The Wendler 531 Strategy

something i started doing lately is start using windler 531 again something i haven't used in years and i this is the strategy i'm using it for is that if you need to show somebody how they're not training hard so if you can you ever use 531 i'm not sure so it's a jim windler who used to be with the lead fts west side you do basically, you get a pretty good idea of what the one rep max is. So let's say your one rep max is 100 kilos. And then you multiply that by 85-90% that you're training with. So let's say it's 100 kilos, you're going to train, you're going to base your maxes off of that, or your training numbers off of 90. You do a 3x5, you do 65% of that for 5, 75% of that for 5, 85% of that, and you do an AMRAP. Then the next session, you go to 70, 80, 90. So you go to 70 by 3, 80 by 3, 90 by AMRAP. And on the third round, you do a 5, 3, 1. It's basically 75% 5, 85% 3, and 1 for an AMRAP. That is a really good strategy to get people to understand how much they're slacking. Because those first two sets, because they're submaximal to affiliate, but then they do that AMRAP. If they do, let's say you estimate their 100, they think it's at 100 and they do that say 75 on that first amrap but they get like 12 reps it's like okay we can actually now if they get close proximity to failures we'll show them a you've been stopping way way too little reps in reserve and we can now calculate out what we think the true max is we can change the numbers for the five by three by three um and then in that maybe they hit like eight reps okay realistically at that point you should be only getting five so i can redo that number five three one when you hit that one you should only be able to get one or two so it's a really good way in three weeks to actually find out what their true rep max is and say look you know how you've been you can see here where you hit 12 reps on that normally you've been hitting like six you can see you've not actually been lifting anywhere close to where you need to be so do you understand you're stronger than you think you are like yeah okay now what have you learned when you do that three by five you should be getting about five when you do that three by three you should be getting like getting you know three to five and on that last one you should be only getting one maybe two tops and they're like oh shit i have been slacking a little bit but it's nice because it gives them a couple of easy sets and then they get this one like ball busting set it's a really good training tool i use a lot on coaches when i think they're they're sandbagging shit i give them that yeah no that's fair enough well you you do you do say that that coaches think they train harder than they think they do um or i have coaches that do train hard but like when i get a new coach i have no idea what their what their experiences are and how they learn how to do something and like i said i really fussy about technique and how we do things and I want to find what the best I want to fit the exercise to you not the other way around So if I see that it looks like they trying to fit themselves to the exercise instead of the other way around, like, okay, we need to, we need to figure out how to do this.