Product Review: Training Three Days a Week

By The Doorman

For www.EliteFTS.com

This website – EliteFTS.com – has something for everyone when you really think about it. I’m not just talking about the products sold here, either. What I’m getting at is the unparalleled guidance this site has offered for so many years in helping us reach whatever athletic goals we’ve set for ourselves.

If you’ve followed this site long enough, chances are you’ve chosen a “mentor” from among EFS’ various world-class Q&A staff members. By mentor, I mean someone who’s written an article or a post that’s applied to you and piqued your interest. Maybe you’ve tried a program this Q&A member has suggested, and it’s worked for you, so you follow his or her log on a regular basis and ask appropriate questions when there’s something you don’t understand.

I’ve gone through several EFS “mentors” over the years, and I’ve come away with valuable information from each of them. Now, when I say I’ve “gone through” them, this doesn’t mean what it typically means from impatient training neophytes – that I spent a week doing what they said to do, didn’t gain two-hundred immediate pounds on my total, then gave up and moved on to the next name on the list of training logs. I’ve tried dozens of different suggestions – giving them all the requisite time and patience – then incorporated what worked into my training and discarded what didn’t.

To clarify this point even further, discarding something doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t work. It means it simply doesn’t work for you. One of the most important things you can learn on this site is the fact that every athlete is different. There are some universal truths in training, but there are, quite possibly, even more variables.

“There’s only one way to train, dude. Get jacked and get strong.”

That said, one of my constants, since discovering this site way back in the early part of the twenty-first century, has always been Jim Wendler. Reading Wendler’s material – his articles, Q&A posts and training logs – is what first interested me in powerlifting, because in Jim, I saw someone with whom I believed I had a great deal in common. Like me, Jim played Division I football in college, reaching the metaphorical top of the athletic mountain for those of us with high-quality work ethics and limited natural athletic ability. Unlike me, however, Jim, by the point I’d discovered his work, had established his post-collegiate athletic goal – an elite powerlifting total – and was in the process of working for it.  

As both a former starting fullback for the University of Arizona and an elite powerlifter, Wendler has credibility in multiple disciplines at a level that most strength and conditioning professionals haven’t achieved in even one pursuit. Beyond that, however, it’s the no-nonsense pragmatism of Jim’s advice that tends to shine through in his written material on this site.

His new manual, Training Three Days a Week, is no exception.

At a young 33 – if you’ve ever met Wendler, you’ll know what I mean by this - Jim is now a homeowner, a father, and a partner in a successful, demanding business. Currently retired from competitive powerlifting, his training priorities have changed – at least in terms of what, exactly, he’s training for – but his desire to be “cock strong” hasn’t waned a bit. This situation left him, as it has assuredly left a lot of us over the years, in the unenviable position of internally debating which aspects of our own training we’re willing to compromise in order to live a “normal” life – one in which we’re able to balance all the things we have going on while still training as hard as we ever have.

In Training Three Days a Week, Wendler presents a strong, logical and, most importantly, gym-tested case for no compromise at all. “I needed more time with business,” he said, “I needed more time with my family, and this was almost a forced decision, but what I found out was, not only did I recover better, but I got a lot stronger. I had my best raw squat I’ve ever had in my life doing this.”

Three Days consists of ten comprehensive training templates interspersed with Jim’s commentary, suggestions and unique brand of humor – the front cover is a tribute to Black Flag, if you’re wondering what I mean. These templates are among the most diverse and practical programs you’ll find in any book ever written about training. Wendler has a unique talent – cultivated, perhaps, by several years manning the phones at Elite Fitness Systems – for anticipating readers’ questions and answering them, in preemptory fashion, within the scope of the material he’s presenting.

Simply put, Wendler knows what the reader wants, and in Three Days, he delivers. Each template serves a dual purpose. When you’re trying to figure out which one to start with, Wendler explains two things: what each one does, training-wise – powerlifting, bodybuilding or general strength-building – and how to schedule each template within the framework of an average busy week. He also explains how to keep things flexible – in terms of scheduling – without compromising the effectiveness of each template. Jim’s hard-won scheduling advice alone is worth the price of this manual.

There are templates for one and two-day weeks, as well as programs for people who are averse to using the traditional Westside max effort, dynamic effort and repetition effort methods. There are also a couple of top-heavy programs for readers who’d like to get all the “hard stuff” completed on the same day and cruise – relatively speaking, of course - through the rest of the week with two assistance-only sessions. The variations here are endless.

For many, the highlight of Three Days will be the outline of Wendler’s “5/3/1 Method” for the raw lifter. Wendler has been using this 5/3/1 scheme with success for some time now, and in Three Days, he explains exactly how to implement the system in your own three day template. Included are exact percentages and a variety of methods of waving them throughout each suggested cycle. Wendler also explains, in detail, how to customize the 5/3/1 method to achieve whatever results you’re after – including a comprehensive list of assistance exercises and methods of programming them.

This may sound like I’m overstating the case, but Training Three Days a Week is a must-buy for just about everyone who lifts weights. If you’re an athlete, you’ll learn a terrific way to optimize both your exercise selection and your time. If you’re a trainer, this will show you how to get your clients strong faster than ever before. If you’re a coach, the various training splits Wendler presents in Three Days are invaluable information your team can’t afford to do without.

This is the one you’ve been waiting for.

Get your 3 days a week manual here