Finishing up my first 5/3/1 week after returning to the 5/3/1 program, and I’m generally happy.

My right wrist has been bothering me, a lot. So today I wrapped my wrists for every pressing set. That helped a bunch, despite not being used to wraps. Funny thing? My wrist feels great now! The chronic pain is all gone — the compression of the wrap did something I guess.

The 1+ set went well, about what I expected. I did have some balance issues — I think it’s the 45-wheel and how that just changes the feel of things. Will just need more work to get used to it. I am improving on my setup tho; Press setup has always been a weak point for me, so happy that’s coming to a spot.

Otherwise, things went well. Again, rest periods during the heavy work is maybe 3 minutes between sets, but on assistance it all drops to 1 minute of rest. Just get the work in and get out.

So that all said…. with this first cycle under my belt, let’s look back a bit.

I’m happy to return to 5/3/1. It’s simple, logical, and just works. It felt awkward at first, but all feels pretty good now. I do feel like I’m not getting enough (daily) volume, but I’m trying to balance that by remembering that I am feeling just a bit sore post-session AND then the overall volume is going up, so I am expecting this will lead to better things for me. Yes, I might try eventually upping it a bit per-session, but something minor like a “first set, last”. Right now tho, no such change.

I will roll into another cycle immediately (no deload). I may not always keep that, but I’m feeling very good so I see no reason to take a deload right now.

I am going to change up my assistance work a little bit. I realized that I’m getting a lot of lat work, and I’d like to change up a bit to drop a bit of that in favor of more upper-back work. So for instance, keep the chin-ups, drop the pulldowns, add face-pulls. I’ll also keep the pull-ups of course, but I’ll probably be less strict about the style of “up” that I do in favor of whatever aggrevates my elbows least. That sort of thing. I’ll continue to tweak this. I really don’t have any “weak points” to address (my weak point is everything), so assistance work really is just trying to be comprehensive; I feel like I’m missing a few things. So I’ll make some minor changes, keep the same approach of 3×10-20, and just roll on and see how it goes.

Very excited about it all. Happy to be back, looking forward to the progress to be made.

Music today: a mix of hair metal

5/3/1 Simplest Strength Template

• Press
  • bar x whatever
  • 65 x 5 (warmup sets superset with band pull-aparts)
  • 75 x 5
  • 90 x 3
  • 110 x 5 (work sets superset with chin-ups)
  • 125 x 3
  • 140 x 7 (7RM PR apparently)
• Close-Grip Bench Press
  • 135 x 5 (sets superset with chin-ups)
  • 155 x 5
  • 175 x 5
• V-Bar Pulldowns
  • 100 x 20
  • 100 x 16
  • 100 x 12
• Cable Rows
  • 100 x 15
  • 100 x 12
  • 100 x 12
• Skullcrushers (superset with curls)
  • 55 x 20
  • 55 x 18
  • 55 x 14
• Close-grip EZ-bar Curls
  • 50 x 20
  • 50 x 16
  • 50 x 12