Lately my performance decreased because I can do less reps with same weight. I also sleep bad – wake up to early or can not fall a sleep even thought I sleep bad previous night. For some time I was losing weight because I ate to little (not on purpose I thought it was enough).
Currently I train 3 times a week (ABABAB). 4 exercises, 4 sets of 10 reps + 10 minutes of cycling (quite taxing).
My question is what should I do in such case? Take a week off? Do half number of sets?
Sleep problems may be high cortisol at night, which could be caused by many things, like not eating enough.
Maybe try doing your workouts in a different order. (Did you read CT’s article on programming for personality types?) Also eat enough to have energy to finish sets.
How old are you? What lifts are you doing?
Isn’t that training style taxing to your mind first of all?Honestly,If I went same rep range,same exercise,more weight each time I’d go nuts and skip training every 3 weeks
Why not doing something like 531,westside,some linear periodization program,in general something that gives you time to get stronger
To explain further and better,let’s take 531
In week 1 you do 85 % for maximum reps,in week 2 90 % and in week 3 95%,week 4 deload and then repeat.You have 4 weeks to get stronger by 5 pounds,not 4 days as in the program you describe.5-10 pounds per month still sums up to a huge number overtime and it’s way less likely that you’ll get stuck as now
In conclusion,CHANGE YOUR ROUTINE
In his defense 531 is an intermediate program and he is a beginner, hopefully in a linear progression program (albeit stalled).
Then he can go take 95 % of his max instead of 90% and break some insane rep prs per week
He could just make a little modification to his current routine like 3 sets of 5-10,stopping a rep short of failure per set,but unless he started lifting 3 weeks ago an intermediate routine will work just fine imo
If you’re gonna drive across the country, why start out driving in the wrong direction?
Better program = better results.
I totally agree with Greek Bro. More varied, but equally effective “sessions” or “workouts” or “challenges” allow you to get in more quality workouts, and give you more time grow into progress.
Progression is still linear, but instead of ABAB… you get
A(light/fast) B(light/fast)
A (Medium) B (Medium)
A (heavy) B (heavy)
Then add weight, linearly progressing.