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What works for me?

What do I look for in a lifting programme? Well, as a quick reminder, a programme works for me if:

• I get stronger;
• I put on a little muscle;
• I don’t have to get fat in the process;
• I don’t get injured;
• I recover easily; and
• I can go for a bike ride or a walk at weekends and not derail my progress.

It’s kind of a long list but it captures most of what is important to me.  Yes, I am hard to please sometimes.

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Basic principles

You develop strength by lifting weights that are close to your 1RM and in enough volume such that your body gets the message that it needs to get stronger.  There is a lot more science to it than this but that will do for the time being.

I think the trick (if there is a trick) is to make sure that you reach “enough” volume without tearing yourself down in the process.  At the moment, the scheme I am using to hit that sweet spot of “enough” volume is a combination of 10 x 3 volume lifting and 3x 3 intensity lifting.

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Volume days: 10 sets of 3 reps

I first read about this scheme in an article by Chad Waterbury but didn’t pay much attention at the time as his focus was on getting bigger.  He also talks about it here and here.  I really like this scheme as I can get through 30 reps of a really heavy weight without stressing my body at all.  If I did the same volume with a 5 sets of 5 reps regime, I would be burned out within a few weeks.

For example, at the moment, my 1RM pistol is sitting at 36.25kg and I am doing 27.5kg for 10 sets of 3 reps on 1min30s (both legs within the 1min30s).  So I am getting only about 30s rest.  It’s tough but it’s not lung-busting like 20 reps squats are.  The interesting thing to note is that bodyweight plus 25kg is about 92% of my 1RM.  So that’s some pretty quality volume!

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Intensity days: 3 sets of 3 reps

I borrowed this from powerlifting and it has revolutionised my lifting.  With 3 sets of 3 reps, I tend to work up to a maximum weight with 3mins rest between each exercise.  So each set of 3 reps is heavier than the one before.  The idea is to break the PR from the previous week.

For example, if I am trying to push my pistol up, I might go for 32.5kg, 35kg and then 37.5kg.  I might get 3 reps with 32.5kg, 3 reps with 35kg but only 2 reps with 37.5kg.  If that happened, then the following week, I’d start at 35kg for the first set as I would be confident of hitting it.

I wouldn’t want to start again at 32.5kg as there is a chance that the early sets are harming my ability in the last set and I want to give myself the best possible chance of nailing the heaviest weight.  On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to start at 37.5kg in case I only got 2 reps and failed.

I found that switching to 3 sets of 3 reps while ramping up the weight meant that my pull up, dip and pistol improvements were twice as fast as they were when only using straight sets.

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A place for volume and a place for intensity

Typically, therefore, I will do an upper/lower split workout routine like this:

• Upper (max) – 3 sets x 3 reps (max effort)
• Lower (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Upper (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Lower (max) – 3 sets x 3 reps (max effort)

For the upper body, I’ll do a push and a pull at these set/rep schemes for both repetition and max effort days.  For the lower body, I’ll usually do 3 exercises on the repetition day: a squat, a hamstring exercise and an abdominal exercise but only one exercise on the max effort day.  I find max effort lower body much harder to recover from than repetition lower body work, probably because of the larger muscles involved (and the involvement of the spine, I suppose, which is the central nervous system).

Sometimes, I will hike the weight up a bit on my repetition work and do 6 sets of 2 reps.  I learned this scheme from Mark Twight’s book Extreme Alpinism.  He wrote this book in his climbing, pre-Gym Jones days and the scheme works brilliantly for improving top end work capacity and strength on pull ups and dips.  I wouldn’t want to do it all the time though, as it skirts along the top edge of bearable intensity for me on a repetition day.

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Regenerate from time to time

When I need to regroup, I’ll cut out the max effort lifting and switch over to a regenerative cycle for 3-4 weeks like this:

• Upper (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Lower (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Upper (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)
• Lower (reps) – 10 sets x 3 reps (repetition)

While I’m doing this cycle, I don’t try and drive the weight up very much.  It probably only goes up a few kg over the 3-4 weeks.  I concentrate on just getting quality reps in and grooving some good movement patterns.

So that’s what’s working for me (at the moment).  If anyone else has had good (or bad) experiences with 10 sets of 3 reps, I’d be interested to hear them.