Meso Powerlifting Corner

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm at the gym and just getting this from memory, but I believe the sets on 5 week are 65% x5, 75% x5 and 85% x5+. 3 week is 70% x3, 80% x3 and 90% x3+. 5/3/1 week is 75% x5, 85% x3 and 95% x1+. All percentages are of your 90% training max.

To answer your question warm-ups are up to you, the ramp up sets are considered work sets and no, you don't drop the weight to rep out the last set.
 
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm at the gym and just getting this from memory, but I believe the sets on 5 week are 65% x5, 75% x5 and 85% x5+. 3 week is 70% x3, 80% x3 and 90% x3+. 5/3/1 week is 75% x5, 85% x3 and 95% x1+. All percentages are of your 90% training max.

To answer your question warm-ups are up to you, the ramp up sets are considered work sets and no, you don't drop the weight to rep out the last set.
^^^^^^ This is spot on
 
That's the vanilla template. I think for bodybuilding purposes you'd like the boring, but big template better. It has you doing 5x10 on another day in the week. For example you'd do your 5/3/1 bench and after that you'd do 5x10 overhead press. There's also a pyramid template where you ramp back down and also rep out the last set. Like on 3 week you'd do 70% x3, 80% x3, 90% x3+, 80% x3 and then 70% x3+. Much more volume that way. You really should check out Beyond 5/3/1.
 
If you're the reading type I'd also recommended reading some of the books behind these programs. Starting Strength, Practical Programming, Beyond 5/3/1, Squat Every Day, The RTS Manual, plenty more I'm not thinking of at the moment. Read the books, run the programs as described for a few months. It'll help down the road when you'll need to do your own programming. If you're like me and don't have the extra money for hiring a coach anyway, plus I like the challenge and trial and error of figuring out what works for me.

Anyway, most of those books are pretty cheap, especially on kindle. I don't think I paid much more than $5 for most.

That program review Jay linked is a great resource, too. Definitely worth a read.

1st off thanks @jaymaximus for putting this together it is going to be sweet and lots of good information already.

@Perrin Aybara you beat me to it with the books but I will repeat for importance sake.
Books to buy are:
- Starting strength 3rd edition
- Beyond 5/3/1
- Squat every day
- Powerlifting the complete guide (this book is especially good for beginners that want to learn about meets and the sport more itself so they don't go into a competition with shorts and a Tshirt and not the beautiful singlet that compliments your junk)
- Supple leopard (for indirect help to powerlifting as you want you body to remain pain free)
- The RTS manual (more advanced powerlifters)
- Mens Health & Fitness guide to stretching (not a must have at all but if you stumble around when stretching and don't know what to do it is good)

A few tips I will throw in here that are usually not covered:
- Stretch, after every workout stretch stretch stretch. The importance of this will not be seen in the first weeks or months but as you become more flexible you will be able to sit in a more advantageous position for deadlifts and you are teaching your mind to have a better kenisthetic sense which will help when knowing you've broken parallel during a squat. It also helps to prevent injury which will keep you training more consistent.
-Raw or equipped? Well I recommend raw for any beginner for sure, equipped lifters are generally the ones who have gone beyond what is possible with their training and want to pick up even more.
- Implementing gear, no not drugs but training equipment I.e knee wraps, slingshots, bands, chains, boards. When should you use these? Well for the first 6 months building your strength you do not need to be pulling out special tricks with consistency you will grow, once you plateau I would implement some overload training. Even though you raw squat a session every second week with wraps on doing doubles about what's your normal raw max will help kick you through plateaus, same with bench and the slingshot. Breaking a plateau on deadlifts is harder but deficit deadlifting a at 75% and heavy rack pulls focusing on pinching your scapula will help. You can use bands for speed training on deadlifts too. Chains are great when your problem is sticking 3-4 inches out of the hole but not so good if your problem is actually getting out of the hole.

If you have any questions on brands of equipment or something on wraps, belts, shoes, sleeves, compression bands, slingshots, really any training equipment I've bought basically everything and tried all the good brands so I'd be happy to give you a personal thought on each one.
 
1st off thanks @jaymaximus for putting this together it is going to be sweet and lots of good information already.

@Perrin Aybara you beat me to it with the books but I will repeat for importance sake.
Books to buy are:
- Starting strength 3rd edition
- Beyond 5/3/1
- Squat every day
- Powerlifting the complete guide (this book is especially good for beginners that want to learn about meets and the sport more itself so they don't go into a competition with shorts and a Tshirt and not the beautiful singlet that compliments your junk)
- Supple leopard (for indirect help to powerlifting as you want you body to remain pain free)
- The RTS manual (more advanced powerlifters)
- Mens Health & Fitness guide to stretching (not a must have at all but if you stumble around when stretching and don't know what to do it is good)

A few tips I will throw in here that are usually not covered:
- Stretch, after every workout stretch stretch stretch. The importance of this will not be seen in the first weeks or months but as you become more flexible you will be able to sit in a more advantageous position for deadlifts and you are teaching your mind to have a better kenisthetic sense which will help when knowing you've broken parallel during a squat. It also helps to prevent injury which will keep you training more consistent.
-Raw or equipped? Well I recommend raw for any beginner for sure, equipped lifters are generally the ones who have gone beyond what is possible with their training and want to pick up even more.
- Implementing gear, no not drugs but training equipment I.e knee wraps, slingshots, bands, chains, boards. When should you use these? Well for the first 6 months building your strength you do not need to be pulling out special tricks with consistency you will grow, once you plateau I would implement some overload training. Even though you raw squat a session every second week with wraps on doing doubles about what's your normal raw max will help kick you through plateaus, same with bench and the slingshot. Breaking a plateau on deadlifts is harder but deficit deadlifting a at 75% and heavy rack pulls focusing on pinching your scapula will help. You can use bands for speed training on deadlifts too. Chains are great when your problem is sticking 3-4 inches out of the hole but not so good if your problem is actually getting out of the hole.

If you have any questions on brands of equipment or something on wraps, belts, shoes, sleeves, compression bands, slingshots, really any training equipment I've bought basically everything and tried all the good brands so I'd be happy to give you a personal thought on each one.

I've wanted Becoming A Supple Leopard for awhile, but it's not available on kindle and the book was expensive last I checked.

Something that helped me a ton with getting great depth on squat was the Limber 11 routine by Joe DeFranco. It's free online and really helps a lot.
 
I've wanted Becoming A Supple Leopard for awhile, but it's not available on kindle and the book was expensive last I checked.

Something that helped me a ton with getting great depth on squat was the Limber 11 routine by Joe DeFranco. It's free online and really helps a lot.

I'm a paperback kinda guys and also like having the books in a stack as it makes me reread them but yes supple leopard is around 40 bucks. I'm a very flexible guy now but had to work on it a lot, did yoga and my girlfriend is a dancer so she's really mean if I'm lazy stretching but it's incredible how much my lifts progressed when I became more flexible.
 
I'm a paperback kinda guys and also like having the books in a stack as it makes me reread them but yes supple leopard is around 40 bucks. I'm a very flexible guy now but had to work on it a lot, did yoga and my girlfriend is a dancer so she's really mean if I'm lazy stretching but it's incredible how much my lifts progressed when I became more flexible.

I am a book hoarder, I have literally hundreds and hundreds of books. I'm just more of a used book store kind of guy and the training manuals are much cheaper on kindle.

What do you recommend on shoulder mobility for low bar squat? I'm forced to go quite a bit wider than shoulder width and I end up with wrists way back and just fingers on the bar. I never have elbow pain with this like I do trying to get my wrists straight, but I feel I sacrifice some upper body tightness.
 
Grab a pvc pipe and do shoulder dislocation exercise where you just put it up and over your body down to your butt then back up and over to your hips, you've probably seen it before. Then lay on your side with your bottom arm infront of you at a 90' angle and push down to the floor with the opposite hand. (Look at that bald spot!)
 

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Grab a pvc pipe and do shoulder dislocation exercise where you just put it up and over your body down to your butt then back up and over to your hips, you've probably seen it before. Then lay on your side with your bottom arm infront of you at a 90' angle and push down to the floor with the opposite hand. (Look at that bald spot!)

Thanks, I do the dislocation thing with bands, but I'll try it with the pipe next time and try the other one at home.

I've never been extremely faithful with doing stretches like I should, but meet time helps with that. I'm thinking the last few weeks before the meet I'll turn my fourth day from an accessory day to a mostly recovery/stretching/very light accessory day.
 
1st off thanks @jaymaximus for putting this together it is going to be sweet and lots of good information already.

@Perrin Aybara you beat me to it with the books but I will repeat for importance sake.
Books to buy are:
- Starting strength 3rd edition
- Beyond 5/3/1
- Squat every day
- Powerlifting the complete guide (this book is especially good for beginners that want to learn about meets and the sport more itself so they don't go into a competition with shorts and a Tshirt and not the beautiful singlet that compliments your junk)
- Supple leopard (for indirect help to powerlifting as you want you body to remain pain free)
- The RTS manual (more advanced powerlifters)
- Mens Health & Fitness guide to stretching (not a must have at all but if you stumble around when stretching and don't know what to do it is good)

A few tips I will throw in here that are usually not covered:
- Stretch, after every workout stretch stretch stretch. The importance of this will not be seen in the first weeks or months but as you become more flexible you will be able to sit in a more advantageous position for deadlifts and you are teaching your mind to have a better kenisthetic sense which will help when knowing you've broken parallel during a squat. It also helps to prevent injury which will keep you training more consistent.
-Raw or equipped? Well I recommend raw for any beginner for sure, equipped lifters are generally the ones who have gone beyond what is possible with their training and want to pick up even more.
- Implementing gear, no not drugs but training equipment I.e knee wraps, slingshots, bands, chains, boards. When should you use these? Well for the first 6 months building your strength you do not need to be pulling out special tricks with consistency you will grow, once you plateau I would implement some overload training. Even though you raw squat a session every second week with wraps on doing doubles about what's your normal raw max will help kick you through plateaus, same with bench and the slingshot. Breaking a plateau on deadlifts is harder but deficit deadlifting a at 75% and heavy rack pulls focusing on pinching your scapula will help. You can use bands for speed training on deadlifts too. Chains are great when your problem is sticking 3-4 inches out of the hole but not so good if your problem is actually getting out of the hole.

If you have any questions on brands of equipment or something on wraps, belts, shoes, sleeves, compression bands, slingshots, really any training equipment I've bought basically everything and tried all the good brands so I'd be happy to give you a personal thought on each one.

Actually I would like to see what brands you recommend for wraps
 
Actually I would like to see what brands you recommend for wraps

Inzer grip knee wraps or SBD knee wraps nothing compares to them. As for wrist wraps mark bells gansta raps would rank number 2 and SBD training wraps number 1 (their competition wraps are not good at all for training and way way to stiff for anything sub 500 pound bench) I've also tried inzer wrist wraps and 3+ discount brand ones for reference.
 
Also, everyone is different, but when I ran 5/3/1 I only did the deload every two or three waves. Everything three weeks seems like major overkill.
Agree completely. The deload week every cycle really leaves you chomping at the bit. I do 2 days on 1 day off which works killer cause I've always needed a day after back and a day after legs( heavy days). And you can move through your weeks faster.
 
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm at the gym and just getting this from memory, but I believe the sets on 5 week are 65% x5, 75% x5 and 85% x5+. 3 week is 70% x3, 80% x3 and 90% x3+. 5/3/1 week is 75% x5, 85% x3 and 95% x1+. All percentages are of your 90% training max.

To answer your question warm-ups are up to you, the ramp up sets are considered work sets and no, you don't drop the weight to rep out the last set.
There are templates with drop sets x 2 with last being a rep out 5+.
 
There are templates with drop sets x 2 with last being a rep out 5+.

There's tons of templates in the book. I did the one for powerlifting, it had you switch the 3 and 5 weeks and you didn't rep out the 5 week and did singles after the plus set on the other week. I set mine up like an upper/lower spilt and did the boring, but big sets at 5x5 rather than 5x10 with deadlift after squat and vice versa and overhead press after bench and vice versa rather than doing 5x5 squats right after the 5/3/1 sets.

Honestly, 5/3/1 was great for my deadlift, but the frequency was too low for squat and bench for me. I prefer squatting and benching 3x/weekly.
 
I've seen that one. There's a Wendler app for Android as well. It's only for the vanilla template, but if you had your template memorized you could still work with it
Nice , I've been doing the 3 month challenge for the last 7weeks. I'm digging it having a volume day and heavy day split with accessories thrown in.
 

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