 Welcome to Barbell Logic, Rewind. This is Barbell Logic, I'm Scott. I got Matt with me and today we're gonna talk about five, three, one, or at least Reynolds variant of that. But before I do that, I want you guys to please go and give us a rating on your favorite podcast outlet, whether that's iTunes or Stitcher or whatever that may be and tell a friend about us. It's a giant help to us. Our numbers have been going up, which please us because we want to reach more people. We want to be as helpful as we can be. So thanks for that. I'm gonna go ahead and give you our handles. We're at Reynolds Strong on Instagram. We're at Scott underscore silver strength there and we're at barbell underscore logic there too. And you can email us at barbell logic podcast at gmail.com. But here's what not to ask for. We're gonna talk about this program, but we're not gonna give it to you. Right, we're not gonna give you a place to download it. We're not gonna make it that easy. Yep. So we'll go over this today and we'll tell you what the salient points are and why it's important in your programming and how it might be possibly be helpful to you in your training life. But we're not gonna wrap it up and put a bow on it. If that makes me a jerk, so be it. My Chaucer's disclaimer here is that I don't really remember what 531 is an original program is or looks like. And I thought about looking it up and pretending that I actually knew, but I felt like I wanted to actually be honest. I know there are like a hundred different versions of 531. Right. I know that I took these percentages off of the original 531 article that was written on TNation, TMAG, testosterone.net, whatever you wanna call it, years ago by Wendler. So Jim Wendler wrote a program called 531 that spurned into a book. It's essentially a month-long program, which means it puts it in, it's a four-day split. We've just talked about a four-day split in a previous episode. What the four-day split looks like is two upper body days, two lower body days, lower body being squats and deadlifts, upper body's being bench and press. And we talked about it in that episode where we're gonna introduce the supplemental lift. So the variant on the main lift. So the first lift of the day will always be the main lift. The second lift will be a supplemental lift, a close connected variant. We'll talk about what some of the ones are in here, but we'd change them some. This is just the basic template we're gonna go over today. I think that the critique, which I probably share is essentially, you can boil it down essentially to your swapping volume for intensity with the original one. So you lift a weight at five reps. Then you lift a heavier weight at three, then you lift a heavier weight at one. Did you really get stronger? You're really gonna swap. That's right. And I think then this other problem is, is that for the way I believe, the way the original program is written, you really just squat one day a week and deadlift one day a week and press one day a week and bench press one day a week. Extra accessories thrown in there. But the concept of the supplemental lift isn't really written into this. Now I know again, I'm sure somebody who just loves five through one and there's 15,000 different versions of programs that say, oh, but the joke and smoke version actually has all the, like, I mean, I don't... It's like the 12 bar blues. Like people have taken this skeleton and done a lot of good and bad stuff with it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so what we're gonna do, the reason we're talking about this, and it's not because five through one is incredible, it's because this is a really good example of a month long four day split program, which is the next sort of piece of the progression of Barbell Logic's content episodes, which are, hey, we've moved into late intermediate programming. What does late intermediate programming look like? Is this late intermediate? Mid intermediate programming? Early, late early. Early mid? Well, it's, mid's fine. So here's why. It comes after two week programming. Now it's month long programming. That's where it comes after. I will use this, which I stole from you, which you stole from somebody else, you stole from somebody we don't know, or, you know, I don't know. Like, all this is incestuous, right? But I'll use this incestuous. Yeah, God, sorry. Continue. Barbell Logic podcast at gmail.com. I'll use it because oftentimes, this is the first time I get somebody to actually do like max effort singles. Yeah. Yeah. This is why I do this. Yeah. You know how many times I run this? Twice, twice, twice. I run it twice. Yeah. That's it. And I make a little change from the first time through the second time through. So let's talk about the split of the program first, and then we'll talk about how it's set up. So the thing that I stole, I believe the only thing that I stole from Wendler in this is the percentages of the main lift for each day. So for example, day one is the bench press day. Day two is the squat day. Day three is the press day. Day four is the deadlift day. Week one, you do 65% for five after your warmups. 65% for five, by the way, is essentially a warmup still. 75% by five, which is a work set. And then 85% for five plus. It's an AMRAP with a floor on it. It's better do five or die. You have to do five. And it's an RPE 10. Or that last heavy RPE, last heavy AMRAP work set is an RPE 10. It's an absolute go till you don't have anything left, right? So it's a percentage base, which means you have to know your one rep max. So how do you know your one rep max? Well, there's a whole bunch of max calculators online and they actually are all basically the same. They work pretty well. Max calculator, you basically take point, I think you take three and a third. Well, if you're doing a five set of five reps, you should be able to get three and a third percent more for every single one of those reps. So you get a little about 16 and a half, 17% more as a one rep max than you can as a five rep. Correct, right. That's good. And so you can take your best set of five or your best set of three or your best double or whatever. You can put it in a rep max calculator and you'll know your rep max. Now the first time we do this, and when there says this as well, I don't have people measure based on their projected one rep max 100%. I actually have a measure based on usually 93%. It's actually 93% for guys and like 95% for women because of neural efficiency and testosterone and whatnot. So based on 93% of your one rep max, how complicated this turns into is it has to get more complicated. So it's fine. You take 93% of your one rep max. On the first week, you do 85% of that for as many reps as you can get. You know how many reps most people get? Six. No. 12. On the first trip, I guess that's right. The second trip they're gonna get like six or seven. Well yeah, because they're gonna go off the high one. We'll get there next. So week one, you have to get at least five. Most of the time almost everybody gets nine or more. Rarely do I see 13. Some women I had a girl that got 13 I think yesterday. That's a bunch of reps. And it shows you the difference between men and women. And so you're gonna do 65% by five, 75% by five, 85% by five plus. And then, because I don't think that's quite enough volume, you're gonna do one drop set after that at 75% by AMRAP. But it's only gonna be like an RP88.5 which means you're gonna leave two reps in the tank. You need to be able to rack it safely. Now this is important because we'll talk about this in a future episode, is it's the first time that I've had any programming that includes anything with RPE, right? Now we talk about RPE some, even with our linear and linear progressional, a lot of times I'll have my clients report back to me what RPE they thought it was. So I tell you the weight. So you're on LP, you're squatting to 45 for three sets of five. Tell me what the RPE was in the last set. Give me the video and then tell me the RP. And they'll give me the video and they'll say it was RP nine. Nope, it was RP seven and a half. And the reason we do that is because I wanna get on the same page so that by the time they get here, they can actually start to do some things based on RPE. I want to call out to attention. The only thing they're doing based on RPE, right, are the secondary movements or the drop sets and the supplemental lifts that don't matter quite as much. I would never have them do this on the main lift. I have to have this weight set. So here's picture weight, get as many reps as you can. You gotta do it until you absolutely can't do anymore. By the way, the first time I do this on the first week, they do it and I go, ooh, you had one or two more reps, why didn't you do it? And I go, I don't know, it felt like it was heavy. Well, you had one more. Okay, so 65% by five, 75% by five, 85% by five plus. And then a drop set at 75% for RPE 8.5 or so leave two reps in the tank. That's done on the bench press, the squat, the press and the deadlift in each respective day. Rep scheme's the same every day. Okay, let's go ahead and stick with the main lift before I move to the supplemental lifts. Week two, the percentages are 70% by three, 80% by three, 90% by three plus. They get at least three reps. Most of the time people get about seven here. Seven's a pretty good over under number for how many they get on the 90% plus week. And then they're gonna do a drop set at 77 and a half percent at AMRAP. And they're gonna give me a RPE 8.5. Again, they're gonna post that video and they're gonna say, don't get to pick their weight. They've gotta do it for reps based on AMRAP. So they're gonna post that video and they're gonna say, okay, that was at RPE 8.5. And I'm gonna go, no, that was an RPE 7 or is it RPE 10 or whatever, right? So we gotta get lined up, that's fine. So that's week two, 70% by three, 80% by three, 90% by three plus. And then a drop set at 77 and a half. And then the last week is 75% by five, 85% by three, 95% by one plus. So what they're gonna do is they're gonna do their 95% of 93% of their max for as many reps as they can do. And most of the time they get three or four here, standard. And then they're gonna do a drop set at 80% by AMRAP. AMRAP as many reps as possible. RPE 8.5, leaving two reps in the tank, right? So that's the first cycle through. The next time they do it, so they'll usually then do a D-load week afterwards, the way the original 5.3.1 is written is, I think they do 50%, 60% and 70% by five, I think somewhere in that ballpark, which is too low. Yeah, so I like to keep the intensity a little higher. I tend to have a lower volume on D-load, but weight is still fairly heavy, so there's not D-training. So they'll do a D-load, which is I don't even write into my program because I'll base it on how the program has gone. Give them a one week D-load, and then we'll do it again. Only this time, they're gonna use actually 100% of their max. So they're gonna use their actual best max. And then they're gonna try to hit their 65, 75, 85 by five plus with 100% of their max. And that's gonna not be 12 reps anymore. That's gonna be like eight reps. Right. Seven reps. Somewhere there. Sometimes it's five. Sometimes they just get their five. And then the next week again, 70, 80, 90 by three plus. And they'll get that usually for four or five. And then their last week, they have to go for a new max. They're gonna work up and make jumps up and try to hit a new 100, 101, 102, 103% new max on the program. So that's the main lift. Right. And the rest of these lists are structured just like we talked about in our four days split episode. We're gonna use the same sort of accessory, or supplement selections and accessory selections that we talked about in there. That's right. So on the first day, day one, which is bench press, after you're done bench pressing, you will move on to a press supplemental movement, which for me is usually gonna be a press lockout of some sort. And the one I've got right now written on the program is the press lockout one inch above the head. I think the forehead is fine. I think the eyeballs are fine, depending on where people are missing weight or where they struggle. I think two inches above the head's fine. Right. This is where you gotta have a good coach, but a press lockout, a press partial, which will end up being heavier than you could actually press. Once you get good at it, in the beginning it's harder than what you can press. By the way, first of all times you do it, you're like, holy shit, I can't even do 90%. A lot of people get dizzy on those. They do. But the nice thing is, is that you don't drop the weight on your pants. It's on their pins. By the way, if you've got a rack, you can't do press lockouts in inside the rack, because the rack is too short. Rogue and Titan and these companies make safety pins, safety catches, spotter arms. Safety spotter arms that will go outside your rack. I think if you put them on, you can press outside your rack. It's not a problem. So you're gonna bench press, you're gonna do press lockouts, and I basically have you work up heavier each week. You're gonna work up to like a three rep max week one, and then maybe like a singles on week two, then an all-time one rep max on week three, somewhere in there. Maybe three sets of three week one, top set of three week two, then one rep max week. Something like, it's heavy. They're heavy, because this is the first time as they've been coming out of this stuff where all they've basically done is lots of sets of five and triples. They haven't, usually when they do five, three, one, this is gonna be the first time they ever actually max. They do singles and doubles and triples here. So, then they're gonna finish up with a couple accessory slots on week day one. Barbell row and curls typically is what we have them do. Right, standing in curls and then a barbell row. The way I teach the barbell row, I prefer a pronated grip instead of a supinated. And the reason I prefer a pronated grip, even though it uses a little less muscle mass, is because especially if you strap up on these things, which a lot of people do, you're really risking a bicep tear. And I don't want a supinated grip bicep tear on barbell row. If I'm gonna get a bicep tear, it's because I was deadlifted in 800 pounds, not because I'm rowing 225 with straps attached. So, that's day one. So day one bench press, press lockouts, barbell row curls. Day two, after you do your squat work, you're gonna go to a deadlift supplemental movement, which is usually low rack pulls, like three inches below the knee. Tibial tuberosity, just below that, right? And same thing, it's gonna be heavy, like five rep max week one, three rep max week two, one rep max week three, something like that. Something in that ballpark. And then, you're often done. You can do one or two movements of accessory work. A lot of times, if somebody's got access to a heavy prowler or heavy sled, I'll have them do that heavy, like not like super hard conditioning. So when I say heavy prowler, what I mean is this, you go out with a prowler, you put two plates on, 45 pound plates, which is not that heavy, and you run with it for 150 feet, and you flip it around, and you walk back into your garage, you get two more plates, and you wheel them out on a whatever, on a car or a furniture dolly. You put two more plates on, you run with it for 100, 150 feet again, and then you go back and get two more 45 pound plates, and you put it on again, and you do it again, and you just keep going until you get the prowler as heavy as you can and push. Concentric only doesn't beat you up, it's a good accessory movement, and you certainly get some conditioning out of the thing. I think it's fine. I also think it's just fine to walk out of the gym after the rack pull. Right, you respect the rack pull. Yeah, man, they're hard, especially when you haven't done them before. That's another one that, the first time you do a rack pull, you're like, aren't these supposed to be easier than a full range of motion deadlift? And the reason they're not, even though they are a partial, and they eventually will get there, is because you're in no man's land when it comes to a tightness sort of thing. When I bend over at the bottom of a deadlift, I feel compressed like a spring. Yeah. And when I put the bar at my mid shin and I try to pull like a rack pull, I don't have any tightness. I've developed no sort of efficiency, no neuromuscular efficiency at all, no motor pattern awareness there to be able to like make it start. What I found with rack pulls is that you often have to pull for five full seconds of strain before the bar ever breaks off the pins. You have to compress all your vertebrae. She's hard, cartilage in your knees, everything has to get tight. Yeah, before it comes up. That's right. So that's day two. Day three is the upper body day. Again, it'll be the press day. So the same press percentage as we talked about. I can follow that with a bench press supplemental movement. There are lots of those to do. Something like a close grip bench press would work just fine. A floor press would be okay too. I like a close grip bench press for a couple sets of five, couple sets of three somewhere in there, pretty heavy. And then put on a sling shot. I don't think we've talked about a sling shot yet. I like a sling shot to overload the bench press. Yeah, so there are a couple of versions of that out, but sling shot and I certainly don't get paid anything for you guys buying a sling shot. I like the red sling shot. I think there's four different versions of heavy. Get a smaller one than anything. Get one size smaller than you need. Yeah, on a sling shot because I need you to actually be able to overload the bench press. If you put the sling shot on, you can't bench press anymore in the sling shot than you actually bench press. It defeats the purpose of the sling shot, right? You bench press 300 pounds. You should be able to sling shot a triple with 315 for sure. So that elastic gets tight across your chest as you lower the bar down and it helps you out of the bottom. You're really working your lockout. Yeah, so working your lockout, which is why I like doing a close grip bench press first because I still want that full range of motion sort of stuff. I get the tricep overload. And then I usually do a couple of slots there like chins and dips. Again, not entirely necessary, but I like some chins and dips for some additional work. And then last day, the deadlift day, we deadlift first and rather than do the drop set like we do with everybody else because that full range of motion deadlifts, especially remember you just did a RPE10 deadlift, 85% for five plus. So what you've done is you've just done a 12 rep, 13 rep, RPE10 brutal deadlift set. What you don't wanna do is strip a little weight off the bar and do another AMRAP set for 8.5. Right. And so we used to have that in there and we've changed it. This is, I think this is the only program right now that I program an RDL for a couple of down sets because it just doesn't beat you up that bad. So you take the bar, you put it up in the rack, you know, just above your knees, you stand up with it from the top, you step back just a little bit and you ride it down, maintaining perfect back extension. You let your hamstrings get nice and tight, you push your butt back, you keep the bar directly on your legs and the bar goes down to about mid-shin and then you stand back up with it and you just do that top end and you do a couple sets there. And then we're gonna do our supplemental lift, the pause squat or it could be a box squat or it could be a pin squat or it could be a tempo squat, any of those things are fine right now. I've got a pause squat with like a two-second pause. So you're gonna lower smooth and under control just below parallel. You're gonna hold it for a two-second count and then you're gonna fire up, right? And this helps you control the weight in the bottom but it also gives you some overload stress. It makes the stress a little higher with a little less weight on the bar and we do stuff like three sets of three and keep getting heavier each week on the pause squat. And then we could end the same way we did the other day which is like with a heavy prowler or sled or tire flips or something if we want to or just walk out after the pause squat. After you do heavy deadlifts, RDLs and pause squats, that's plenty, you don't have to do anything else. Yeah, it is. Yeah, so that's the way I do the five through one and then I basically repeat the same thing the next time through I just make sure you go based on 100% of your max and the third week we're gonna go for new maxes and based on how the supplemental lifts went I might change the supplemental lift. I might make the rack lockout or the press lockout a little higher. I might go from low rack pulls to just below the knee rack pulls. Let me go a little heavier. I might go from close grip bench to paused benches on the pins, one inch off the chest. I might do a floor press. I might do a board press. There's tons of different variants you could do there for the squat. If I started with the pause squat, I might switch to a box squat or tempo squat or a pin squat or anything like that. So basically it's a simple month long, three weeks of loading followed by one week de-loads. So that's the other thing that a five through one usually will introduce for the first time is the concept of a de-load week where if you think about this, the first three weeks of the program allows some amount of fatigue to build up and then gives your body a break after the third week and you have a de-load week. Now the question is, is a de-load week just a walk out of the gym and go eat? All you can eat Chinese buffets and sleep as much as you can. And the answer is those parts are good and you should do those on other weeks. But we're also gonna train and we're gonna train fairly heavy. We're just gonna do a lot less volume. That's how we set a five through one. You'll know, as you do it here, it's a ton of fun. It's predictable because we can use these max calculators and you kind of know where you're going. You're like, oh man, this is three plus. Man, I better hit six. If I don't hit six, I'm not gonna get my PR here in two weeks. It's a lot of fun. You get to learn quite a bit about your body and what you can do when you run out this five through one program. Yeah, I like it. It's fun. It's a good place. Again, I rarely use it more than two times in a row. I have a guy that just came on really good lifter. I won't call him out by name. He's been on five through one for two and a half years. I don't know how he did it. It's a standard. That's crazy. So you're far, he's very advanced, very, very strong guy. And so I said it's time to move on. So he signed up with us and we are putting him on a little more advanced programming. So I'll usually run five through one through twice. And from there, a lot of times I'll stay on the four day split and I'll put somebody on instead of a one month program. I'll put somebody on a two month or nine week sort of simple block program that's the same sort of split that just has a longer inverse relationship with intensity and volume. So it starts with a little more volume in the beginning and a little less intensity. And by the end, it's a whole bunch of intensity and a whole lot less volume. And you just start taking it so that they're making progress or hitting water at maxes or peaking. At this point, once you get to five through one, almost every program you do is gonna peak you at the end. At the end of the program, you're gonna do a meet or you're gonna do a mock meet at your house or a meet week at your house and you're gonna hit PRs. And so that's the other thing that occurs with five through one is from this point forward, if you're a strength lifter, if you're a strength athlete, every program from five through one on is gonna peak your lifting to try to hit new one rep maxes or new three rep maxes or something really heavy at the end of the thing. That's it. Thanks.