Strategy: Rotating Rep Ranges

The following article was based off of a coaching call I did with one of my clients, John, just last night.  John is a strong late intermediate trainee who has built a 500+ Squat, 600+ Deadlift, and a 350 Bench Press.

In the past, John has made significant progress with very basic intermediate level programming.  His best gains have traditionally come through a tapering type approach that has him starting a program at a low intensity/high volume and linearly working down into a high intensity/low volume phase.  This approach is reminiscent of many great Powerlifters, both past and current.  Generally speaking we are talking about starting a training cycle with sets of 8 and working down the reps until we arrived at a max double or triple and then possibly hitting a max single at a meet.

John’s best runs have occurred when the journey from 8s to singles was “unscripted.”  In other words, we never really planned out when we would drop from 8 to 7 to 6 to 5, etc.  We just started with sets of 8 and ran them as long as we possibly could until the weight on the bar forced us to drop down to 7 or 6.  Then we would run that as long as possible until we were forced to drop to 5s and 4s.  John had some amazing runs on this type of simplistic programming.

But based off our conversation from last night, we both came to the same conclusion that John may be “done” with this type of programming.  Although we have tried to duplicate this process several times since his first few initial successes, it seems that his body has become unresponsive to this methodology and changes need to be made.

After his next meet, John will begin a cyclical approach to his training.  This is an approach that I have used with dozens of trainees, both at the gym and with my consulting clients.

Examples of cyclical training can be found everywhere in the strength training literature….I most certainly did not invent the concept.

In Practical Programming for Strength Training many of the intermediate programs we wrote rely on cyclical training or a rotation in rep ranges week to week.

Westside programming calls for new Max Effort exercises to be cycled in every week, and the Dynamic Effort Squat cycle follows a 3 week rotation.  The ever popular 531 program designed by Jim Wendler is another example of a cyclical programming that has worked for a lot of people.

I have lots of clients that operate off of a cycle of 5s, 3s, and 1s.  I don’t do my programming the same way Jim does though – training maxes, AMRAP-ing the final set, etc is generally not part of my strategy.  And with most early intermediate trainees I use a “sets across” approach to the 5s, 3s, and 1s – anywhere from 3 to 5 sets across at the specified rep range.  I have found the reason that many trainees don’t respond well to Wendler’s 531 is due to the lack of training volume at the actual working percentage.  The “one all out set” approach works extremely well for many, but most early intermediates require a little more training stress to drive adaptation.

An example progression might be:

Week 1:  3-5×5

Week 2:  3-5×3

Week 3:  3-5×1

Week 4: Deload or Repeat cycle

The rotation doesn’t have to be 5s, 3s, and 1s.  Sometimes when a client gets stuck in a 5,3,1 rotation I make a very very minor change to their programming – I switch them to 6s, 4s, and 2s.  This doesn’t seem like much, but I think the power of this adjustment comes from turning the singles into doubles.  For instance, if a trainee got stuck at 5x1x495, I’ll back them off a bit and try working up to 2-3x2x495 after a few cycles.  This has a powerful effect.  Even though total volume is about the same, the effect is different.

With John, we are going to spread the rep range out a bit more.  In the past, he has seemed to respond well to sets of 8.  We both agree that 5s are an essential rep range to train in, so those will be included too.  For the heavy neural work, we will use doubles instead of singles.  This gives us the ability to avoid early burn out and drop to singles later once the doubles get stuck.  So his rotation will be a 3 week wave of 8s, 5s, and 2s.  This gives us work in the entire spectrum of strength producing reps.  Mentally and physically, this weekly fluctuation is important.  3 different workouts gives us enough variety to keep things fresh, but we never get detrained in any one area.

With the linear approach, John would always be a little detrained in one area or another.  Working his 8s for too long was excellent for work capacity and growth, but he lost the sensation of the very heavy weight in his hands or on his back – something a strong lifter needs to do fairly regularly.  Training too long for triples and doubles meant he was losing some of his work capacity and risking the “burnout” effect that heavy training can cause when done too often.

The exact volume of a routine like this will vary from lifter to lifter.  John has always been a kind of “one and done” lifter.  His best progress has come when we focused on just one all out work set, followed by 1-3 back off sets depending on the exact exercise.  Other lifters can still use this approach, but work sets could be done “across” for more training stress.