Post your 5/3/1 experience/review/advice here!

jayche

Thinking about giving it a go in a few weeks your input on the program would be appreciated!
Thanks in advance!

gypsy_spirit

I did Stronglifts for about 14 months. I switched to 5/3/1 because other friends liked the program and I needed a change. I have been doing 5/3/1 for about 10 weeks and I really like it.

cwolfman13

probably the best intermediate strength building/strong man routine out there. What program have you been doing? You're not going to make the kind of gains with 5/3/1 that you will with Starting Strength or Strong Lifts 5x5 as 5/3/1 pretty much assumes you've already hit your linear gains wall...so daily/weekly strength gains now become more monthly type of progress.

I pretty much go back and forth between true 5/3/1 programming and a variant of the program 8/6/3 to switch things up. It's an awesome program...I highly recommend reading the book and understanding the principles of the program before diving in though.

jayche

probably the best intermediate strength building/strong man routine out there. What program have you been doing? You're not going to make the kind of gains with 5/3/1 that you will with Starting Strength or Strong Lifts 5x5 as 5/3/1 pretty much assumes you've already hit your linear gains wall...so daily/weekly strength gains now become more monthly type of progress.

I pretty much go back and forth between true 5/3/1 programming and a variant of the program 8/6/3 to switch things up. It's an awesome program...I highly recommend reading the book and understanding the principles of the program before diving in though.

I'm currently running my own modified version of madcow (aka not madcow) and I've been making good progress off of it. Just looking to introduce some more hypertrophy/volume work into the mix, 5/3/1 seemed like a good fit for that. The book is a good suggestion I'll have to take a look at it sometime.

And if it matters my current 1RM (lb) are:
Squat: 320
Bench: 245
Deadlift: 455
BW: ~147-152

mantium999

Started with Stronglifts and got bored out of my mind. While I would not be classified as "intermediate" by any means, I find I am making much better progress on 5/3/1, and enjoy it more on account of the flexibility it provides around accessory lifts. Highly suggest checking out blackironbeast.com's 5/3/1 calculator. Good stuff there.

traps531

Here are my estimated 1RM lifts for a little more than one year of running 5/3/1. Before this program, my progress had stalled on every lift using linear progress.

I am a 47 year old man.

I truly believe that if you do this program, you will get stronger. It will be slow progress, but progress. At least, that is my experience with it.

http://cphost1.iglou.com/~urocket/TCG/531progress.html

jayche

Thanks everyone for contributing so far, any advice on accessory work? I'm thinking about doing the BBB challenge.