Programming & Periodizing Reps
-: Alright so Tempo's obviously been a big impact so far.
It's the first one we talked about.
When prescribing that x tempo, you need to make sure
that you're accounting for that that's a lot of intensity
at the beginning.
The x is explosive, that's a lot of intensity
so higher intensity tends to be lower reps.
So if I'm using an X, guess what?
Reps come down.
When using a very long tempo,
that's going to extend the time portion.
It may not extend a significant portion
because if you go too long, the weights
are gonna have to go down 'cause it's you know,
you're gonna fatigue.
So if the tempo gets too long,
you will also need to bring the reps down
because otherwise the intensity will get so low
that it's not significant anymore.
Like the set would get too long.
So it becomes an endurance set instead.
Now maybe that's what you're going for,
but if you're just lengthening the tempo,
that's probably not the best way to extend a set:
one, from a boredom standpoint and two
'cause we're trying to bind this to concentric
do more concentric work if we're focusing on metabolic work
and if I'm just extending the tempo, I'm gonna be
spending a lot of time in the eccentric as well.
So we don't want to do too long a tempo and too many reps
because we end up with insignificant amount of load
or intensity, not getting significant tension anymore.
We're just getting the time component and that's obviously
not gonna lead to the stimulus that we want.
When we look at varying reps, similar to varying tempo.
Okay we're gonna look at,
we can vary that at multiple points.
So we can vary reps within a program.
That should probably be a small change meaning that
as you progress through your program,
you shouldn't be like okay, today we're gonna do 20's
and then next week we're gonna do 10's.
That's too big of a jump.
When we're looking at varying reps within a program,
they should be small changes because maybe
we're focusing on jumping up intensity.
We're trying to use progressive overload,
but with progressive overload which is you know,
essentially the goal is to increase intensity every week,
that's not always gonna happen by simply saying
hey, I'm gonna put weight on the bar
and because magic happens when you change weights,
I will be able to lift heavier.
Because people go in with that assumption
that they're just gonna go up in strength
in whatever increment weights that their gym
happens to have, they will often times
end up with a load where they start compensating.
They start cheating, they start picking up bad habits.
They start generating momentum and changing the tempo
and changing all the other variables to compensate
for the fact that they put more weight on the bar
and they therefore think they should be able
to move it for a certain amount of repetitions.
One way to ensure that I should be able to do more weight
next week than this week is to do one less rep
or two less reps so if I could do a weight 10 times today
and I was able to do it and my recovery is optimal.
I manage my stress, my nutrition is good.
Everything goes as planned.
If next week or the next training cycle,
whatever that may be, whether it's five days from now,
six days from now, a week from now, 10 days from now,
whatever, when I'm going to repeat this workout,
if I lower the reps, I should be able to
increase the weight hopefully by a small marker at least.
That's really the only way to guarantee
progressive overload is to have
a program that descends in reps.
It's the only way to guarantee that I should be able
to go up intensity as to make sure that I'm also
going down in the reps.
Now there are plenty of times when you will get stronger
from workout to workout because you're getting
neurologically efficient fast.
But as you become more advanced,
you do not increase in strength at the same rate.
Therefore, if you want to make sure you're progressive
in intensity, you will maybe need to make
small adjustments in the reps game over
the course of a program to ensure progression towards
the intensity that you want and then when you go back,
you should see that you have actually accumulated
a lot of actual strength, not just well I only went up
because I went down in reps.
You'll see the strength too.
It's just you'll see what happened over a period of time
instead of trying to figure out well,
am I two and a half pounds or five pounds stronger
than last week and why is it that I have to move up
in the same amount of increments in a dumb bell
lateral raise where I'm using a tiny little muscle
that's got extremely poor leverage versus
what I do in a bench press?
So if you look at it like well, you should go up 2%.
What happens if you're lateral raising 10 pounds?
How do you go up 2% of 10 pounds?
Well you know, so one way to ensure that would be like
okay, let's write a program where I'm gonna do 12 reps
with 10 pounds and then maybe I could go to 12 and a half
pounds for 10 reps or you know, the next.
Or maybe who knows, maybe I can go to 15 or whatever,
but I can use those bigger progression in weight
because I'm decreasing the reps as well
instead of switching over to cheating and compensating.
The more advanced you are, greater training age,
so quality remember is an important part of that,
the less you can vary the reps within a specific workout.
So you can change in a workout like I said
especially metabolic training, you could have
four reps at the beginning and 25 reps at the end
like all over the place, but when you start becoming
more advanced especially for strength and hypertrophy work,
your reps can't be drastically different.
Like the window between your lowest and highest reps
get smaller because what will happen is you'll start
accumulating different stresses
and as you get more advanced,
you need to be more specific on the stimulus.
So when you have a beginner,
you can have a shotgun approach.
You're aiming at a big target because
everything is ready to respond to training.
As you become advanced, you're having to periodize
between different small elements to continue
to make progress so you need to have basically like,
you need to be at the sniper rifle like
laser-specific and that means you can't have
a big range in the reps that you're using
in an individual workout.
You can still progress them overtime
and use other types of methods that way,
but you need to make sure you're achieving
that specific stimulus and you're not like
broadly going over a bunch of other things.
Otherwise, your periodization will not work.