My hope is that in this article I can help to simplify what seems like a very complex topic to many athletes and coaches.
First, a little context. What is an advanced strength athlete? The word advanced can be a little misleading because the connotation in your head implies someone who has been lifting for many years or many decades or is accomplished at a very high level. And this isn’t necessarily true. In Practical Programming for Strength Training we defined an advanced athlete as someone whose training requires more than just week to week programming. To drill down even further – the advanced athlete isn’t capable of progressing (setting new personal records) on his lifts on a daily or weekly basis. The accumulation of training stress must build up over a longer period of time in order to manifest new PRs. We’ll just say an average of about once per month. I say an “average” because our bodies don’t neatly adhere to our calendars, even though we might like them to.
So actually – most lifters who have been training consistently for more than about 2 years (or even much less) are likely an advanced athlete. Again, simply meaning that they have gone beyond the novice and intermediate phases of programming where new PRs can be set on a daily or weekly basis.
So at this point, the training program must plan for PRs at certain intervals of time. I prefer planning for PRs rather than hoping for them. Will you always hit the new PR according to plan? Of course not. But without some sort of structure there is no framework in which to operate, evaluate, or make adjustments.
Personal Records (PRs) can come in all shapes and sizes. For most strength athletes (and all strength competitors) the gold standard is the 1-rep max. But that is not the only PR we plan for. In fact, it’s rarely the PR that I am directly programming for with an advanced athlete. I can’t emphasize enough – directly programming for.
So of course if I am programming for a Power Lifter the ultimate goal is the 1RM squat, bench, and deadlift. Nobody cares about your 5×5 max on meet day. But the path forward to those new 1-rep maxes doesn’t necessarily come from incessantly attempting new 1-rep maxes every month. In fact, that is probably the least predictable strategy to use. But a lot of excited lifters get impatient with the process and constantly want to test a new 1-rep max to “See if it’s there yet!!!!”
[ I should stop here for a moment for a point of clarification. Testing new 1-rep maxes on the competition lifts is different than training heavy singles. Heavy singles aren’t necessarily maximal. They aren’t in doubt. Heavy singles training can and should be a part of most power lifting programs at some point. But training the singles vs testing for new maxes isn’t the same level of stress – physically or mentally. Even in my Conjugate Programs, where we work up to heavy singles every week – there is a reason we are using variations of the competition lifts, and rarely the competition lifts themselves ].So back the the topic of volume……with an advanced lifter, the PRs that I am aiming for every 4-6 weeks are volume PRs. The exact amount of volume can vary with the lift and the lifter. I can tell that my attempts to systemize this into some sort of Universal Volume Prescription have been a failure. Lifters respond to volume differently. The same lifter responds to volume differently on each lift. Some lifters need a lot. Some lifters need a little. Everybody needs some.
So then the only real question that is left is how do we build the training volume up over time without overtraining the lifter?
Neither intensity nor volume can keep travelling up and up and up in a linear fashion week to week to week. An attempt to do so will only result in burnout, overtraining, regression, and possibly injury. Cycle it, Wave it, Periodize it….whatever terminology you like (a Periodized Cyclical Wave? ha!!) you have to figure out a way to sustainably raise it over time.
As I see it there are really two main ways to do this. Perhaps there are other ways, but I am bound by the limitations of my knowledge and experience to only share the methods that I am familiar with. Furthermore, within these two systems – there are likely an infinite amount of individualized permutations that one could devise.
So please, I beg of you, when you read the examples I lay out below, do not fall into the trap of missing the forest for the trees. Try and see the bigger picture concept I am trying to show you vs getting caught up in the minute details of the example. Sets and reps could be different. Weight increments between weeks might be different. Length of a training block could be different. But the fundamental concepts are what is important.
Method #1: Keep Volume Steady, Wave the Load.
For the purposes of illustration were are going to use 4-5 week blocks of time. So for 4-weeks the lifter will hold his volume work constant. Meaning sets and reps will stay the same, but weight on the bar (intensity) will build each cycle with new volume PRs attempted every 5th week. The following block will reset the loads back at a lighter weight and he will climb back up over another 4-week period of time, again trying to set a new volume PR in the final week of the block.
Here is what that might look like over the course of 3 successive blocks. Let’s pretend the lifter starts this program with a Back Squat Volume PR of 5 x 5 @ 300 lbs.
- Week 1: 5 x 5 x 275
- Week 2: 5 x 5 x 285
- Week 3: 5 x 5 x 295
- Week 4: 5 x 5 x 305 – NEW PR!
- Week 5: 3 x 3 x 275 (DELOAD)
- Week 6: 5 x 5 x 280
- Week 7: 5 x 5 x 290
- Week 8: 5 x 5 x 300
- Week 9: 5 x 5 x 310 – NEW PR!
- Week 10: 3 x 3 x 280 (DELOAD)
- Week 11: 5 x 5 x 285
- Week 12: 5 x 5 x 295
- Week 13: 5 x 5 x 305
- Week 14: 5 x 5 x 315 – NEW PR!
The benefit of this method is that the volume stays HIGH throughout the entire cycle. Some lifters are going to respond better to this as they tend to detrain relatively quickly when volume drops below a certain threshold.
But not everyone responds this way. And not every lift responds this way. So that’s why I have an alternate way of doing things that sometimes works better.
Method #2: Keep Weight on the Bar Steady, Wave the Volume
In this method, the weight used for the volume work will stay the same each week of the block. But every week the volume performed with that weight will increase slightly until volume is peaked in Week 4. In the following block, the weight can either be increased or the weight can be repeated again, but with an attempt to end the block at an even higher volume. I will give examples of both. Again, lets pretend our lifter starts the program off with a maximum of 5 x 5 @ 300 lbs. And again, lets pretend the focus of this program is to raise his 5×5 max over time.
- Week 1: 5 x 2 @ 305 lbs (5 sets of 2)
- Week 2: 5 x 3 @ 305 lbs (5 sets of 3)
- Week 3: 5 x 4 @ 305 lbs (5 sets of 4)
- Week 4: 5 x 5 @ 305 lbs (5 sets of 5) – NEW PR!
- Week 5: 3 x 3 @ 275 lbs (DELOAD)
Let’s say the next block we decide to progress things a little more conservatively with more subtle increases in volume each week:
- Week 6: 4 x 2 @ 315 (4 sets of 2) – 8 reps
- Week 7: 5 x 2 @ 315 (5 sets of 2) – 10 reps
- Week 8: 6 x 2 @ 315 (6 sets of 2) – 12 reps
- Week 9: 5 x 3 @ 315 (5 sets of 3) – 15 reps
- Week 10: 3 x 3 @ 285 (DELOAD)
- Week 11: 4 x 3 @ 315 (4 sets of 3) – 12 reps
- Week 12: 5 x 3 @ 315 (5 sets of 3) – 15 reps
- Week 13: 6 x 3 @ 315 (6 sets of 3) – 18 reps
- Week 14: 5 x 4 @ 315 (5 sets of 4) – 20 reps
- Week 15: 3 x 3 @ 285 (DELOAD)
- Week 16: 5 x 3 @ 315 (5 sets of 3) – 15 reps
- Week 17: 5 x 4 @ 315 (5 sets of 4) – 20 reps
- Week 18: 6 x 4 @ 315 (6 sets of 4) – 24 reps
- Week 19: 5 x 5 @ 315 (5 sets of 5) – 25 reps – VOLUME GOAL ACHIEVED.
Using this system, I believe the reason it works so well is not just because you achieved the “magical” combination of 5×5 that I used as an example in this program, but it’s that each successive 4-week block also gets progressively more stressful, but in a manageable way. So it’s not like when you hit 5 x 5 you unlock some magical portal into the next dimension of strength – it just gives you a target. An aim. And it gives you a metric of when to increase loads. But the actual magic is in the progressive nature of each 4-week block.
In Week 6-9 we average 8-15 reps with 315. In Weeks 11-14 we average 12-20 reps with 315. In Weeks 16-19 we average 15-25 reps with 315.
Repeating this over and over again will lead to predictable gains in 1-rep max strength without overtraining. As an advanced lifter not every week can be maximal. Especially for volume work. In both of these examples, perhaps only the 4th week of each training block would be performed with maximal effort.
The first 2 weeks will generally be perceived as fairly moderate efforts. The velocity of the barbell on each lift can and should be intentionally higher. In other words, if you are doing something like 4-6 sets of 2 reps with a weight that could be performed for sets of 5….then move those weights with a bit of explosiveness. This is a valuable method for a lifter as force production can stay high, even with loads that aren’t terribly heavy. The rest time between sets can also be reduced as a means to increase work capacity.
Perhaps the 3rd week gets hard again, and then the 4th week is a killer, and rest times can be expanded as a means to make sure you meet your volume goal. This is hard work but there is a Deload immediately following. So you aren’t having a week of all out maximal effort and then left wondering “How the Hell am I gonna go up from here next week??”
Just so you can see another example of this, let’s look at how we might set up something similar for the Deadlift. Working up to 5×5 maximums might be a bit of overkill on the Deadlift for a whole lot of lifters. But you can apply the same thinking to a lower volume target. Let’s say on the Deadlift we want to cap the volume work at about 15 total reps – we’ll just call it 5 x 3 (5 sets of 3).
- Week 1: 3 x 2 @ 405 – 6 reps
- Week 2: 4 x 2 @ 405 – 8 reps
- Week 3: 3 x 3 @ 405 – 9 reps
- Week 4: 4 x 3 @ 405 – 12 reps
- Week 5: 2 x 3 @ 365 (DELOAD)
- Week 6: 4 x 2 @ 405 – 8 reps
- Week 7: 5 x 2 @ 405 – 10 reps
- Week 8: 4 x 3 @ 405 – 12 reps
- Week 9: 5 x 3 @ 405 – 15 reps (VOLUME GOAL ACHIEVED).
What happens when you get stuck with these approaches?
Over coming a plateaus in training is just part of the process. And keep in mind, what I’m showing you here isn’t an entire program. It’s one aspect of an entire program. This is just the part of the program that accrues volume on the main competition lifts – generally a necessary thing for a strength athlete. So there may be other aspects of the program that need to be adjusted as well if you are getting stuck.
In my programs there is also an intensity based element (i.e. a top heavy set of 1-5 reps) and an assistance protocol.
But in terms of getting stuck and making changes…..a simple approach might just be to swap methods. If you are using Method #1…..then try Method #2 for a while. Or vice-versa. Use your own intuition to help decide if this is the right approach for you. For instance, if you are using Method #1 but find that the volume is just too high for too long OR that you are detraining by using too light of a weight for the first 1-2 weeks of each block, then switching to Method #2 would be a good idea. If you are using Method #2 but feel as if you are losing your conditioning to volume in the first 1-2 weeks of each block then Method #1 might make more sense. All I can tell you is that it varies by the lift and the lifter and there is no way around some self experimentation.
Should You Simply Just Raise Your Volume Caps?
Maybe. But I do think there are definitely some upper limits and diminishing returns by simply adding more and more and more sets to the competition lifts. But you can raise your training volume with your assistance and supplemental lifts as well. So instead of raising your Bench Press volume goals from 5 x 5 to 8 sets of 5….maybe just add 3 x 5 of Close Grip Bench or Floor Press or Incline Bench Press on another day of the week. Or instead of moving your Deadlift volume goals from 5 x 3 to 5 x 5, add in 2 sets of RDLs after your squats on another day of the week. So still an increase in training volume, but perhaps in a more effective manner.
