Not all programming strategies are complicated.
Some are.
This one is not.
Over the past year or so I’ve really fallen in love with the concept of “Top Set / Back Off Set” programming. It’s been around forever, so not really new, but has made a bit of a resurgence in popularity in many strength and bodybuilding circles in the last few years.
Before getting into the “how to” of the methodology, a bit of context.
This is mainly a hypertrophy based programming method. While you can certainly get stronger with this method (and even massively stronger) the way that I use this tends to be in the context of someone training for more muscle mass.
In using this method you’ll be pushing quite a few sets to failure in medium to high rep ranges relatively frequently. In doing so it necessitates the use of a rotation of exercises each time you target a various body part. So we aren’t getting hyper focused on overloading any one exercise with a lot of volume or frequency, so it’s hard to make this approach super specific to power lifting.
In addition, I tend to use rep ranges here that are high to medium, so again, not super specific to power lifting which might require more work in the 1-5 rep range.
But the method is really quite simple.
First – pick two rep ranges to work in for a given exercise. The first rep range will be a low to medium rep range, the second set will be a medium to high rep range.
The exact rep ranges you choose will mainly be dictated by (1) what exercise you are doing (2) where in the workout the exercise falls (3) what body part you are working.
As a general rule of thumb we’d say that dumbbells, machines, and cables would be trained at higher rep ranges, and barbell based movements would be trained in lower rep ranges. Lower rep ranges are used in the beginning of workouts where strength is highest, and higher rep ranges are used towards the end of workouts where we are working more for fatigue than maximal loads. Smaller muscle groups will generally use higher rep ranges than bigger muscle groups.
Pretty basic stuff, but important to remember when selecting your rep ranges to progress within.
A pretty generic but useful framework for a compound movement at the beginning of a workout might be to work your top set in the 4-8 rep range and your back off set in the 8-12 rep range.
So to start with, select a load you think you can get about 8 reps with, and do 8 reps with it.
Lets say that’s a Squat for 315 x 8. That’s your top set. Now back off that weight maybe 10-20% and try and squat a set of 12 with it. Lets just say 275 x 12. That’s your day 1 starting point.
Next time you hit this workout you’ll add a bit of load to both sets.
320 x 8, 280 x 12 would be the goal.
Keep adding small amounts of load to each set every week. For as long as you can you’d try to hold the same number of reps each week.
But of course you’ll eventually have to drop your reps as the load increases.
Over the course of several weeks you’ll eventually work your way down to the bottom end of the rep range for the top set and the back off set, and when that happens you’ll reset your weights so you can get back towards the top end of the rep range.
Two important points…….
One – there is no structured time line for this. It might take MANY weeks or even months for you to whittle down from 8 reps to 4 reps. Or it might be just a few weeks.
Two – the top set and the back off set operate independently of each other. The lower range might “bottom out” before the upper range does – or vice versa – and that is okay.
The idea is that each time you work your way from the top end to the bottom end of a rep range you are setting rep PRs along the way and/or ending each cycle a bit higher than the previous cycle.
Deloads in between cycles are probably a good idea if you are really pushing hard for many weeks in a row.
Perhaps an over simplified example of what a cycle might look like is this:
- 315 x 8, 275 x 12
- 320 x 8, 280 x 12
- 325 x 7, 285 x 11
- 330 x 6, 290 x 10
- 335 x 6, 295 x 10
- 340 x 5, 300 x 10
- 345 x 5, 305 x 10
- 350 x 4, 310 x 9
- 325 x 8 (PR), 315 x 8
- 330 x 8 (PR), 285 x 12 (PR)
- 335 x 7 (PR), 290 x 11 (PR)
- etc, etc…..
The 4-8, 8-12 range works well for a lot of heavier compound movements.
For smaller muscle groups, machine / cable movements, etc you might do a top set in the 8-12 range and your back off set in the 12-20 range. You can even apply those higher rep ranges to some heavier compound movements like squats if you really want to torture yourself for a few cycles. It tends to work really well as a hypertrophy stimulus on lower body exercises (squats, leg presses, hack squats, etc).
If you are training a muscle group 2 times per week then I’d suggest you use a different exercise the second day of the week. It would be difficult if not impossible to make progress by applying this to say Back Squats twice per week.
But you might have good success squatting 4-8, 8-12 on Monday and then Leg Pressing 8-12, 12-20 on Thursday for example.
If you are training a muscle group more than twice per week then I would not recommend this approach. All out failure training more than twice per week is probably a bad idea. Higher frequencies tend to necessitate a lower relative intensity across the board.
If doing 2-3 exercises for a muscle group in a given session, then you’d probably wind up 4-6 total sets for that muscle group using this approach, using a combination of top set / back off sets and single all out sets to failure – often with the use of rest-pause techniques on that single all out set to really ramp up the fatigue factor.
I usually use an approach that would look like this:
Chest
- Bench Press 4-8, 8-12
- Incline Press 8-12, 12-15
- Cable Fly 12-15 x (1 set w/ rest-pause)
Quads
- Squats 4-8, 8-12
- Leg Press 8-12, 12-20
- Leg Ext 12-20 (1 set w/ rest-pause)
Back
- Deadlift or Rack Pulls 4-8, 8-12
- Seated Cable Rows 8-12, 12-15
- Lat Pulldowns 12-20 (1 set with rest-pause)
Make no mistake – this is a low volume approach to training. Low volume can work really well for hypertrophy IF and only IF your effort is extremely high at every session. If you aren’t good at putting in extreme efforts into a set and you don’t know how to push right up to the brink of failure then this approach probably won’t work all that well for you.
Low volume + low effort = not enough stimulus for growth.
Additionally, you must understand the role of mind-muscle connection and how to keep that focus on the target muscle group for the duration of an all-out high effort set. It’s not just about moving a weight from point A to point B until you wear out. It’s about keeping an extremely targeted stress on a given muscle group for a handful of super high effort sets on exercises that you feel work for you. Those exercises can vary from person to person.
This approach tends to work really well on the BACK END of a higher volume phase of training. If you’ve become stagnant on pushing high volumes for an extended period of time, try something like this and watch your strength and growth both take off, perhaps returning to a phase of higher volume of training after several cycles of setting new rep PRs.
I’ve found alternating periods of high and low volume over the course of a year to be pretty effective. You don’t necessarily have to be “all in” on one approach or another.
If you want to take a deeper dive into the top set / back off set approach and how to alternate periods of lower volume with higher volumes then I’d encourage you to take a look at my Four Day Upper / Lower Split for Hypertrophy Program.
The program is far more than a list of exercises/sets/reps, but is a pretty comprehensive look at an entire training philosophy for long term training for hypertrophy and physique.
Four Day Upper / Lower Program for Hypertrophy
