Thanks for the inputs, any other suggestion for someone who just started and set the TM at 90% of recently tested 1RMs? I just ended the first week, so I might just recalculate the TM to 85% for the next weeks?
Or maybe, I could end this month with this TM, then next month keep the same TM (hopefully increasing the rep records) and from the third month see what the estimated 1RMs are based on the new rep records and calculate an 85% TM on those?
Not trying to split hairs here but it’s the first program I run that’s strictly based on very specific % and such, so I want to be prepared ![]()
Wow - this has been discussed many times on this forum.
Generally, if you can’t hit 5 reps on your final week/set (95% set) than you have the wrong TM. There are also bad days but that’s kind of the point of this general guideline. Of course, if you are using a variation with a lot of supplemental work, the TM would be lower.
This is why I introduced the 7th Week Protocol on my forum, this forum and in the new book. Again, this has been discussed on this forum many, many times.
The WHOLE IDEA is using the right TM for the Leader Program and stop using TEMPLATES. Thus you can actually program long term and look at the big picture. Please read the many posts on this very forum which this has been discussed.
Just keep going with it and on your 1+ week use 3 reps as the “minimum” instead of 5. You can still get at least 6 cycles out of that except for maybe overhead press. The rule about using 90% was around for many years with this program and people made progress.