Adapting Wendlers 5-3-1 to a Wider Audience

Jun 22, 2022

Jim Wendler's 5-3-1 program has been frequently lauded as a great way to gain strength. It's simple, to the point and probably works extremely well for an older athlete ( high school or beyond) who is comfortable lifting weights in the 1-3 rep range. However in many sports performance programs young athletes are not as technically sound and lifts in the 1-3 rep range might be ill advised. A compromise might be to take the concepts of   Wendler's workout ( starting light, finishing with a max rep set) and simply increase the reps. The purist will argue that this is no longer 5-3-1 but, the intelligent strength and conditioning coach will see that the concept remains exactly the same.

 

In the Wendler 5-3-1 workout you use 90% of your max to determine your starting weight and then use the percentages indicated below:

 

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Set 1

65%x5

70%x3

75%x5

40%x5

Set 2

75%x5

80%x3

85%x3

50%x5

Set 3

85%x5+

90%x3+

95%x1+

60%x5

In other words for a 300 bench you would base percentages off of 270. However, I find this method confusing.  You are essentially using  a percentage of a percentage. A simpler method would be to use 100% of the 1 RM and adjust the percentages down by 10%. The weights used would be the same.

For example in week 1 the heavy set is 85% of 90% or 76 % of the 1 RM. Simply dropping 10% keeps the math far simpler as shown below.

 

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Set 1

55x5

60x3

65X5

60x5x3

Set 2

65x5

70x3

75X3

 

Set 3

75%x5+

80X3+

85x1+

 

As I said previously I am a big fan of the concept but much of our audience consists of younger athletes or older adults. Neither group lends itself well to either triples or singles. Because of this we would use the same concept but, we have simply modified the rep range from 5-3-1 to 8-6-4 as shown below.

 

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Set 1

50x8

55x6

60X4

60x5x3

Set 2

60x8

65x6

70X4

 

Set 3

70%x8+

75X6+

80x4+

 

Give this a try with your athletes and shoot us some feedback. The nice part is that the slightly higher rep range means we can do this with exercises like split squats or 1 leg straight leg deadlifts as well as bench press. The exception would be Olympic lifts as I would not recommend eight reps in the hang clean.