[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
[quote]55amg wrote:
[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:
[quote]55amg wrote:
m at 250x8 and 225x13 and I was thinking of doing like a 6 week peaking cycle, I can either :
week 1 200x15
week 2 210x15
week 3 220x12
week 4 230x12
week 5 240x10
week 6 250x10 (hopefully lol)
or 225x10 on week 1 and go up 5 lb every week while keeping the reps the same until I hit 250x10 … What do you all think? Also I would be doing 1-2 sets of overload with the slingshot and some paused closegrips wich always helped alot I think. Thanks for your help :)[/quote]
I prefer to do it the other way around. Start with heavier and work on improving your capacity to do reps with a heavy weight.
[/quote]
SO I should start with 250x5 and add one rep every week?[/quote]
That’s not what I’m saying. The body doesn’t work in a linear fashion. It is not as simple as saying that you can add one rep per week. Adding one rep per week (from 5 to 10), so 5 reps in 5 weeks would represent a strength gain of about 12-15% in strength over 5 weeks. Most solid strength programs will give you that gain over 10 weeks or so.
It sounds “easy” to just add one measly rep every week. But when you are talking about something that is already a max effort that 1 rep out or5 represent a pretty significant strength gain, once that cannot be repeated every week.
If it were that easy we could go from 250lbs x 5 to 250 x 57 after one year, and that just wont happen.
What I’m saying is that if you want to be able to do 250lbs x 10 you need the base strength to do it… the stronger you are, the “easier” 250lbs becomes relative to your capacity and the more reps you can do.
Normally you can do 10 reps with 72-75% of your maximum.
So if you are shooting for 250lbs x 10 it means that you need to be able to do one solid rep in the bench press with at least 335lbs (250 is about 75% of 330). Even if you are much better at reps than maxes you would still need at least a 325lbs bench press to have a shot at getting 250lbs for 10 quality reps.
If you can’t bench press close to that weight you can try to add reps every week until you are blue in the face, there is not way you will be able to go from 250 x 5 to 250 x 10 in that short of a time.
A 250 x 5 (if it is a limit effort) equals about a 280-285lbs max bench. Which would mean a lack of strength of AT LEAST 45lbs to have a shot at getting 250 x 10.
So while ONLY adding 5 reps over 5-6 weeks sounds VERY easy. In reality it requires a pretty large increase in strength.
Of course all of this is assuming that 250 x 5 is an all-out effort at the moment.
EDIT… I just noticed that you can do 250 x 8… so realistically it should be fairly simple top get up to 250 x 10. I assumed 250 x 5 was your max since you decided to start there.
So yeah, getting from 250 x 8 to 250 x 10 should be fairly easy.
But by starting heavier what I mean is handling weights that are heavier than your target.
Do training sets between 260-275. Mostly, with one set per workout where you go for higher reps, just to maintain your strength-endurance.
For example.
Week 1
4 x 3-4 reps @ 260
1 x max reps @ 235
Week 2
2 x 3-4 reps @ 260
2 x 3-4 reps @ 265
1 x max reps @ 235
Week 3
1 x 3-4 reps @ 260
2 x 3-4 reps @ 265
1 x 2-3 reps @ 270
1 x max reps @ 240
Week 4
1 x 4-5 reps @ 260
1 x 4-5 reps @ 265
1 x 3-4 reps @ 270
1 x 2-3 reps @ 275
1 x max reps @ 240
Week 5
1 x 5-6 reps @ 260
1 x 5-6 reps @ 265
1 x 4-5 reps @ 270
1 x 3-4 reps @ 275
1 x max reps @ 245
Week 6
1 x max reps @ 250
- Don’t worry if you don’t improve the max reps from week to week even when the weights stays the same: the volume with heavy weights increases from week to week which will leave you more tired when the max reps set comes up.[/quote]
Thank you very much for putting some good thought in this I just printed the workout out and will start it right away!