[utfootball4]

utfootball4 on April 3, 2007 at 8:27 am #63884

We pyramid in a very similar fashion to what y'all have posted. We pyramid our daily workout on ME days, and cycle or wave the intensity similar to what you have posted above. We do like to raise the intensity if we are focusing on power. After warming up with bar only, then warm ups with 135lbs and 225lbs, we might do something like this…

5×50 4×65 3×70 3×80 2×85
5×50 4×65 3×73 2×85 2×90
5×50 4×68 3×80 2×90 1×95
5×50 4×68 3×85 1×95 1×102

We don't do a lot of singles, and we try to get over 90% at least once or twice each week. The lower reps in the first few sets keep you from getting beat up. Triples and double don't really take that much of you, especially if you are careful with your accessory movements.

If we are focusing on hypertrophy, we might do something like this (similar to UT's first post)…

5×60 3×70 3×75 2×80     8 x 70    8 x 70
5×60 3×74 2×80 2×85     8 x 73    8 x 73
5×60 3×78 2×85 1×90     8 x 75    8 x 75
5×60 3×83 1×90 1×95     8 x 77    8 x 77

I don't feel that the warm ups sets do much for hypertrophy unless they are at least 8 reps per set and at least 65% of 1RM. In this second pyramid scheme, we're still doing heavy weights with a few sets >90% 1RM, so continuing to work on strength, put the primary emphasis of hypertrophy comes out in the last two sets. These sets are killer, and we don't always get our full 8 reps on the last set. We cycle back and forth between the power emphasis and the hypertrophy emphasis almost all year long.

One final caveat…we don't actually calculate out the percentages. We know roughly how much we need to bump up on each set, and round everything to 5lbs., so our percentages are not exactly as posted above. We do know what our 'stages' were from the week before and we add 5 – 10lbs. from the week before at each stage, depending on how we feel.

so if you had a athlete who needed more lower body hypertrophy u would use the 5-3-2-1-8-8? my only concern is im not sure if you have enough volume 8+ reps, in my above example it covers all spectrum 10-8-6-4-2-1-8-8 – 5 sets hypertrophy and 4 low/high level strength.