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I'm almost at the end of dan john's 40 day program and I'm going to do 5/3/1 next.

Press day
A1) press 5/3/1
A2) chin-ups 3xalmost failure
B1) incline bench press 5x10
B2) underhand row 5x10
(vanity work)
C1) Push Press 2x5
C2) EZ-curls 2x8-10
C3) lateral raises 2x10-12

Deadlift day
A) deadlift 5/3/1
B) power cleans 3x5
C) front squats or back squats 10x5 or 5x10
D1) front lever progression 5xmax
D2) calf raises 5x10

Bench day
A1) incline bench press 5/3/1
A2) chin-ups or pull-ups 3xalmost failure
B1) press 5x10
B2) underhand row 5x10
(vanity work)
C1) Push Press 2x5
C2) EZ-curls 2x8-10
C3) rear delt raises 2x10-12

Squat day
A) front squats 5/3/1
B) power snatch 3x5
C) deadlifts 5x10 or 10x5
D1) front lever progressions
D2) calf raises 5x10

This is my plan, but I've got some questions.

1. Bench day:
I'm not going to do regular bench presses, but either the incline bench or push press.
Can I do the push press as my second upper body strength exercise or should I stick to incline press?
(If i could do the push press as my strength move, I'm going to swap the vanity work push press with incline presses)

2. Deadlift day/Squat day:
I'm going to do oly moves on these days (wendler approves this somewhere), but should I do them before or after the main strength move?
I like doing explosive moves after my main strength exercise, so I think I'll stick to that.

3. Deadlift day:
Should I do front squats or back squats as a complementary exercise? I like doing front squats, but I hate doing them for higher reps.
But I've never really tried back squats, (cause I think they might make my butt even bigger haha).
And if I pick front squats, is it acceptable to do 10x5 instead of 5x10?

4. Squat day:
I'm doing deadlifts as an accessory exercise for squats, but is it acceptable to do 10x5 instead of 5x10?
I'm afraid higher reps might ruin my back.

Thanks in advance!

Wouter,

I'm starting to think the best way to answer programming questions is: do the program you've written, mark up your journal, and figure out if you're making progress. As long as you're making progress, keep going. When you stall, review your journal and ask questions. Then you can say, "I've been doing x-y-z for a single cycle of 5/3/1 and I've found that..." Makes it much easier to answer.

But with that said, one of your questions jumped out at me:

4. Squat day. My trainer recommended squat accessories on deadlift day and vice versa. So deadlifts on squat day are fine. As for 5x10 or 10x5, either will work, so long as you keep with it for a few weeks before switching. Everything works, but nothing works forever.

The rest of it is outside of my experience, can't help with those, except for repeating what I said before, just get under the bar, keep your journal, and ask more questions when you can tell us what is resulting from your program.

I'd choose a better row than that underhand nonsense, and I don't see the point in two sets of push presses after you've done like ten sets of pressing.

doing 10 x 5 instead of 5 x 10 is fine but I would do the 5 x 10 instead. Trust in Wendler.

The accessory work should be that, an accessory to the main lift. For instance i can deadlift over 200 kgs and i do my RDL sets of 10 @ 85kgs at the moment. I work on perfect form with a nice stretch and keep the time between sets pretty short, around 90 seconds. When i did 5 x 10 normal deadlifts i never went over 105kgs i think, but the same again, perfect reps with short time between sets. It took me a while to figure it out as i used to bust my ass during my accessory work, but now i keep the weights light and get the reps in.

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Wendler recommends doing power cleans before deadlifts, and if you hate doing high rep front squats, that's a good reason for doing them. They suck for a reason.

Jim Wendler and Power cleans -

http://www.jimwendler.com/2011/09/power-cleans-and-531/

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What if the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about?

Doesn't Wendler suggest only 2 or 3 accessories per day?

On the DLs, 10x5 won't hurt you in any way that 5x10 would. Why would it be any better?

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

Yes. Wendler only recommends 2-3 accessory exercises a day. Me thinks perhaps Wout hasn't read up on the 531 program.

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Thanks TimD.

Why not just do one of the accessory programs Wendler outlines in the 531 manual? This programming is suffering from a huge amount of overreach, which I think is a really common problem people of our knowledge level suffer from. 531 is a framework for strength: pick one other goal that you want to work on and work on that exclusively. Jamming 80,000 exercises into 37 hour long workouts is just going to waste your time.

When you did Dan John's 40 day program, did you actually do it, or did you do it plus a bunch of other things too?

_________________
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that's just god when he's drunk

I haven't read Wendler's book yet (still waiting on delivery) but I've read a heap on his blog and also elitefts. He is pretty adamant about the 2-3 assistance exercises and they should be "effort free". And I swear I've read him say "don't make the mistake of majoring in the minors" at least a hundred times.

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Yeah, you guys are right.
I'll drop the "vanity work", but I'm going to keep the push presses, I like doing them.
I'll put them after my main strength exercise.
Also 5x10 front squats and deadlifts, I'll trust wendler on this one (I got a pretty injury-prone lower back and I've never done that high volume on dls).

Press day
A1) press 5/3/1
A2) chin-ups 3xalmost failure
B) Push press 2-3x5
C1) incline bench press 5x10
C2) underhand row 5x10

Deadlift day
A) power cleans 3x5
B) deadlift 5/3/1
C) front squats 5x10
D1) front lever progression 5xmax
D2) calf raises 5x10

Bench day
A1) incline bench press 5/3/1
A2) chin-ups or pull-ups 3xalmost failure
B) push press 2-3x5
C1) press 5x10
C2) underhand row 5x10

Squat day
A) power snatch 3x5
B) front squats 5/3/1
C) deadlifts 5x10
D1) front lever progressions
D2) calf raises 5x10

And I added 2x5 front squats to dan johns 40day program.

EDIT: I have got the book, but I read this article.

I have been doing the program from that article for probably 5 months and it seems pretty good, but I had to drop the curls because it gave me a really bad case of forearmitus overtranius.

Wendler says you can do whatever you like for your assistance as long as it doesn't detract from your performance on the main lifts.

I do a ton of assistance work with loads of isolation stuff for delts, arms etc., and I'm doing 5/3/1. I would still be doing 5/3/1 if was just doing bench, rows and chins on my bench day. The amount of assistance isn't important (providing you're sufficiently training your upper back), it's just whether or not it's eating into your recovery to hinder your progress on your main lifts.

That's the beauty of 5/3/1. You can do pretty much anything as long as you keep to a couple of principles. It's all in the book.

Do you by any chance curl your wrists during the motion, especially near the top? That will produce some strange effects.

But you're only doing it on your bench day right?

_________________
What if the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about?