Five/Three/One - 531 Workouts 4+

Midway through my first cycle, and loving this app already. Great visual UI, easy to configure and laser-focused on 5/3/1 principles. Took me a moment, but I appreciate that it’s structured so that you have to make adjustments each cycle - which makes me think about what I want to do, and allows for an amazing degree of flexibility in programming.

While it is technically free, I purchased all add-ons and think that most users should consider doing so as well. It’s a small price to pay in order to fully take advantage of the app.

Only two suggestions I’d make:

1.) For Boring But Big, allow users to flip the supplemental lifts. In other words, give me the option to do my 5x10 deadlifts after the squat main work sets, rather than only allowing deadlift/deadlift and squat/squat. Per Jim Wendler, this is an allowable modification- and very welcome for an older lifter like me!

2.) Allow the ability to tick off accessory lifts at any time, rather than the current linear flow where you have to complete all lifts of a particular exercise before moving on to the next one. To keep workouts shorter, I’ll often knock out an accessory lift set during the main lift rest periods - but I have to mentally keep track of what I’ve done because the app doesn’t let me check off later sets until all earlier sets have been completed.

Otherwise, I love this app for 5/3/1 tracking and highly recommend it.

There are a lot of spreadsheets and apps floating around for tracking a 5/3/1 workout plan, but this one is by far the best. Easy to use, not confusing like many other apps.

Be aware that in order to select custom accessory work (which is basically a must in my opinion) you need to pay a small fee, but that’s a totally fair price to pay on my opinion.

All that said, there’s one feature I’d love to see. I’d love to see a way to track weight in the accessory work so I can easily see how much I lifted last time and track how my accessory lifts progress over time. Right now I just write the weight in the notes, but I’d love a dedicated way to input it, and I’d love a display on the accessory lifts that states how much weight you used last time you did that lift,

This app is worth it if you are looking for something to quickly generate modifications to workout routines. Its free to start. It costs about 10$ to get the needed add ons for the assistance workouts (which id recommend). The app’s strength is its ability to quickly generate sets and reps based on basic 531 patterns. The interface is easy to use and the timer works well.

The only quirk is that you have to do the sets in order. This makes sense for the program…bit if you are in a crowded gym sometimes its hard to do all in order.

All that said this gets 5 stars because it is a major time saver. Great job by developers.

Fwiw I like this app in combination w strong. Strong allows for more customization but takes a bit longer to program. Admittedly though 531 is stil great here for those workouts as it moves you out of doing the same set/rep range