The case for conjugate training and the older lifter does not come easily for me. Although conjugate is in my roots, I have been training 5/3/1 for the better part of the past decade. I kind of feel like I'm cheating on Wenlder. The truth is, 5/3/1 was an and is an awesome way to train. There's different training for different seasons and for me, this is one of them.
By referring to a season, I am not talking about athletics or competing. I am talking about the season of my life. Being 52, having lifted hard since the age of 15, and competing on a very high level for over a decade has me in a unique situation.
I have a lot of miles on this body. But I can still push training to the limit. That's why I had to walk away from AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible) a guiding principle of 5/3/1. I was not able to recover from the combination of intensity and volume. As a result, I switched to capping my sets and incrementally adding weight each cycle, Jim's 5's PRO, but that was even too much for me to recover from.
When I capped my rep maxes I really missed pushing myself, but I kept going. Not long ago however Wendler, Rhodes, and I did a Table Talk with Dave Tate. He mentioned how he and his doctor were discussing how doing so many warmup reps and volume on squats was aggravating his hip as it was pretty much bone on bone.
In other words, we may only have so many reps in us. I don't want to accumulate all of that mileage doing reps with lighter weight. I have already done that and built my base. My passion is training for strength. In addition, training for singles is safer in my opinion. You can harness a lot of focus on one rep versus trying to squeeze out a 10th rep when your body is completely fatigued.
Here's the last and greatest reason for the switch, singles are fun. That's the whole reason I have always loved training. I just want to put as much weight on the bar as I can and go.
