5/3/1/ and gymnastics

[Robert Jersey]

So just curious if anyone has attempted a hybrid program with Wendlers 5/3/1 and some gymnastic programming. I'm thinking of picking up foundation one and am curious if anyone can offer some tips on cross programming. I Have seen great results by using chomping lifts and some simple birthright progression but I would like to taker it to the next level thanks for any help. Also sorry for any grammar errors I'm typing this all on a Droid the spell church is going crazy.

[Daniel Burnham]

Yea. I did 5/3/1 hybrid when I first started training. In the end I dropped it for foundation and have had better results. I still squat occasionally to maintain but don't feel the need to press at.

5/3/1 is good for lifting. Combining gymnastics and lifting will give you subpar results. Best decision I made was to drop the upper body stuff for gymnastic exercises. I also follow leg strength found in h1 now because I don't necessarily need a huge squat and would rather have more mobility.

[Aaron Brown]

I'm doing it now, until R1, M1, and H2 come out, then I will drop the bench and press, and reduce the deadlift and squat frequency to a level sufficient for maintenance, by which time I will likely have reached my 'barbell' goals anyway.

 

Wendler's suggested 'body-weight accessory' template goes like this: 

 

Monday: press w/ dips and chins

Tues: squat w/ glute ham raise and leg raises

Thurs: bench w/ chins and pushups

Fri: deadlift w/ single leg squat and situps

 

Changing it to the 7 progressions in the foundation series is straightforward:

 

Monday: press w/ front lever (FL), straddle planche (sPL), hollowback press (HBP), and rope climb (RC) 

Tues: squat w/ manna (MN), side lever (SL), and single leg squat (SLS) 

Thurs: bench w/ FL, sPL, HBP, RC

Fri: deadlift w/ MN, SL, and SLS

 

Both Foundation and 5/3/1 run on a 4 week cycle, with the 4th week as a deload week. If you are going to run this 'hybrid program' it is absolutely essential that the deload weeks are synced and you don't skip over them!

 

I don't do AMRAP sets on the 5s and 1s week, only the 3s week. So it's like  typically 5/5or6/1 instead of 5/3/1. It's too much stress otherwise (learned by experience!), particularly on the 1s week. You may find something else works better for you, depending on your recovery capacity.

 

Also, consider getting Handstand One (H1); I do it on Tues and Fri. There is a lot of shoulder mobility/stability work in H1, so you don't need to do face-pulls ad nauseum for rotator cuff health like if you were just doing barbell work. Plus, handstands are awesome, and who wouldn't want to learn how to do one?

 

Anyway, at some point you will have to choose what is more important to you and specialize. That being said, the Foundation series has a lot to offer, and is definitely worth a shot if you are even the least bit curious about Gymnastic Strength Training™.

 

A cautionary aside: your barbell strength won't have nearly as much carryover to gymnastics as you hope (at least it didn't for me). Where Coach says you should start and where you think you should start may be two completely different places, and remember who the expert is (hint: it's probably not you)!

 

[Blairbob]

 Yes, I have talked about it before on the forum. I ran 531 as assistance to my gymnastics based programming from Jan 2011 to August 2011. There were a few sidebacks due to a few back injuries ( possibly because I had about a 6 month layoff from barbell squats and switched to a low bar placement during them and possibly because of having to coach a lot of kids and I tweaked it saving one of their little butts ).

 

 I did it without the assistance work as I was already doing lots of pullups, rope climbs, dips, muscle-ups, pistols, plyo work and tumbling. I also didn't want to have long lifting sessions as I was juggling coaching, training at night after coaching and some other activities.

I found I didn't get anything out of doing weighted dips and pullups more than 1x/wk of each. I was doing a SSC for FSP's and FBE's then though I probably should have ran a linear progression for FBE's but was wary due to the fact I was coming off a few shoulder injuries in the months prior.

Progress is slow on 531, especially if you don't do the assistance work which I can't stand. It's nice that it doesn't take a lot of time to finish as I did it on 2 days splitting backsquat/OHP and DL/BP and eventually adding FS/GoodMornings in there. I was not able to really do any Olympic Lifting at the Uni gym because my coaching schedule conflicted with WL classes on the platforms and I didn't really venture out to any nearby places to lift. I was able to do DB CJ or Sn but they were more for conditioning than Power or Strength.

 

As well the 531 and gymnastics workouts were split apart since the Uni gym and gymnastics hall were about a mile, mile and half away. Quite often I would lift in the morning or early afternoon and do gymnastics after 830PM though occasionally if I missed lifting earlier I would do it after gymnastics and a PWO shake with some carbs.

If you want to get a bit of lifting in or don't have a lot of time to lift, it's fun and easy to program. You are not gonna get crazy results quickly on it but I wanted to get back into lifting and try 531 regardless so I was ok with the fact that gains would be slow. It also is not as demanding as a program like TM, SS, or Intense lifting programs like Smolov or Sheiko or the less difficult Russian Squat programs from 1974 and 1976.

[Alessandro Mainente]

I tried 5-3-1 for a long time to increase the pullup strength and it works. i've increased the over weight of 30 kg in one year.

Unfortunately use the idea of "more difficult leverage" widening the arms is better to prepare the body for future elements. no weight can substitute the large grip pattern and muscle activation since is the biomechanic that changes.

[Redwan Haque]

Yea. I did 5/3/1 hybrid when I first started training. In the end I dropped it for foundation and have had better results. I still squat occasionally to maintain but don't feel the need to press at.

5/3/1 is good for lifting. Combining gymnastics and lifting will give you subpar results. Best decision I made was to drop the upper body stuff for gymnastic exercises. I also follow leg strength found in h1 now because I don't necessarily need a huge squat and would rather have more mobility.

Wait... H1 has leg strength?? Or did you mean F1?

[Kyle Clayton]

I would drop the upper body lifts and deadlift if you're combining with F1/H1. It should be fine to keep the squat and 1 olympic lift at a time (either clean or snatch). I'm doing this and so far my strength is increasing across the board. Lower body mobility has also increased a lot--I don't find that squatting once a week hampers that at all, at least not at my current level. Jim from Beast Skills does some pretty impressive feats of gymnastic strength in addition to having a very respectable squat and olympic total for his size.

[Robert Jersey]

I have been thinking of dropping the the upper body movements and just staying with deadlift and squats. I can always use a weight vest and dip belt to give myself that extra umpf. Plus being in the military it makes more since to train like an athlete than a powelifter. I'll be trying out foundation one while deployed and try to post an update on how i have progressed. Thanks for the info.

[Douglas Wadle]

I don't think combining programming is a great idea. The whole point of 5-3-1, straight from Wendler's mouth, was to be simple. so combining it and monkeying with it just complicates it and makes it more likely to be ineffective.  I've changed to Foundation and H1 for most of my strength training.  However, I still maintain 1 day a week of more traditional complex movement weight training.  I do deadlift, squat, weighted dips, weighted pullups, box jumps.  This allows me some specificity training for my sports i'm involved in.  Those are the areas I feel I still benefit from, and don't get in the way of foundation.  On the contrary, I've found they are helpful and synergize with some of the GST.  I just do max strength on these, and would in no way recommend using hypertrophy programming if you want to improve in gymnastics.  Maybe as I get more advanced with GST I'll be able to give that up, but at my current level I feel I am losing strength if I don't supplement to some degree.  I still see benefit, not regression, by combining them in this low level fashion.  I work a lot on mobility in the evening after I weight lift or do endurance sports.  If anywhere, that is where these other activities may slow down your other GST training, as noted by Dan above.

[Blairbob]

Unless you are doing wide stance or low bar or single/double ply squats, I think it's a big misnomer that your mobility will suffer by doing squats.

 

Yes, some (Olympic style) Weightlifters don't have great lower body mobility. Some of these are Master's lifters or recreational lifters starting out and some will have poor shoulder mobility as well. That's life.

 

That being said, even after stupid squat sessions, I still have good mobility the next day. It's just that my legs are a bit stiff and weak, especially if you do direct hamstring work like Good Mornings or RDL's.

 

Seriously, there is nothing like holding the bottom of a squat under load for 5-10s to work on your flexibility in the OHS, FS, or BS.

I guess you could do it in a wide stance squat or sumo squat, but you could also do cossack switching pistols on a Bosu too in a mankini.

[Alexander Kornishev]

I have been messing with  5-3-1 for couple of years with very good results as part of my CF training. It is a great program but combining it with F1 is probably a bad idea. It all depends how far you want to advance in your gymnastics skills. Squatting 400 lb DL 500lb and benching 300 lb would make my joints so sore and muscles so tight that I had to drop eventually the whole program in favor of F1. 

But if you really want to stick to both I found that deviding F1 in 2 as per 4 days schedule and combining 2nd half with some Lifts is possible.  And then you will have one day dedicated to lifts only. 1st half of F1 has to be done separately  too as it loads upper body too much. Also you might consider longer cycle if you need more rest. Beware of rapid lower body mass development that will make your @$$ much heavier for any gymnastics activities.

Hope that helps.

[Tyler Leonard]

I did a modified 5/3/1 split using foundation ideas.

 

Basically found my max I could lift and used the 5 rep max ideology from Foundation series. It gave me some huge strength gains but like a few people said I dropped it for purely Foundational work