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The original was posted on /r/weightroom by /u/Richard_VT on 2023-09-05 16:07:25.

TLDR

Amalgamating the 2 programs has worked fairly well, pushing me more than what I was doing before. Some of the conditioning made me want to mentally bail, something I haven’t experienced in years., and I think my training desperately needed that discomfort.

Main Lifts:

Movement Coffinworm Week 1 Coffinworm Week 16
Ring Pull-Up 3 Reps @ 153kg/337lb 3 Reps @ 158kg/348lb
Box Squat 4 Reps @ 119kg/262lb 5 Reps @ 140kg/308lb
Larsen Press 5 Reps @ 94kg/207lb 5 Reps @ 104kg/229lb
Front Box Squat 5 Reps @ 106kg/234lb 5 Reps @ 126kg/278lb

I use total weight for the ring pull-up, because that’s the only way %s work for such a movement. As my BW increased… the additional weight on the vest/belt decreased. Total weight is all that matters. So that 158kg/348lb was 91kg/200lb BW & 67kg/148lb additional weight.

Introduction

For the past 16 weeks, I’ve amalgamated 5/3/1: Coffinworm and the Pillars programming track of Functional Bodybuilding (FBB). Both are paid products (Coffinworm is in Wendler’s latest book, FBB is a subscription service). While I shouldn’t give away everything, I can give you an idea of what my recent training looked like.

“Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.”

Any Wheel of Time fans will know the above quote. If memory serves, Robert Jordan got it from an old Japanese saying. It is easier to give up, or die, than it is to do what duty requires you to do. In the books, al’Lan Mandragoran, and later Rand al’Thor, say this before undertaking life-threatening tasks. This is my desk. Yes, that is the WoT collector’s set, WoT desktop wallpaper, 4 Japanese inspired renditions of Mat, Perrin, Rand and Lan, wood engraved map of WoT, and 2 sculptures of the Kyūbi from Naruto and Levi from AoT. I have a Kyūbi inspired arm tattoo, 9 tails wrapping around my upper arm. If the stars align, I want to get a Rand al’Thor rib tattoo. Safe to say, I’m a bit of an avid anime/fantasy series fan.

Now this will sound rather pretentious, but I think one can apply that quote to everyday life. Whether it’s school, work, relationships, nutrition, training, etc. It’s easy to simply go into the gym and get some movement in, it’s harder to truly push yourself, and dance on that threshold of breaking, either mentally and/or physically.

Prior to this training pivot, I was doing a modified Coffinworm, with some accessory lifts and a little bit of conditioning. I was seeing decent results for pull-ups, but I never had that nervous, butterflies type feeling when heading into the gym. Training was fun. And that’s not a bad thing, but I think I needed some… adversity. Something challenging. Something I sort of dreaded. Enter FBB.

Functional Bodybuilding

FBB is the brainchild of former CrossFit Games athlete Marcus Filly. I did CrossFit back in 2014, and he was one of the big names at the time. He seemed nice in interviews, relatively intelligent, and had a pretty appealing physique to me. Fast-forward 9 years, and he’s got a pretty successful training program, that I finally decided to try. To not sound like a shill, I’ll have a section at the end of the things I don’t particularly like about FBB. For now, let me break down FBB very broadly.

Programming Tracks

FBB is broken up into 5 tracks.

  1. Minimalist - No equipment, 4 X 60 minute sessions a week. Basic strength work and conditioning.
  2. Pillars - 4 X 60 minute sessions a week, typically split up into 2 upper and 2 lower. Basic strength work and conditioning. No Olympic lifting, kipping etc.
  3. Pump Condition - 5 X 75-90 minute sessions a week. More volume than Pillars, bit more focus on hypertrophy. No Olympic lifting, kipping etc.
  4. Pump Lift - 5 X 75-90 minute sessions a week. Same as Pump Condition, just replaces conditioning with more hypertrophy work. No Olympic lifting, kipping etc.
  5. Perform - 5 X 90 minute sessions a week. This will be for your aspiring CrossFit athlete, or just someone who likes Olympic lifting as well. Olympic lifting, handstand push-ups, kipping, muscle-ups etc.

I went with Pillars, as it seemed to gel quite nicely with 5/3/1.

Typical Pillars Workout Breakdown

  1. Strength Intensity - This is either your more conventional strength work (something like E2MOM: 3X8 cyclist back squat, with a drop set at the end), or it’s more of a circuit, with less rest (something like 3 rounds of max reps weighted pull-ups, rest 30s, 12-15 narrow grip dumbbell bench press, rest 30s, 30s max rep deficit push-ups, rest 90s, back to movement 1). Everything in this section is tempo-based, so those cyclist back squats get a little rough when you’re descending over 3s.
  2. Strength Balance - Usually a couplet or triplet of accessory lifts. Something like every 90s, 12-16 reps of incline chest supported DB elbowing row & alternating DB cross body curls. Like the above, this is mostly tempo-based too. A little humbling when you pick a weight and get crushed, because the reps have a long tempo.
  3. Conditioning - Usually in the 5-15 minute realm. It could be something as simple as EMOM 10: 30s hollow hold, 30s Echo Bike. Or something slightly more complex, like for time: 15-12-9-6-3-6-9-12-15 of front squats, Pendlay rows, and 5 box jumps after each round. Pretty much no tempo here, as that’s reserved for the strength/hypertrophy part of the training.

What I don’t like about FBB

FBB (Pillars at least), is almost more like an accessory program, vs a main program, if top-end strength is the goal. The strength work at times seemed to be less rest, sometimes more circuit style, than your more conventional, do a working set every 3-5 minutes, working up to a heavy weight. I hope I’m not misrepresenting what Mythicalstrength likes to say, please correct me if I’m wrong and I’ll edit this part, but it’s usually some variation of resting a lot between sets is borderline lazy. I don’t quite agree with that… assuming strength is the main goal. I couldn’t push the weights I’m doing on ring pull-ups, if I was supersetting it with other stuff, and having less rest, more fatigue etc. So 5/3/1 gives me your more typical long rest between heavy sets, FBB gives me that less rest, more supersets/circuit type of training. The latter kills me a bit, because I’m just not used to it. I personally find it harder than longer rest, heavy work, which is usually quite… easy. Do your 5 reps, rest 3 minutes, rinse and repeat. Not finish one movement, rest 15-30s, start another movement. Hence my decision to amalgamate 5/3/1 and FBB.

The other thing I don’t particularly care for, is things like GHD sit-ups show up from time to time. This might incense some CFers out there, but that movement is just… not great, for me at least. I’ll immediately sub it out for hanging leg raises or some other hard core movement.

Finally, because people want variety, sometimes I feel movements aren’t done frequently enough. You can go 2 months between something like Nordic curls appearing in a workout. For me, I need to do that movement somewhat regularly to keep it in check, or the next time I do it, I feel dead the next day or two. I just do Nordic curls on Sundays to prevent this happening.

5/3/1

Not too much to remark on here, 5/3/1 is pretty well known at this point, even the more unusual variants like Coffinworm. I’ve picked perhaps a somewhat strange set of main lifts, but it works for me.

My TM increases are as follows:

  • 1kg on ring pull-ups
  • 2kg on Larsen Press
  • 4kg on both squats

Perhaps a bit conservative on weight jumps, but I like to think of training long-term. It all adds up quite quickly, in the grand scheme of things.

Amalgamating 5/3/1 & FBB

At first I tried just combining them straight. Start the session with 5/3/1. Then go into FBB strength intensity, then balance, then conditioning. Did that on Monday/Tuesday & Thursday/Friday, did active recovery on Wednesday and Saturday, and some KoT stuff on Sunday. While this combination worked… I started feeling a bit rundown. So I instead took the conditioning out of Monday/Tuesday & Thursday/Friday, and replaced the active recovery on Wednesday/Saturday with that. At first, this seemed like too much, where are the rest days/active recovery days, but if guys like GZCL can train 1500 days in a row, at an altitude of 10,361ft… I can handle training everyday, especially as Coffinworm has a built in mini-deload every 3 weeks. During that mini-deload week, I scrapped everything except 5/3/1, as that’s the anchor of my training.

After 16 weeks, lower body days are definitely harder than upper body days. Doing 5/3/1 box squats, into FBB banded sumo deadlifts, into a couplet of barbell hip thrusts and goblet curtsy drop lunges, just knocked me quite a bit. At the beginning of each week, I’d simply look at the week of FBB, and then put the workouts on the appropriate days. I.e if the main lifts of lower body FBB that week were sumo deadlifts and back squats, I’d pair sumo deadlifts with box squats, and back squats with front box s…

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