[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
Thy. wrote:
I don’t have the knowledge to regulate my workouts. The only way I can regulate it is to do MORE or do HEAVIER and work to my limit. I can’t know how one workout will influence the next. If I do 85%x1 will the stress be insufficient (or not as prominent, not as progress-prone) to make maximal progress ? Probably, I’d chose to go 85%x2 and have at least 20 sets in 20 minutes (I could probably do even more, I’m very efficient at such work).
Yes, I always try to apply maximal force to any weight. But I wouldn’t know whether it’s better to use 70% for speed or 85% for load. But my instinct will always tell me to use MORE.
I understand that “anything above 70% is enough if you lift fast”. But let’s say I use 70% too often and I would get to a PR 3 weeks later than if I used more weight and some different method.
I don’t understand how to “regulate”. If you go by how you feel that day, well I usually feel fine (I only have a few bad days in months), so what does that tell me ? Nothing. Let’s say I want to improve by pressing power, so I press 3 days a week. I might feel good or great on ALL of these days. I would think “I can do this one more heavy assistance movement, so I better do it because I feel great” and it turns out that I did too much work on all of these days in one week because I felt great. But then next week I see that I didn’t progress or even regressed. That’s why I need to have general guidelines, where to stop, what intensity not to exceed, what total volume not to exceed, etc.
I don’t know the theory and don’t have experience, so that’s why I’m asking.
It’s not about how you ‘feel’ but rather about what your body can give you on that day.
You ask about using 70 or 85%… use both… and everything in between. You gradually add weight to the bar, starting at 70% and slowly work your way up until you can’t get 3 solid (no grinding, no technique breakdown) reps.
Here’s an email I sent to Nate Green because he was having a meltdown about how I plan sets, reps and weights…
Most people and coaches have individuals focus on the load instead of the execution of the rep, and they insist on respecting the guidelines as if it were dogma.
So someone with a 300lbs bench press might do:
1 x 3 @ 270lbs
1 x 3 @ 270lbs
1 x 3 @ 270lbs
1 x 3 @ 250lbs (hit a wall on that preceding set)
1 x 3 @ 240lbs
1 x 3 @ 230lbs
Whereas I would recommend:
1 x 3 @ 210lbs
1 x 3 @ 230lbs
1 x 3 @ 250lbs
1 x 3 @ 260lbs
1 x 3 @ 270lbs
1 x 3 @ 280lbs
By progressing this way IF you accelerate every single rep as much as you can you will reach higher top set.
People will point out that the ‘average load’ of the first workout is higher than the second one (255lbs vs. 250lbs) so it should have a better training effect. It doesn’t work that way! The first 3 sets of the second workout are super explosive… accelerating a weight that is 70% or more requires a huge force output. Maybe even higher than doing a max set!
In the first workout example, the ‘lighter’ sets are not explosive. You didn’t pick a lighter weight to accelerate it; fatigue forced you to decrease the weight. So in essence those last 3 sets are not optimally effective to build strength, recruit high threshold motor units or build muscle.
In the second workout example the ‘lighter’ sets have two benefits: they wake up the nervous system, potentiating those last heavy sets, they stimulate the fast-twitch fibers better than ‘force/fatigued’ lighter sets.
Then, with that workout, if that 280lbs x 3 was solid, I might actually recommend doing another heavier set of 3. This is autoregulation. By the same token if on that 5th set I can only get 2 reps, I stop the exercise.
IT’S NOT ABOUT FOLLOWING DIRECTION ON THE SHEET OF PAPER. The actual written words wont build muscle. Read an article 20 times, you will not get bigger! The whole purpose of a workout is creating a physiological stimulus. The number of sets, reps and exercises you do are only tools used to reach that physiological stimulus.
Since your actual physiological state will vary from day to day (even throughout a day) there is no way to be able to come up with a precise program that will always lead to an optimal stimulation… a program serves as a guideline. The adjustments you make during the workout will determine whether you reach that physiological stimulation or not; or if you overshoot it and overstress your body.
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All of this is great but how do you autoregulate when you use the higher reps range and don’t ramp.