Briefly mentioned this earlier, but I’ve got a friend coming into town, and hes putting together a lifting party I guess you could call it. Going to treat it like a meet. Which is cool, because I’ve never really intended on doing anything like that. My initial plan was to just keep milling through the cogs of 5/3/1 until the end of April and see what happens. Now that I’ve given it more than a second thought, I want to attempt a small peak beforehand. I’m crushing my final sets by double or triple the prescribed reps. So relatively speaking, I’m sure my max pulls are going to be limited by how comfortable I would be with true 1RM weights, as opposed to the actual muscle behind them.
So, how do you peak? I’ve got about… 5 to 6 weeks. I was thinking of waiting until 3 weeks out, limiting or removing accessory work altogether; and focusing on the main movements. Heavy singles for two weeks on all lifts, followed by a week of extreme deload and speed work before the day? Does this sound right?
Also, how do you progress heavy singles? Where do you stop so you dont completely fry yourself? How do you recommend to layout speed work? And should you perform speed work during the heavy singles phase? Sorry for all the questions, I’m fine grinding out weeks and months of sets, but I’ve never properly tried to obtain maximal effort for a set day.
Five weeks out 3x1 at 90 per cent TM, 3x3 around 60 per cent TM paused
Four weeks out work up to a small PR, that’s it
Three weeks out 2x1 90 per cent of that PR, 2x2 60 per cent paused
Two weeks out 3x1 80 per cent of the PR, that’s it
Six to seven days out 5x3x50 per cent squat, 5x3x50 per cent bench, 6x1x50 per cent deadlift
No assistance. In peak you’re no longer building anything; you’re preparing your body to display the strength that you’ve built.
In week one you can do a fluff upper day at the end of the week but it isn’t essential. If you do one, it needs to be very light. Stuff like pushups, lateral raises, etc.
Doin the same type of thing for my gym! So this is a cool and timely thread! @MarkKO I think I’m gonna roll with your peaking set up for my mini meet thing and see where we end up!
Edit: Good lord, didn’t realize this was an old one, my bad, but how did the mini meet go? Haha
PR’d on Bench, Significantly PR’d on Squat, and stayed the same on deadlift, however, in my defense, I hadn’t eaten in like 7 hours, was using a deadlift bar, which I’m extremely unfamiliar with, and it was the last lift, so I was pretty gassed from all my hype from the squat PR.
I pretty much ignored any advice I got and just did heavy ass singles for two weeks leading up to the meet, and just took 4 days off beforehand.
Fucked up my shoulder a bit, but she’s back in operation as of now.
The day of the meet, the dude that set it up was messaging me. He was laying on his floor in pretty severe back pain. Something had just flared it up. Little did he know I was doing the same thing. Haven’t had any notable back pain in years, and suddenly, that day everything felt like I was falling apart. Then a third guy told us when we showed up he was laying on his floor all morning.
3 totally different training routines, and none of us had lifted with eachother in years. All in the same damn boat.