[quote]gav223 wrote:
Hi Robo1, any chance you can explain a bit more. A friend who is a powerlifter trains using singles most of the time. He’s not massive, but can lift big poundages for his size.
Although I don’t know his exact routine I know that the majority of his workouts are singles only. I don’t know much about weight training so would like to know the best way to go. The 3x3 system you suggest sounds interesting. How would I set that up.
Cheers.[/quote]
singles training every day all the time is a very brute force type of method that IMHO works best if you are using progression techniques that keep you from truly maxing out such as altering the rack heights, number of boards, length of pauses etc. or if you use rest pause methods and keep the weight at 90%.
The problem is i see most people going for PRs on every single set, which is just going to lead to burn out.
there is a much more elegant way of achieving the same strength gains by employing medium and high volume techniques, which is where the starr 5x5 and korte 3x3 programs come into play.
The beauty of both is the a combination of volume (which helps you practice and perfect technique), conditioning (the repetitions force your brain to recognize the weight more consistently), and recovery (most of the medium to high volume programs don’t require you to be fully recovered to go on to the next workout, which pushes your body to develop a higher tolerance and workload capacity)
gav223, if you’re new to these programs there is a fairly detailed primer floating around on the web about both the 5x5 programs and the 3x3 set up. If someone has the link please post. This isn’t the same link but it’s a good description as well: New Lifter
but the gist is you warm up and then do 5 sets of 5 reps of compound movements like the squat and bench press.
You’re going to have to figure out what you’re 5 rep max is on each lift and then each workout the weight you end up doing the 5x5 with will be a percentage of that max. the 3x3 program is similar in nature with slightly lower percentages on the weight.
Here is a link to the 3x3. The 3x3 Program. there are better descriptions out there but that’s the first link I found. Personally for a beginner the 5x5 is going to be better for you. The korte program is a bit more involved because of the volume rises and falls over the course of a few weeks.
Both programs are great though. There is very little assistance or isolation exercises involved here. You are doing heavy compound lifts with minimal rests between training days. One of the reasons why these programs are so popular is 1) they work and 2) they are so simple in nature that even a caveman could do it.
