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Originally Posted by
Callador
I agree that 5/3/1 more fits into the "advanced" category of programming as explained in PPST2. People can use it as a beginner too, but you might not advance as quickly as you could if you did SS and something like the TM instead for the beginner and intermediate stages.
I think it would be more fun to compare something that is more of an odd duck than 5/3/1, but people get excellent results off it. Let's look at Westside's system, or in a more generic sense, conjugate tranining. Here you have people using it from beginner to advanced and even elite. You work up to a daily max, once for a bench press type movement, and the other for a squat/dl type movement. You always go "balls to the walls", but you rotate exercises instead of intensity. Since you are using a daily max, I imagine there is some auto-regulation in there. If you aren't feeling hot, your daily max might be lower.
This system also has 2 speed days, where you use between 50-60% of your 1RM on a squat/dl and bench type movements. This is sometimes periodized a little bit, since some systems do 1 week at 50%, the next at 55%, and the last at 60%. You then repeat that again in the next cycle.
So how does a system, where you change the exercises and not the intensity, play into PPST2? I am only up to about page 60 reading it, so I don't know. I figured it would be worth asking, and it could be something fun to talk about.