Metallicadpa PPL 5/3/1 in Durata: one number moves two lifts

Finding it and starting it

The finder takes three answers: goal, experience and days a week. Six days and a powerbuilding goal bring back Metallicadpa PPL: 5/3/1 at the top of the list, flagged advanced, which it is. It is a step up from base Metallicadpa rather than a replacement for it.

The program page carries the schedule and the rules before you commit to anything. Two rules, in this case, because the main lifts and the accessories are governed differently and the page shows both.

Setting it up asks for two kinds of number. Each main lift needs a training max, which is the number every prescribed percentage is taken from. Each accessory needs a plain working weight, the same as in the base program. This run opened the overhead press accessory at 67.5 kg and the lat pulldown at 92.5 kg.

The training max is the only number you set

In base Metallicadpa the app reads the sets you logged and decides the next weight from them. Here it works the other way round. You set a training max per main lift, and every weight in the next four weeks is already decided: percentages of that number, week by week.

Week one is sets of five, week two sets of three, week three the 5/3/1 week that finishes at 95% of the training max, and week four is a deload. Then the training max is reviewed, and the whole wave repeats on a heavier bar.

This run started the squat on a 200 kg training max. Week one put 170 kg on the bar for the top set, week two 180 kg, and week three 190 kg, which is the 95% top of the wave. None of that was decided while training. It was decided the moment the training max was entered.

The start date fixes the calendar, and every session in both cycles hangs off it.

Legs B, at half of the same number

The squat appears twice a week in this program, and the second appearance is where the design shows itself. Legs A runs the 5/3/1 wave. Legs B runs five sets of ten at 50% of the same training max.

So the volume day has no working weight of its own and no rule of its own. It is half of the number that drives the heavy day. On a 200 kg training max that is 100 kg for fifty reps, which the session card totals at 5000 kg of work before it saves.

That is a lot of squatting for a day with no decisions in it. You do not choose the weight, you do not add to it when it goes well, and you cannot creep it up when you feel good. It rises when, and only when, the training max rises.

The first session lands on the start date and the History calendar starts filling in behind it, six entries a week.

Three weeks up, one week down

Week three is where the wave peaks. The heavy squat takes 190 kg, the accessories stay where they are, and the volume day is completely unmoved at 100 kg. Nothing in the program treats a hard week as a reason to push the volume work harder.

Week four is the deload, and it is the same story in reverse. The heavy day comes down deliberately, the accessories carry on, and the volume day is still at 100 kg, because half of an unchanged training max is an unchanged weight.

This is the part of 5/3/1 that reads as strange on paper and makes sense in the app. The two squat days are not competing with each other. One of them is testing the training max and the other is feeding it, and neither one is allowed to drift on how the session felt.

The review, and both lifts move

At the end of the cycle the training max is reviewed. The squat and the deadlift take the heavier bump in this program, 5 kg rather than 2.5 kg, so the squat's training max went from 200 kg to 205 kg.

One edit, two lifts. Cycle two opens with the heavy squat on the identical wave, now at 175 kg, 185 kg and 195 kg where cycle one was at 170 kg, 180 kg and 190 kg. The Legs B volume day goes from 100 kg to 102.5 kg on its own, because it was never anything other than half of that number.

Nothing else in the program needed touching for that to happen. There is no second setting for the volume day and no separate ladder to keep in step. It is the clearest argument for the training max as a design: one number per lift, reviewed once a month, and everything downstream of it follows.

By the last Legs B of the run the volume squat reads 102.5 kg with an estimated max of 136.7 kg, and the heavy day has finished its second wave at 195 kg.

The accessories did not move at all

The honest half of this run is the accessory list. Every single one of them finished the eight weeks on the weight it started on. The bench press accessory held at 105 kg, the overhead press accessory at 67.5 kg, the lat pulldown and seated cable row at 92.5 kg, the incline dumbbell press at 42.5 kg, the Romanian deadlift at 105 kg, the leg press at 30 kg, and the pushdowns, extensions, face pulls, curls, leg curls, calf raises and lateral raises all at 12.5 kg.

That is the double-progression rule doing exactly what it says. An accessory only moves when every working set reaches the top of its rep range, and on a six-day schedule sitting behind a heavy main lift, none of them did. Compare it with base Metallicadpa, where the accessories were seeded lighter and half of them climbed across a similar stretch of training.

It is worth knowing before you start this program rather than after week six. The main lifts are the part of this program that is designed to move, and they move on a schedule rather than on a good day. The accessory work is there to hold position while that happens.

The strength index and the estimated one-rep max chart show the shape the two systems produce together: a saw-tooth climbing through each wave, dipping at the deload, then stepping up again when the training max is reviewed.

The payoff: 100 kg to 102.5 kg, without a decision

Two screenshots of the same Legs B session, eight weeks apart. The volume squat opened at 100 kg and finished at 102.5 kg, and nobody typed either number. Both are half of a training max that was set once and reviewed once, and the heavy day on the other leg day moved with it from the same edit.

It is a small number on its own, and that is the point of putting it next to the heavy day rather than in place of it. The volume work does not race the main lift. It rides it.

Cycle 1

100 kg → 102.5 kg

+2.5 kg

Same session, eight weeks apart. The volume day is half the training max, so it followed the review up on its own.

Cycle 2