicep health maybe some stuff like deadlifts sit-ups again the assistance works all very fundamental as well right so if you have a

lower body dominant day, you might do your, your heavy squat or whatever, and then you'll do some type of maybe good mornings or glute ham raises or reverse hypers or, or, or whatever on your upper body days, you might do some type of a heavy overhead press. And then for your assistance work, you might do your pull-ups, your bent rows, dumbbell, inclined dumbbell bench, maybe weighted pushups or whatever. But then also there is some conditioning in the program as well. So it's not like you're doing no conditioning at all. He's a big fan of hill sprints, pushing the prowler, running stairs, things like that, that are super basic. You don't have to overthink conditioning. And he definitely doesn't overthink conditioning. He just runs as

hard as he can up a flight of stairs and then kind of walks back down and does it again. The next time he tries to do it one more time than he did last time. Or do it the same amount of work without dying as hard. Yeah, I'm a big fan of hill sprints and running stairs. Tell them about our experience on the treadmill the other day. Oh, yeah. I was not there. I am so glad I opted out.

That was rough, man. I had something important to do, and that's why I wasn't there. Yeah, if you're stuck in a hotel and it's, I don't know how cold it was outside. It was cold though. We didn't go outside and we just want to get a quick workout in before we went out, went out that evening to meet up with Travis mash and, and, and Christmas Abbott. Say what? You name dropping sons of bitches.

He's like, don't forget Christmas. And so we go down to this, uh, this little tiny weight room, which God was much bigger in this room. And, and there's a treadmill in there and a few dumbbells and a bunch of mirrors. And that was about it. And so we warmed up real fast and then we got on the treadmills and we just put it at the highest incline. You warmed up real fast, which means you probably didn't warm up real good. We did a decent warm up, but it was really only five or ten minutes.

And then we decided the first thing we were going to do is just run a quarter mile uphill sprint on this treadmill for conditioning. Was it max? Yeah, like 15 degree incline. Incline, that's the word I was looking for. Yeah, we just put it on a certain mile per hour and then start running and just kind of see what happens. And if it was too slow, we'd just beep it up. And if it wasn't enough, we could beep it down. Use the beeps. Use the beeps to get it up and if it was wasn't enough we could we could beep it down so the beeps use the beeps to get up and down

all right but uh i put it on way too i wasn't that warmed up and i put it on way too high he felt weird for an hour after it wrecked me i was gonna do a couple of them i did one of them and i was wheezing and i i was thinking about throwing up and i was like i can't do anymore like we're gonna go out and have a good time with these guys. And I'm going to be sitting in the corner, like holding my head. I, uh, I've only seen Doug maybe a handful of times get to the point where he's like, I don't want to move. If he's done that, he really did make himself. So he really did push it hard.

So I used to do it all the time though. Training for MMA. I would, I would put it at the highest incline and then I would do, I would do one minute sprints. And the great thing about treadmill incline sprints is that there's no opportunity to slow down unless you beep yourself down. So you can set it on 10 miles an hour, and then you just have to go 10 miles an hour. You got no option, bro.

Unless you decide to hop off or decide to go slower. So you can do a sprint. You're like consciously making an effort to be a pussy at that point. Right. And hit down. But the benefit really is that you can run a sprint, a one minute sprint at 10 miles an hour. And if you did it, next time you can run 10.1 miles an hour and then 10.2 miles an hour.

And each time you get it, you can't do that on a hill. Yeah. It's just like doing a back squat. Like if you get five reps at 300 pounds where you can go 305 pounds next time and you can find that limit to a very precisely not like running around the track where like you're like okay i'm gonna do a 400 meter sprint and then you're like you're like i think i'm running faster and then you go oh i was trying to get a 62 and i got a 64 bummer you're making me question my grandfather's treadmill now it's cold it's hot it's dry

it's wet it's it's early in the morning it's late in the morning like there's no way to control how you do on the track it's fucking no way to do that. It's a great way to force yourself to run a little bit faster for a certain period of time. And you can wreck yourself like that. So is there anything else we want to cover about 531? Are we leaving anything out? You made a good point on the break about considerations before we begin, didn't you? Where you should go now for more information.

Oh, yeah. Make sure. It's an incredibly important point. didn't you? Where you should go now for more information? Oh yeah. Uh, make sure incredibly important. Yeah. So this, this was not intended to, to, to skip five, three, one, the book, like this was not intended for us to cover it. So you can watch this episode or listen to this and know what to do now. We're just talking about the benefits of it, why it works and maybe some good supplemental or complimentary information to the book. Uh, we'll definitely try to get Jim Wendler on the show in the future. Uh, if you want to buy the ebook,'ll definitely try to get Jim Wendler

on the show in the future. If you want to buy the e-book, you can go to jimwendler.com, click on the store. You can buy the e-book and download it today for 20 bucks or you can go to amazon.com and buy the paperback.

Is it on Elite FTS? I would be shocked if it was not on elitefts.com. By the way, we're not making any money off of this. No, no, we're just a resource. We just think it's great. Yeah, so we just get a lot of questions about 5-3-1.

We just want to be as open about it as possible. You got a question, Doc, in an open skill? Well, what I was going to say was a question that we do get from a lot of crossfitters is that they don't just want to do squats and deadlifts and presses. They want to work on their snatches and their cleans and their other crossfit skills and their gymnastics. So how do they, I know we're not supposed to alter the program, but what is, does anyone know what Jim does when, when he, someone wants to throw in some cleans or some snatches? I think he covers that at the end of the book. I think you can do five, three, one programming. You probably, you don't, you might not do your rep set at the end,

but you can still do, you can certainly do five reps in a power cleaner, hand clean. It might work better if you do ones, doubles and triples, but you can certainly do five reps in a power cleaner hand clean it might work better if you do ones doubles and triples but you can still do the same progression and start conservative work your form but you will get better it's probably not ideal for weightlifting programming but if you're a guy who wants to be strong and also do the power clean or do some snatching you could that would be perfectly serviceable i would keep it separate uh i actually don't remember what the book says on it specifically but i would definitely keep it separate and you could do it somewhat of a progression but i would probably focus on technique and keeping the weights light and then really just focus on being stronger and then after you get you know to a certain point you say hey i want to improve my if you really

want to improve your weight lifting and that's like your number one goal this probably isn't the program for you but if you But if you're biggest thing is... If you're looking to be strong, it's probably okay. Right. If you're just trying to get your squat and press up, then this is what you need to do. So you need to know what your goal is here. So the goal here is really get your squat, deadlift, and press up.

If you want to get your weightlifting up, there's a ton of other weightlifting programs out there. And to get bigger and stronger, generally speaking. Yeah. So there's a million ways you could do it. I've actually done this exact same thing before. What I did was I was doing three days a week and I would just do three sets of three of either power snatches Or power cleans by doing a power variation of power snatch or power clean as opposed to a full squat snatch or squat clean

You're automatically going kind of light, but you're still getting you're still getting the movement pattern down every day You're still able to kind to remember what that feels like. That way, when you get out of this program and you want to get back onto some weightlifting or CrossFit specific program, it's not like you haven't cleaned or snatched in 12 weeks or however long you did the program. You've got to practice the movement. You've got to treat weightlifting like a sport.

You can get stronger with powerlifting style movements without treating it like a powerlifting sport. With weightlifting, think about it as like throwing a baseball. You wouldn't play baseball and go weeks and weeks on end without throwing the ball or swinging a bat. The same thing with weightlifting. You don't have to take it to maximum loads, but you at least need to be doing the movements

and practicing. And those squats and those deadlifts should probably be like clean pull deadlifts and high bar squats. You could do. If you're weightlifting and you want to get back into that and you're in off season you would i would probably still be doing oh oh i thought you were saying sub clean deadlifts for deadlifts in the program i would not do that because you can't get the same stimulus i'm saying it's just if you're going to get back into, yeah, we got it. Yeah, man. Yeah.

You're in agreeance. We're in agreeance, a concurrence of ideas. Chris Moore and I agree a lot more than we used to. That's for sure. We're two sides of the same coin, my friend. A weird, weird coin. We used to throw things at each other in the parking lot. That's not true.

Yeah, I just want to make it really dramatic for the people at home. It's all peace and love, man. Really? I never thought, I never struck you. I never said unkind word about, I called you, I called you C word

and said many words. I think you've called me names. I've definitely called you names. You've made me sad, man. Before, once or twice. Made me real sad. All right, let's get on with the show. We're done.

What did you say, Chris? It's an episode 100 on the way. Oh, that's right. It's episode 99. Episode 100's on with the show. We're done. What did you say, Chris? Episode 100 on the way. Episode 100 is coming out next week. Maybe we'll do something special. Maybe. Top secret. It's in the works right now. Something special coming. Yeah.

As we already did, promoted Jim Wendler. You can go to his website, buy the book, go to Amazon, buy that book. You definitely should. It's like $20. Yeah. Well worth it. I bought the e-book a long time ago.

I actually had to pull my old PC out, which I haven't opened in like a year. I go, oh, I got the book somewhere. Anyways. Also, go to the T Nation article that Jim Wendler wrote. See Chris in the background. Looking good. Oh, shit. Also, try a 400-pound Chris Moore.

Get that book and read it. Also, Doug, wasn't there a top questions that Jim published on T Nation? A 531? Or was that on Elite Fitness? I think that was on EliteFTS.com. Look, dude, Jim has put a lot of free information on this. And you can go out and just learn to your heart's content.

Just get in your Googles and type it in and go for it. T Nation actually has a lot of good 531 stuff. Google 531 and read those 10 articles. You'll have it down. And if you like 5-3-1, if you like the discussion today, you probably still want to check out what Chris put together, which is starting strength.

No, it's not. No, it's not. That was someone else's. Simple strength. Why can't I get it right? Well, I go into like where that's like a, here's what you should do. Here are the percentages.

Here's how it works. I go into sort of, if you want to know how periodization works, but you're a beginner, you want to see how these things will mix and how you'd put together a program

and mix and match ideas. That's what that product really is. Yeah. So I could see like, if you like one, you'd like the other. They could complement each other.

They go together really well. Yeah. All right, cool. Make sure you go to Barbell Strug. I can't talk. Make sure you go to barbellstrug.com. Sign up for the newsletter.

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