Anyone familiar with this guy and his approach? He is the former strength coach from the University of Tennessee. He has a unique program involving pyramiding in 10 week cycles. You start in the first week doing, say, 4 sets of 10, increasing the weight on each set.
Over the 10-week period, the top set becomes heavier and heavier, and the reps in the top set are reduced, until you do a one-rep max in the bench, squat, and clean (this is more for football players and other athletes rather than powerlifters, so the clean is emphasized more than the deadlift).
By the 10th week, your set/rep scheme looks something like 10, 8, 5, 3, 1, whereas in the first week it started as 10, 10, 10, 10. Then you start a cycle again, with a some slight variation, but again do another 10-week program and (supposedly) keep achieving a new max.
This sort of training looks quite a bit different from the programs that are in vogue right now (i.e., Sheiko, Westside); has anyone had any experience with this type of program? Any success?
God I hate pyramiding. I just had to get that out there. If there’s one method that’s completely retarded for getting the most out of your test day it’s pyramiding. The more fatigue you induce at a lower intensity, the more your max will suffer from accumulated fatigue.
If you want to use pyramiding to gradually induce a greater load/intensity over time, I GUESS I could see it, but I don’t like the idea overall. To me there are so many better ways to load.
I guess I can’t deny the athletes that program produces though.
Sorry if I’m posting a “unique” program everyone already knows about! From the responses, it sounds like this is actually a tried and true method and most PLers know about it.
Just in case anyone doesn’t know what I’m referring to, it goes something like this:
Week 1: 4 X 10, increasing the weight on each set until you get to around 60% of your one-rep max.
Week 2: 10, 8, 8, 8, 8, same deal, but this week your top set is around 65% 1RM; again, you start with a fairly light weight and increase the weight on each set.
It goes one like this until your final 10th week, when you do 10, 8, 5, 3, 1, with the last rep (hopefully) being about 103-105% of your previous max.
The bench and squat are worked twice a week, one day heavy and one moderate. The clean is hit only once a week (if you’re a PLer instead of a football player, you’d substitute the dead for the clean). Some assistance work like incline presses, behind the neck presses, lunges, leg extensions and curls are thrown in as well (yeah, I can hear some of you saying “Wow, lunges and leg curls, that’s revolutionary!”)
It is the pyramiding that looked unique to me. Most linear progams I’ve seen (like Ed Coan’s) just involve doing 3 or so work sets at the same working weight, while adding 5% each week.
Anyway, thanks to all who replied. I’m glad if I’ve inadvertently come across some old-school PL training.
I’m not a big fan of pyramids because of the obvious fatigue before you get to your heavy sets, but the program is just a twist on short cycle linear periodization.
There really isn’t anything new in the strength world. The things that got people strong are still the things that get people strong, but with twists and some variation.
Bust your ass on a program like that, and you’ll get stronger.
