What are Pyramided Sets?
In
the event you are a real beginner, and we all were at one time, let me
first get a little terminology out of the way. An exercise is the
movement, or lift, that you are doing. A set is the actual act of
moving the weight a certain amount of times, and a rep is the 1 time
movement of the weight. So a “set of 8 reps of bench press†means you
will be doing the exercise bench press where by you raise and lower the
weight 8 times without stopping.
I recommend doing 5 sets of each exercise. Why?
For starters each of the exercises I am suggesting you start and limit your self to, are compound exercises
(work more than 1 muscle group and involve more than 1 joint) and work
a major muscle group. Anything more than 5 sets would risk over
training, assuming you are using appropriately heavy enough weights.
Also when you are working a large muscle group (chest, shoulders, back, legs) experience has taught that 5 sets are the minimum required to exhaust the muscle fibers enough to stimulate growth.
Since at the beginning you will be working your entire body in each
workout you need the 5 sets for each exercise to accomplish muscle
fatigue for each muscle group. Later on in more advanced training
certain exercises would be reduced to 3 sets because you will be doing
multiple exercises for each muscle group, thus surpassing the minimum
total of 5 sets a different way.
What makes a set “pyramided†is the weight amount chosen. For
each of the 5 sets you will use a different weight amount such that if
you to create a chart of the weights used, the shape of a pyramid would
result.
What follows is a brief description of what each set of the 5 should accomplish.
Set 1:
This is a warm up set, but not in the sense of stretching, because that
has been done already. This warm up is to tell the muscle group being
worked that it’s time to get serious. You should chose a weight that is
about 50% of your maximum 1 rep weight and perform 6-8 perfect form
reps.
Set 2: Increase your weight to 60-65% of max and perform exactly 6 reps using perfect form. Your muscles now know they are working.
Set 3:
Increase weight to 75% of max and knock out exactly 6 reps using
perfect form. At this point your muscles are warmed up, blood is
rushing to the worked area, and your body is primed for the first of 2
“muscle building “ sets. These first 3 sets lay the foundation, if you
were to stop right now, your muscles would recover quickly, with
effectively no growth what so ever.
Set 4:
Increase weight to 90 % of max and get 4 reps with good form and find a
way to do 2 more reps for a total of 6. If perfect form were required
you should not have been able to do 6 reps. This is the set that has told your muscles “time to get biggerâ€. If you want growth of any kind this is how this set must go.
Set 5:
Drop the weight back to 60-75% of max and go to failure. If you can do
more than 8 reps then your weight choice here was not enough. In the
perfect workout you fail on the 6th rep. This set brings the muscle to
exhaustion and reinforces sets 4 “we need to get bigger†mentality.
If
you can honestly say that you performed 5 sets as described above, at
this stage, you do not need any more work for this muscle group. With
proper rest and nutrition when you do this exercise again you will be
able to increase the weight.
The chart below shows the weight increase progression through 9 workouts of an exercise where your maximum lift is 100 lbs at the first workout. The numbers in the chart are the actual weights to use if you could
add 10 pounds to your 4th set every other session. If you are a
relative beginner or have not been showing any gains for awhile,
adopting the plan we recommend should allow you to do this in the first
month.
| work out | set 1 | set 2 | set 3 | set 4 | set 5 |
| 1 | 50 | 60 | 75 | 90 | 75 |
| 2 | 50 | 60 | 75 | 100 | 75 |
| 3 | 55 | 65 | 80 | 100 | 80 |
| 4 | 55 | 65 | 80 | 110 | 80 |
| 5 | 60 | 70 | 90 | 110 | 90 |
| 6 | 60 | 70 | 90 | 120 | 90 |
| 7 | 65 | 75 | 100 | 120 | 100 |
| 8 | 65 | 75 | 100 | 125 | 100 |
| 9 | 70 | 80 | 105 | 125 | 105 |
