Issue 081
November 2011
Set and rep variations for increased awesomeness
Regular readers of this column may have noticed I bang on about progression all the time. With performance-enhancement training we are trying to progress to higher levels of athleticism, movement quality and injury resistance, getting heavily ‘diesel’ along the way is a fun by-product but not a primary focus.
Paul McVeigh
Pro fighter & sports scientist
Paul McVeigh is a sports scientist and a professional fighter, ranked as the number-one bantamweight in Europe
There are many ways to progress your strength training, you could increase the weight moved, the sets and rep ranges used or vary the movement pattern itself. With so many simple ways to progress, it is still astounding to see people doing the same exercises for the same sets and rep schemes with the same load and staying exactly the same athletically.
This issue I would like to introduce a few different training ideas to shake up your workouts and hopefully give you a few of your own ideas.
If you are not progressing you’re stagnating. A great tip I picked up somewhere is to always try to make the heaviest set of your last workout the first set for the subsequent workout. Try to add 2.5kg a week to upper-body lifts and 5kg to lower-body lifts.
Looking at sets and reps differently
When the number of sets per exercise goes beyond three a strange thing starts to happen. People tend to count the first few sets as being warm ups and only get some real work done on that final set. We then hear the same guys talking about that brutal 150kg 6x3 deadlift workout when they only really did 1x3. Anything below 70% of your one-repetition max (1RM) is a warm-up.
That being said, for most people, doing multiple sets with a repetition max is a crushing experience. A more productive way to spend your time would be to work towards your repetition max, drop the weight back for a set or two then work up again. You get a significant amount of work done in appropriate %RM ranges without ending up in the same spot several hours later unable to move.
Why do we always tend to make our last set the heaviest? It is a habit for most of us but not a necessity. After a decent warm-up it’s perfectly acceptable to start with your rep max and then drop the weight and accumulate volume with progressively lighter loads. You might even pick up more weight first time as you are not fatigued.
Whatever method you use keep an eye on the total load you have moved, that’s the weight multiplied by the reps added up over the number of sets performed. If this number is going up, whatever method you use, you are getting stronger.
Goal-Based Set-Rep Schemes
We can look at set-rep schemes in many different ways. One is to think in terms of the number of reps we wish to perform for a given exercise in a workout. The number of total reps for that exercise is prescribed as is the load based on repetition maximum and you try to get this number of reps done in as few sets as possible.
This really changes things up. You are free to push yourself harder in the beginning sets so that you are ‘rewarded’ with fewer reps in the subsequent sets. You are no longer fixed into a rigid rep scheme and can really take advantage of strong days and ease back and use more sets when they are not feeling it.
Alternatively, you may look to the long term and set yourself the goal of lifting a certain weight for a specific set rep scheme. You may, for whatever, reason decide that lifting 80kg for five sets of five reps is a great idea for you. You throw 80kg on the bar and give it a go. For set one you get five reps, for set two it is four reps for set three we get two and on the final two sets you only crank out one rep.
Over the course of subsequent workouts you try to improve on this, even by as little as one rep per week. As you are constantly handling the same load it starts to lose its intimidation factor and you can always do one more rep, right? It may take ages but eventually you will get all 25 reps and on that day you can set a new goal and begin again.
6 sets 3 Reps, 3RM - 150KG
Set 1
Broski Method - 70kg
The back off set method - 130kg
Best set first method - 150kg
Set 2
Broski Method - 80kg
The back off set method - 140kg
Best set first method - 140kg
Set 3
Broski Method - 80kg
The back off set method - 150kg
Best set first method - 135kg
Set 4
Broski Method -.100kg
The back off set method - 130kg
Best set first method - 135kg
Set 5
Broski Method - 100kg
The back off set method - 140kg
Best set first method - 130kg
Set 6
Broski Method - 150kg
The back off set method - 150kg
Best set first method - 125kg
Total Load (reps x load for each set totaled)
Broski Method - 1740kg
The back off set method -.2520kg
Best set first method - 2445kg
Simple ways to progress your training
Sets and Reps - From 3x8 to 5x5
Rest Periods - 60 sec to 30 sec
Exercise - Bench press to a Chain-loaded push-up
Tempo - Including longer eccentrics and isometrics
Load - Lift something heavier
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