The Best App for the 5/3/1 Triumvirate: Run the Template Without a Spreadsheet

Why the Triumvirate lives in spreadsheets

Like every 5/3/1 template, the Triumvirate is percentage-driven: each main-lift session is three work sets calculated from your Training Max, waved across a 4-week cycle, warm-ups included. The community answer has always been a spreadsheet, and for the main lifts a good sheet computes correctly. But the Triumvirate is half assistance work by design - two exercises a day for 5 sets each - and that half has no percentages to compute, so the sheets simply leave it out. The result is a program where the part that distinguishes the template is the part nothing tracks.

Where the spreadsheet breaks down

• In-gym use: editing cells mid-session on a phone is miserable, and one mistyped formula corrupts the rest of the cycle silently.
• AMRAP logging: the AMRAP set should become an estimated 1RM and a trend line across cycles - most sheets have a cell for the target and nowhere for the result.
• Assistance progression: dips going from 5x8 to 5x15, good mornings creeping up in load - the actual double-progression of the template's back half - is invisible to a percentage sheet.
• TM resets: stall on the press and you need to reset one Training Max to 90% of its current value without touching the other three - the classic way a copied sheet breaks.
• Units and plate math: the sheet says 77.6 kg, the gym has 2.5 kg plates, and every set needs mental rounding - doubled if you switch between kg and lbs.

What an app must do for the Triumvirate specifically

1. Calculate the Training Max from a true or estimated 1RM (the 90% rule).
2. Generate every warm-up and work set at the correct percentage of TM for the current week of the cycle.
3. Log AMRAP reps and convert them to an estimated 1RM (weight x reps x 0.0333 + weight).
4. Track the assistance exercises with their own rep and load progression, separate from the percentage math.
5. Apply cycle increments automatically: +2.5 kg to upper-body TMs, +5 kg to lower-body TMs.
6. Handle week 4 as a real deload - main lift only at 40/50/60%, no AMRAP, no assistance.
7. Round every prescribed weight to your plates' actual increments, in kg or lbs.

How Hardy handles each requirement

The 4-day Triumvirate routine - press, deadlift, bench and squat days with their exact assistance pairs from the template - is free in Hardy's routine library. Set four Training Maxes once and the app prescribes every session of the cycle; swap any assistance exercise in the editor without touching the 5/3/1 math. For the full method beyond the base template, Wendler's 5/3/1 books are the source.

Free web tools if you just want the math

Not ready for an app? Hardy's 1RM calculator turns any recent rep set into an estimated max - the number you take 90% of for your Training Max, as covered in how to calculate your training max. The plate calculator then tells you which plates to load for any target weight. Both are free in the browser, no account needed.