So I recently joined my local L.A. Fitness, and as a result I recieved a free personal training session. I told him that I was looking for some strength training, because my goal is to maintain or gain muscle mass while burning as much fat as I can. What happened was that instead of doing the usual, 3 sets with less reps and more weights, what he did was start me off with a set, then for the next set he’d drop maybe 5 or 10 pounds and made me do more reps. I tell ya, I was BURNED out and sore for the rest of the week. I really felt the burn and the workout.
Here’s my question though, is this healthy? I remember a guy once told me about a year back, that reverse pyramid workouts are HORRIBLE for you because apparently your body only remembers the last set you did. So if you did lighter weights for more reps, you’ll actualy become weaker rather than stronger. Is there any truth to this? I wanted to start working on this kind of workout routine, but I’m a little worried.
Your body does not remember anything, only your brain does. If that theory was true then following Incline presses with DB Bench presses or BB Curls with concentration curls would be detrimental to strenth since your body would only “remember” the lighter weights you used. What about if you have a heavy day and a light day for a body part? Your light day would make you significantly weaker.
My point is that I would have to see multiple extensive studies coupled with multiple real world test cases to put any stock in that BS. Drop sets or reverse pyramids will not make you weaker, but training inconsistantly will.
[quote]ryno76 wrote:
Your body does not remember anything, only your brain. If that was true then following Incline presses with DB Bench presses would be detrimental to strenth as would following BB Curls with concentration curls as your body would only “remember” the lighter weights you used. What about if you have a heavy day and a light day for a body part? Your light day would make you significantly weaker.
My point is that I would have to see multiple extensive studies coupled with multiple real world test cases to put any stock in that BS. Drop sets or reverse pyramids will not make you weaker.[/quote]
Thanks! I really enjoyed the workout but I was just worried because that guy told me about it being bad for you, so I didn’t want to jump into a reverse pyramid type workout without any benefits.
[quote]RampantBadger wrote:
After almost 5 years on this site???[/quote]
yep! hahaha truth is, I’ve never really sat down and focused solely on weight training. Most of my workouts come from endurance training, so really anything with weights up till now has been specifically for cardio and endurance training.
[quote]GnP4life wrote:
So I recently joined my local L.A. Fitness, and as a result I recieved a free personal training session. I told him that I was looking for some strength training, because my goal is to maintain or gain muscle mass while burning as much fat as I can. What happened was that instead of doing the usual, 3 sets with less reps and more weights, what he did was start me off with a set, then for the next set he’d drop maybe 5 or 10 pounds and made me do more reps. I tell ya, I was BURNED out and sore for the rest of the week. I really felt the burn and the workout.
Here’s my question though, is this healthy? I remember a guy once told me about a year back, that reverse pyramid workouts are HORRIBLE for you because apparently your body only remembers the last set you did. So if you did lighter weights for more reps, you’ll actualy become weaker rather than stronger. Is there any truth to this? I wanted to start working on this kind of workout routine, but I’m a little worried. [/quote]
I made great gains with RPT. When you plateau, switch to something else. I’m still doing them for deadlift (with a couple of warmup sets).
I remember a guy once told me about a year back, that reverse pyramid workouts are HORRIBLE for you because apparently your body only remembers the last set you did. So if you did lighter weights for more reps, you’ll actualy become weaker rather than stronger. Is there any truth to this? . [/quote]
