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I love doing dips, although I'm 100% convinced they didn't help my bench press. I do think they helped my press, though.

I'm 5'9", 195 pounds. I've lifted all kinds of programs for twenty years now, so I'm not experiencing beginner gains or whatever. I've been all 5/3/1, a little bit of a Wendler homer, and pleased with every result I've gotten since I decided to go all in with 5/3/1 about 14 months ago. I'm an average guy: literature and writing professor, dad and husband. I'm definitely not someone who can do things most others aren't physically capable of doing...

One of the keys of doing grip work is to make it economical - there is no point in doing direct grip work when you can EASILY add to an exercise you would already be doing. And the BIGGEST excuse is "but I can do more weight if I don't use overhand grip or X". Well, guess what? If your grip ain't strong, it won't matter what you can tug. You are simply WEAK. Get over your own ego and do things right.

I like weighted chin ups. I'm not voting for them in the next "Five Awesome Exercises" election but they certainly have their place. I've championed chin ups for years, mostly because they're great for the upper back, lats, and arms. And because you can do them anywhere – chin-up bar, top of the Smith machine, scaffolding, top of the monolift, playground equipment, etc. Weighted chin ups are a good idea IF you can do them, and even then you still need to keep bodyweight chin ups as part of your training (unless you can bang out multiple sets of 20 with good form). And if that's the case, gain some weight!

"If you can’t do chins, you are either hurt, fat or weak - And none of these three things are good...doing this will greatly increase your chin volume without taking any extra time or energy from your workouts."

This is the first half of the Instagram Q/A that I put up recently.  Some of the questions were answered on the Table Talk that Dave Tate and I did. The ones we didn't get to, I answered them below.

Hey Jim, first off I wanted to say thank you for writing the 5/3/1 program. I love it, it keeps me grounded and I am making great gains from it. So much so that I wanted to share them with you. You don't hear a lot about conditioning goals being reached on here so I thought you might appreciate this.