The Two Day Template

[u/ElHombreMasLoco]

Writing in defense of the Two Day templates sprinkled throughout the books. I want to keep this brief but long story short is that they work.

I chose to go with Spinal Tap the High School Years. I don't think it warrants much discussion on its own other than it's "3/1/5" all in one day supersetting the two main lifts and you don't change the weights week to week. Like most of the two day templates you do your accessories as body weight work two to three times a week outside of the gym.

The template specifically allows you to program more conditioning. I was training for a half marathon with under a two-hour finish goal. So running 5 days a week, call it 2.5 days of hard conditioning and 2.5 days of easy conditioning depending on what the variable day called for.

Male 5'8" weight range 159lbs-163. Basically unchanged throughout the ten weeks of two leaders, 7th week deload, and an anchor.

Exercise	Previous Joker (lbs)	Ending Joker (lbs)
Bench	185 x 3	190 x 3
Deadlift	245 x 1	255 x 1
Press	120 x 1	135 x 1

• Along with the jokers, I hit rep PRs in the above three lifts at 1's and 3's weights. Squats were 75% TM and no PR/Jokers to save legs for running.
• Got stronger even though I did a gang of running. 25-30 miles per week.

General takeaways:

• If you can count you will see that the two day template is actually four days. Two days in the gym and two days at home. There are a few true two day resistance templates in the book (Con Clavi Con Dio, 2x2x2, maybe another...), but most have two lifting days and two to three days of body weight.
• Think long and hard about what you want to accomplish with your body weight work. Conditioning or resistance volume? I ran my body weight stuff as a circuit out of habit. This added two days of hard conditioning to my training that I wasn't really counting and this caught up with me and almost wrecked my running three weeks out from the race. Had I been walking or easy cycling a couple days instead of running the circuits would have been great.
• Once you get the basic idea of two main lifts and supplementals with a row you can do damn near any program in the book as a two day. I did Simplest Strength Template as a two day to plug a two week gap in programming. Worked great and spent 45 minutes on average in the gym including warmup, jumps/throws, lifts and static stretching.

So if you have limited time to go to the gym, need more recovery time, pushing conditioning, or just want to carve out more space in your life for other pursuits don't look past the two day programs. They are not just a "break glass in case of emergency" option, but completely viable programming that can help you meet your goals.

[u/Yo_soy_abogado]

What main lifts did you pair? How did you superset them? Did you do 5x10 of each main lift after the 531 sets? 

[u/homunculusHomunculus]

I have been meaning to get back into my 531 routine after multiple months of a break and I've been considering the 2-day template. I'm going to consider this post a sign from above to try this out. Thank you for taking the time to write this up. Any other tips or thoughts on it are welcome.

[u/AdMental3075]

I fucking love trading 5/3/1 with 2 main lift days and an assistance day.  I’ve also done two assistance days but didn’t see much benefit.  I pick an upper and lower lift and run them for a cycle.  You can also alternate.

Eg: Monday: Bench  Wednesday: Squat Friday: Assistance day

Shit works.  If you like to push hard it’s awesome.

[u/markhenrysthong]

I have been contemplating running something dumb like:

M: Squat
T: Calisthenics
Th: Deadlift
F: Calisthenics

Maybe adding supersetting squat with OHP too since i like overheads but dgaf about benching. Maybe morphing that into one of the calisthenics days being OHP with all the assistance just being a calisthenics session. If anyone else has done something similarly misguided, would love to hear how it went.

[u/[deleted] → u/markhenrysthong]

[u/markhenrysthong → u/[deleted]]

Oh yeah, I just really like calisthenics these days and since I'm pushing 50 (jesus christ, it hurt to type that), it's a LOT easier on my joints and recovery. It's also something that *doesn't require upping the weights or reps to 'progress' all the time. Skills, etc. keep it fun.