Programming Detail Question

[Weston Nichols]

Greg, and everyone else,

When you say "work up to a heavy single for that day" how do you go about doing that?

Do you take lots of little jumps, or is it better to take bigger jumps to reduce fatigue getting there? I would think in a meet you would want to use bigger jumps for warmups before your opener, but in training perhaps it is different?

Thanks,

Weston

[Steven Low]

PR = 300:

10x45
5x135
3x185
2x225
1x275
1x295
PR attempts

Ensure adequate rest between sets.

If you're in a meet.. do your warmups and go below your PR for your first attempt. Second attempt can be near/over PR depending on if your cycle was programmed well. Third attempt hopefully above that.

Well, at least that's how I'd approach it... dunno about anyone else.


(Ignore this post)

[Arien Malec]

Heavy for day does not mean a max attempt. It means working up to a weight that feels heavy but can be lifted successfully with good form. It's not a go for broke lift. If things are feeling good, don't hesitate to go for a PR, if lower weights are feeling heavy, stop there. Based on the way Greg constructs his cycles, you may be dealing with fatigue preveninting a PR attempt, so just go up to where it feels good but heavy.

[Greg Everett]

Arien described it well.

Over time you should develop pretty consistent warm-up patterns, i.e. take the same weight jumps on your way up. These will change somewhat over time as your lifts increase obviously, but the jumps will be pretty similar once you get past the beginner stage.

For example, if I'm going to do a heavy single front squat as the first exercise of my sessions, i'll do:

50 x 3 x 2
70 x 3
90 x 2
110 x 1
130 x 1
150 x 1
160....

I recommend keeping the reps as low as possible and the jumps as big as possible - you want to get prepared, but you also want to incur as little fatigue as possible.

The consistency in your warm-up will come in handy for meets - you need to be able to plan your attempts, etc., and you want to be confident with those numbers instead of overthinking your warm-ups because you're not accustomed to the numbers or the jumps.

[Steven Low]

Oh whoops. My brain got up this morning and saw heavy and equated it to max. My bad.

[Dave Van Skike]

Another way that doing it pretty much the same way is that as you're warming up to your work sets, is that you are getting consistent cues about where you are at that day . Not that you should take a huge amount of stock in how you feel as oppossed to how the bar is moving but it's semi useful.

I find that sluggish warm up correspond to really volume days at sub max percentages and when the weight feel really light throughout the warm up this corresponds with a good day to go after a PR.