This year has been focused around two exercises, with a rep scheme that varied little, with clear goals. As it happens, this rather organised state of affairs is not the norm for me, I like to adapt on the hoof, often known with derision as routine hopping. It’s a good thing and a bad thing. Let’s see how finally actually following some advice from high places worked out for me as I exercised a bit of routine discipline.
I chose to focus on one top set of five in each workout, starting with the trap bar deadlift, and then later in the year the squat. The goal was simple and twofold, to increase strength in these moves for five reps and also to increase my 1RM in each.
Let’s start where I did, with the trap bar deadlift (hereafter TBDL). I began my cycle with 3x5, and followed this for about a month. Training the lift twice a week (or sometimes three times in a fortnight), doing the TBDL first in the routine. I was warming up with sets of five in the lift, starting with a 20kg plate on each end of my heavy bar, making a total of 75kg. I would do some general warmup before this, and it worked well in terms of setting the bar up with the least amount of fuss, I’m pretty lazy about stuff like that. The weight would be increased by 20kg each set, until I was at my working weight.
When the move started getting really tough, I dropped to 2x5. After only a couple of weeks (4 sessions) I dropped to one top set of five. And this was the core of my workouts for the next 8 months or so.
My other workout activities were not constant through this time. Even though my core move was set, I chopped and changed things around in other areas. I worked hard on KB pressing for low reps, KB clean and pressing, KB snatching, ab wheel, chins, anvil horn gripping, COC grippers. Sporadically I would rotate in other things, such as odd object curls, lever bar, blobs. These other parts of my workout always came after the big move, and later in the cycle they did suffer because I was fatigued after the big lift.
Progression. I used the smallest jumps in weight I had at the time, 2.5 kilos, and just kept the cycle rolling. Getting a long period of constant progression was the goal, and I managed to keep to that for months.
The TBDL was now getting seriously hard each workout, in fact it was getting very hard to progress. I found new levels of intensity and focus needed to be summoned up to achieve the set, which would leave me somewhat knocked out afterwards. I began to use a mental routine to help summon up the drive needed to attack the set, using visualisation immediately before the set, this really helped for this cycle. After really struggling with increases, but continuing to get them I finally failed to progress one week, and knew it was time to turn my focus back to the squat.
I had been unable to back squat during this time for various reasons. Those reasons were now resolved, and I returned to the squat with gusto. I started to bring my squat weights up after doing the trap bar work, and soon switched it to be the new core move, dropping the TBDL. I knew I wanted to stick with the one set of five, and quickly found a suitably conservative weight, and began slow progression once again. It was much easier to settle into this new cycle than it was to set up the TBDL cycle, just a case of finding a decent moderate work weight, and getting going. As the weight was still moderate and the volume was low, I was doing this move in every workout, up to three times a week. Once things started to get moderately tough, I switched to using tiny progression, and sorted out enough microweights to allow 0.5 kg progression per session, about a third of a percent increase each time. I started to struggle to recover, and switched in another non-core move session, so only doing the squat every second workout. This other session was lighter, usually KB work. Further progression was possible with the squat, and I continued onwards for another month.
This is one interpretation of Hardgainer and Dino ideas combined. One top set of five is a classic dino training device, and long cycles using microweights is classic Hardgainer thinking. I’ll comment on both.
Using one top set of five was a real revelation to me. I have done all kinds of rep range cycles, 20 rep squats, 10x3, 5x5 and 3x5. These higher rep plans need a lot of work, this is a good thing, but it can also wear me down over time. Dropping heavy volume work way down really allowed me to recover more quickly, a big plus. I allowed the background work to really just coast along, letting the big lift absorb my energy and not worrying about holding back for the key peak set. This allowed me to get really strong, stronger than ever, and the 5 rep work steadily pushed my 1RM up.
Long dedication to a lift, using microweights. This works out very well. It can be a little unsettling at first, as the cycle will work best if you start at a weight that is perhaps medium hard, a good hard set, but a guaranteed to complete set. And then move to the regular increases. The unsettling part is that it feels easy at first, like you’re not working hard enough. But this is ideal, and the longer you can keep it feeling easy as the weights go on, the better it will all work out. You may have spotted I was using only 0.5kg per time with the squat, this was about a third of a percent at a time, this might be considered to be extremely slow progress for a big move like the squat, but I wanted to take the principle to its extreme, and make progress as slowly as I could. Its very good mentally, knowing that you MUST make the lift, because its actually no real difference than the last time you lifted it. And this feeling can be stretched out for weeks and months, and all the time you’re eeking out tiny bits of progress. The Hardgainer book describes this kind of slow, consistent progression training as “slow cooking” and also as“the golden fleece of strength training” and I agree, it’s a very good way to get some very real gains.
I did plenty of things wrong over the cycle. Firstly, another time, I would make the increases in weight as low as possible, using the 0.5kg weights earlier and really taking my time to bring it up to the tougher workloads. Even my slow progression got pushed along too fast with the frequent training. Secondly, I over-focussed on these moves, doing them every workout, or every second workout, with little variety. Once the loads got really heavy later in the cycle, this was tough on the body, and hard to bring the sheer focus to get a PB every time. Later in the squat cycle I also started to do higher rep KB swings, I was loading my back hard all the time, and perhaps not fully recovering. The relentless nature of the schedule caused a few minor injuries and stiffness. I had to stop the squat cycle after hurting my back outside the gym.
Its hard to hold back on progression sometimes. I really think had I tried to progress even slower, in the long run I’d have managed to get further.
And I desperately needed more variety. Variety in reps, variety in moves. It was working so well it was easy to want to push it along, but I think the core move needs to be varied more, for the mind and the body. Had I switched the move to another before I’d really met my limits, I think I would probably recovered better overall. I took the idea to its limits to find out how it would work for me.
For all the errors and mistakes I made, the difficultly of keeping a completely regular routine in the modern world, it worked really well. It’s really good to be getting stronger, and it’s a lot of fun pushing up those 5 rep maxes. I lost some weight over the year, and definitely firmed up. It was a lot of fun. I’m going to continue the idea of the 1x5 top set, but this time I’ll be mixing it in with other training methodologies. The cycle may last a very very long time done perhaps only once a week, maybe using several different items of equipment/bars each on a slow progression, but if its real measurable progress, then I’ll take it.
The numbers. I started the TBDL cycle at a moderate-heavy 195kg for 5, with a 1RM of 273kg. I ended at 5x257.5kg – this translated into a 1RM of 280kg. The squat cycle began at 150kg x5, and 1RM of 200kg. Ending at 171.5kgx5 and a 1RM of 202.5kg. I suffered injuries before I had properly tested my 1RM on the squat, but I know how much stronger I had got on the 5 rep sets. In the end I didn’t manage to push my 1RM up that far, but I really pushed my 5 rep maxes, and got a lot of hard productive training done over a long time.
A truly great and fun way to train. Just avoid milking it too dedicatedly for too long.
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