I was just wondering what’s the best way to do sets with a 5x3 scheme?? should I just do straight sets with the same weight and increase it 10lbs next week, or 3 sets with aheavy weight and 2 sets with a lower weight, or something like that? how do you guys normally do your sets?
How do YOU want to do it, and what is your reasoning?
I am simple, I simply do weight progression with straight sets.
I do progressively heavier sets. I start at 14 reps and work done to 6. It goes like this 14,12,10,8,6. Yes five sets, I don’t go over 315.
There’s two schools of thought. One is to use a consistent weight, and when you “complete” the given set/rep (5x3 in this case), you increase the weight. Another school of thought is to go as heavy as you can each set for full repetitions, and progressively lower the weight to get the same amount of repetitions.
First method, you might be content with 3, 3, 3, 2, 2 for a given exercise. Second method, after you hit that double on the fourth set, you’d lower the weight so you could hit a triple on the fifth set. Moreover, since you hit triples for three sets, you’d probably increase the weight next time on the first two sets.
Either do sets across (with the same weight) or increase the weight over five sets (generally using at least 10% jumps). These two are very simple and effective for strength training. You can do a combination of the two, but then you’ll end up with more than five sets.
straight sets. warm up with 2/4/6 plates then hit my working sets. usually 3 - 6 sets depending on rep range.