I proposed a bet.
Four guys. Two teams. One 5/3/1 lifting cycle.
Everybody would write down the one-rep maxes they had when the cycle started. At the end of each month, we would add up the gains for each team. Whichever pair added the most total weight won.
That was the whole competition.
There would be a Google spreadsheet because anything worth arguing about needed a spreadsheet. There would also be what I called “gentlemanly terms” for the bet. We had not decided what the losing team owed, but it needed to be enough to keep things interesting.
I liked training with a target. A program on paper was fine. A program with somebody checking the same numbers was better. Put a small competition around it and suddenly nobody wanted to be the guy who skipped the work and dragged down his partner.
The 5/3/1 program was already simple: use the main barbell lifts, work from percentages, and add weight over time. We did not need to improve the program. We just needed a reason to stay on it.
This was also a good counterweight to work. Most of my day was full of systems where the result could be hard to see. A faster site mattered, but it was rarely one person's work and it was never finished. A barbell was much less complicated. Either the weight moved or it did not.
I was still running, racing, and signing up for things that required more endurance than common sense. Lifting gave me a different kind of score.
Write down the number. Do the month. Write down the new number.
And, ideally, make your friends pay.