Program Review: 5/3/1 Building the Monolith



After 6 grueling weeks, I have finished my run of Building the Monolith, so I thought that here would be a good place to discuss my experience with this program. First up, an outline of the program:

What is Building the Monolith?

Building the Monolith (BtM) is a 5/3/1 program that is exclusively featured on Jim Wendler's blog (as in, it is not found in any of the four 5/3/1 books). It contains three days per week of lifting, and each day is very much full-body. As the program is freely available to the public, I have no qualms with talking about the specific ins and outs of the program, as I would with something contained in one of the books. So, without further ado, a brief outline of each of the three lifting days.

Day 1

Squat: 5x5/3/1 (i.e. working up in weight with sets of 5 reps, until you reach the maximum weight for that day, then performing 5 sets of 5 reps with that weight)
Overhead Press: 5s PRO (i.e. 3 sets of 5 reps, each increasing in weight), followed by an all-out set of as many reps as possible at the first set's weight.
Pull-ups: 100 total reps (done in whatever set/rep scheme you wish)
Face Pulls/Band Pull-aparts: 100 total reps
Dips: 100-200 total reps

This day is, in my experience, by far the hardest of the three lifting days. I tackled it in the following method:
Giant set the first three lifts, without any rest other than changing weights. This meant I went Press-Squat-Pull-ups-Press-Squat-Pull-ups etc. This continued until I ran out of pressing sets, at which point I replaced them with the dips. I generally finished the squats and pull-ups at around the same time, at which point the workout simply became dips with band pull-aparts between sets. Since the pull-aparts are the "easy" part of this workout, I didn't worry too much if I went over the 100 rep count. I generally did around 150 of them, as I found doing sets of 10 between sets of dips made my shoulders feel happier.

The squatting isn't too bad, nor is the pressing, but the pull-ups and dips are brutal (particularly the dips). I really feel like the pull-ups and dips did a lot to increase size/strength in my upper body, and I went from doing 14 sets of 7 dips (with a mini-set of 2 at the end to make the rep count), to doing a set of 10 followed by 10 sets of 9 reps. As for dips, I stuck with doing sets of 10 reps throughout the entire program, and simply added 2 sets each week (so I started with 100 total reps, and finished with 200).

This day also took the longest, on average, with workouts generally lasting between 75-90 minutes

Also, the AMRAP set on pressing went very well, with my numbers on this set each week being the following:

Week 1: 49kg for 15 reps
Week 2: 45.5kg for 20 reps
Week 3: 50kg for 17 reps
Week 4: 44kg for 22 reps
Week 5: 40.5kg for 26 reps
Week 6: 47.5kg for 20 reps

Now, the fact that I dialed my training maxes back after the first 3-week cycle makes comparisons between weeks a little tricky, but The difference between week 1 and week 3 (heavier weight, more reps), as well as week 2 and week 6 (same weight, more reps) makes it quite obvious that my high-rep strength did quite well in this program.

Overall, a brutal but effective day.

Day 2

Deadlift: 3x5/3/1 (i.e. similar to the squat in Day 1, but with only 3 sets of 5 instead of 5)

Incline Bench: 5x5/3/1

Rows: 5 sets of 10-15 reps

Biceps curls: 100 total reps

This day was probably the easiest of the three, and there's really not a whole lot to say about it. The only tricky thing I found with this day is that my gym set-up makes it difficult/impossible for me to super-set deadlifts with incline bench presses, so my method of tackling this day was as follows:
Super-set the incline benching with rows (i.e. bench-row-bench-row etc.) until I ran out of rows, at which point I replaced the rows with sets of 10 curls. I then did the bench/curl super-set until I completed the bench sets, at which point it became a deadlift/curl super-set, until I finished all 100 curls. After this, it just became a boring old deadlift session, with nothing in-between.

This inability to super-set the deadlifts from the beginning meant that I always felt like I wasted a bit of time between deadlift sets, so I generally did something like lateral raises (without counting reps) between sets. Day 2 workouts generally lasted between 50-60 minutes, but I feel like with a better set-up, I could consistently nail this workout in under 45 minutes. Ah well, not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things.

As for the weights used for the rows, I started with 5 sets of 10 with a 30kg dumbbell, and added a rep to each set every week, so I ended with 5 sets of 15. For curls, I never really bothered tracking it too much, but generally started with 10kg dumbbells, then switched to a lighter weight if it became too difficult. Of all the things to worry about in this world, the amount of weight which with I do curls is very far down on my list.

Overall, a nice "semi-rest" in the week.

Day 3

Squat: 5s PRO, followed by a Widowmaker set (a set of 20 reps)

Overhead Press: Many sets of 5 reps (the number of sets varies week-by-week, ranging from 10 to 15)

Weighted Pull-up: 5 sets of 5 reps

Shrugs: 100 total reps

Face Pulls/Band Pull-aparts: 100 total reps

This day fell somewhere between the first two days for me, in terms of difficulty. Before commencing BtM, I had heard horror stories about the Widowmaker set on this day, but I never found it to be as challenging as people made it out to be. Sure, it was tough, but not enough to make this day more difficult than Day 1. I guess different people have different strengths.

This one was a little different in terms of how I approached the work, primarily due to me wanting to push myself with the weighted pull-ups. This meant that doing a regular giant-set meant that I would gas out pretty quickly on the weighted pull-ups, so my approach was something like this:
Press-Squat-Weighted Pull-up-Shrug-Face Pull, and repeat two times without the weighted pull-ups (as in, I'd only have the pull-ups for one in three "cycles", if that makes sense). I did this until I finished up squats (other than the Widowmaker set), at which point the cycle would continue as normal, but without squats. I saved the Widowmaker set for last, as many people (including Jim Wendler) have warned that the Widowmaker set tends to make all subsequent work suck. Maybe heeding this warning is why I found this day okay.

For the pull-ups, I started with 20kg; a weight that was challenging, but doable even on a "bad" day. Each week, I would increase the weight by 1kg, so by week 6 I was doing 5 sets of 5 with 25kg added weight. Combine this with my weight gain (which I will talk about more below) and I'm pretty happy with how these progressed.

Overall, a fun day, and a good end to each week.

Conditioning

I pretty much followed Jim's advice on conditioning for this program, so I'll give a direct quote to his recommendations:

"Conditioning or cardio is mandatory – 3-4 times/week.  Hills cannot be done but Prowler is OK. Bike and weight vest walking is preferred.  Remember your goal isn’t to become Cardio Queen and if you get fat when you train like this, it’s because you simply aren’t working hard enough to support the calories.

Sample conditioning:
  • Tuesday – Prowler: 10, 40 yard sprints/walks with 50% of bodyweight. 60-90 seconds rest in between the sprints/walks
  • Thursday – 84 pound weight vest, 2 mile walk
  • Saturday – Air Dyne Bike, 10 miles (this day is CRUCIAL to get rid of soreness)"
 As I don't have a Prowler or Airdyne Bike, I stuck mostly to walking with a weights vest, and doing 30-ish minutes on the elliptical machine (in my opinion, the most unfairly vilified and under-rated piece of conditioning equipment by lifters (probably because it's a lot harder than it looks)). I did this about 3-6 times per week. I'd recommend doing something similar; this is not the time to be doing sprints or other intense conditioning, just stick with a lot of easy conditioning.

Diet

Image result for lots of eggs
An image of a supermarket worker preparing the eggs for delivery to my house.
 Simply put, I ate quite a lot of food during this program. I generally ate around a dozen eggs per day, and got a lot of protein in my other meals. I also ate a lot of rice, and lots of fruit/vegetables. People get all wet and bothered by Jim's suggestion of eating 1.5lbs of meat and 12 eggs per day on this program, but it really starts to make sense when you actually do the program, and realise just *how much* work is involved.

Results

I haven't actually tested my maxes for a while, so can't really comment on any strength gains, other than the AMRAP overhead press sets.

Where this program definitely excelled, however, is in size. I started BtM at 80.5kg, and finished at 82kg. So yeah, even with eating like it's my job, I only put on 1.5kg in six weeks. However, this 1.5kg seems to have gone a long way in making me look better. In particular, my shoulders, arms, and upper back all look bigger, which has admittedly had the unfortunate side-effect of making my shirts uncomfortable around the shoulders... Ah well, not exactly the worst problem to have.

Overall, I'm really happy with my run of BtM, and maybe one day I'll revisit it.

Next Steps

I've made the decision that the remainder of 2018, as well as the entirety of 2019, will be devoted to hypertrophy (i.e. building muscle), with the aim of reaching 90kg by the end of next year. For this reason, all my programming will put absolute strength on the back-burner, and focus on Gains™. Since Jim recently made a post about a new Boring But Big program (Boring But Big: Beefcake Training), it seems like a great opportunity to do something other than sets of 5, as well as continue bulking up.

Link to the original BtM post: https://jimwendler.com/blogs/jimwendler-com/101078918-building-the-monolith-5-3-1-for-size


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