Introduction
Most people know Jim Wendler in the powerlifting community, if you don’t know who Jim Wendler is he’s the creator and author of the 5/3/1 Training Program.
I used Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 program before, and surprisingly achieved some great results without being too taxed and burnt out!! The basis of 5/3/1 is as follows and all percentages are calculated off your ‘Training Max’ which is 90% of your true one rep max (1RM):
Jim Wendler 5/3/1 Percentages Table
| Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 |
| 1×5=65% 1×5=75% 1×5+=85% | 1×3=70% 1×3=80% 1×3+=90% | 1×5=75% 1×3=85% 1×1+=95% | Deload 1×5=40$ 1×5=50% 1×5=60% |
This program has been used by hundreds of thousands of athletes and lifters of all ages and abilities. Jim played football and graduated from the University of Arizona where he was a three-time letter winner. He went on to squat 1000 pounds in competition and is an accomplished Elite Lifter with a 2,375 pound total.
He has coached high school athletes, collegiate athletes, trained general populations and spoken globally on the topics of strength training, conditioning, fat-loss, performance and program design.
However, his greatest success is his ability to simplify the complexities of strength training into templates so that anyone can apply them and achieve their goals.
Jim has over years developed a lot of variations of his original 5/3/1 program which can be purchased from Amazon following this link. Jim released the 5/3/1 first and second edition program’s, however, it received quite a lot of criticism for lack of volume, lack of variation and being too short of a program to create any real strength adaptation. The 5/3/1 beginners program I review is based on this first book Jim released.
He then released the ‘Beyond 5/3/1’ book which provided A LOT of solutions to the criticisms offering many principles and variations such as; First Set Last, Boring But Big (one of the variation’s I reviewed), Joker Sets, Rule of Ten, 531 SRV and so much more. I highly advise buying this book seen below.
Jim also released the 5/3/1 Forever book which I haven’t personally read, however, I’ve been told it’s worth a read! In addition, Jim released the 5/3/1 for Powerlifting which is where the Wendler Powerlifting excel spreadsheet I reviewed is taken from.
Wendler 5/3/1 Beginner Program
Wendler 5/3/1 Boring But Big
Wendler 3/5/1 Powerlifting Program
f you enjoyed this review I highly appreciate any donation’s as I do all my reviews for free and for the joy of helping others. Good Luck with the program and lifting. Kind Regards, Johnny.
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