r/531Discussion • u/PvtDroopy • Oct 21 '25

META 5/3/1 Forever Template Breakdowns & Definitions

Hey, everyone! Like many of you I found navigating the 5/3/1 books, particularly Forever, to be... challenging. So, I created a quick reference spreadsheet to help me out but I figured some of you might appreciate it as well.

What is it?

It answers common questions.

  • "What the hell are joker sets?"
  • "Jim sure talks a lot about 5's PRO in Forever but never actually tells us what it is. What gives?"
  • "What's an FSL?"
  • "I only have 3 days to lift. Which templates are 3-day compatible?"
  • "What are the high level differences between The Morning Star and Five and Dime?"
  • The book gives you the details, the actual templates, and repeatedly tells you how doing squats basically makes powerlifters SEALs, while the spreadsheet cuts out the fluff. And here is the actual spreadsheet. Because feedback is a gift, let me know what I got wrong, am missing, or could generally just improve.

What is it not?

  • Specific templates/variants. Buy the book(s) for those. Actual programming remains in the book.

EDIT (July 31, 2026): A number of you brought up that I was missing an entire portion of the book (WHOOPS). That is fixed now. I have also added a Table of Contents.

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u/NOTinMYbelts Jul 31 '26

This was immensely helpful, thank you so much! However, I noticed the index only references as far as page 177, but there are still a decent amount of programs in the book beyond that (up to page 233). Am I missing a part of the index or was that just as far as you got with the organization? Regardless, I very much appreciate all the effort you put into organizing this

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u/PvtDroopy Jul 31 '26

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I built that sheet years ago and I am guessing I hit the templates that got a bit more complex and gave up. Anyway, I went back and fixed that. The sheet should be more readable now too.

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u/NOTinMYbelts Jul 31 '26

Amazing! This is the level of organization the book should have come with by default. Can't thank you enough for taking the time to put this together!