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When do you move up in weight?


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I'm doing a pyramid 12-10-8 and have been doing it for a while. It's working great for me. I just need to hammer down when I will move up in weight.

 

Right now I only move up when I can successfully do the last 2 sets of 8 reps. Ex: Military press

12x80, 10x85, 8x95, 4x95 (failed) < Could not successfully do 2 sets of 8 reps so I will re-attempt this again next week.

 

I've also thought of just going up to 100 if I can successfully do 8x95, so I'd be trying to 12x80, 10x85, 8x95, 6x100

 

Any thoughts on which is best?

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Not quite relevant to pyramid training, but I've found Matt Wiggins' strength-endurance method to be very useful. You do 8 sets of 3 reps with 60 seconds of rest between sets. When you can do all 8 sets with 3 reps you reduce the time to, say, 50 seconds. Again, when you can do all 8 sets at 50 seconds you reduce the time. You can reduce it to 40, then 30, then 20. I've found that with some lifts it is better not to go below 30 seconds. When you get to the 30-second, 25-second or 20-second rest period and can do all 8 sets of 3, you add weight and go back to 60 seconds. You will find that in some lifts you will have an improvement in rest period or weight in nearly every training session. I find it easy to reduce from 60 seconds to 50 and sometimes to 40 but below that it is better to reduce by 5 seconds at a time. Only a little bit of extra weight should be added when it's time to increase the weight. Perhaps only 5 or 10 pounds. When you get down to 30 second rests you will be gasping for breath.

 

I don't know what your goals are. This might not work too well with bodybuilding but it does work with strength.

 

Mike Mahler wrote about a method which combines rest-pause and the strength-endurance method mentioned above.

 

You take a heavy weight - a weight which you can just manage to lift 3 times in a row - and lift it just once. Then you rest for 60 seconds and do it again. You do this 10 times. When you are able to do it 10 times with the 60 second rest between each lift, you reduce the rest time to 45 seconds for you next training session. When you can do all 10 lifts with the 45 seconds rest, you decrease the resting time to 30 seconds. Then to 15 seconds.

 

It's important to put the weight down between each lift - even when you are only resting for 15 seconds.

 

When you can do all 10 lifts with only 15 second rests, you increase the weight and go back to 60 second rests. You work your way down to 15 seconds, increase the weight and go back to 60 seconds. And so on.

 

Probably best to use this for only one exercise/lift at a time as it can be quite taxing.

 

All these methods are similar but one will suit one person better than another.

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