I'm most of the way through my second week of doing this program. Freakin love it! No messing around, just warm up, do your money lift, do a couple supporting exercises and you're out!
Also I love the built in ego check with the weight calculation, injury prevention is becoming very important for me as I age.
I'm pairing this with an attempted 5 hours of LSD cardio per week. I'm in between seasons right now, but shortly mountain biking will take the place of the LSD on a spin bike. MTB is more interval type training and 5 hours a week is a EASY target for me.
I'm hoping this allows me to stay strong during the summer and put some mass back on after my skinny-ing during the winter with snowboarding and too much bodyweight stuff. :D
I've been meaning to check out the 5/3/1 program...I use a 5X5 approach a lot (4 warmup sets and 1 set with a top weight) but find as I get older I seem to tweak my neck and shoulders a bit after a month or two, even if I keep very strict form.
How are your joints feeling on this program...any issues or is everything good?
So far, so good. I think listening to your body and upping the weights just enough to progress but not enough to aggravate previous injuries is the key. More and more (40's are closer than 20's) I care about long term health instead of arbitrary numbers in the gym.
I always did 5/4/3/2/1. Slight variation, but worked well.