Poliquin how many sets

Bag 0 Product added to cart. Thank you for shopping with Poliquin Group. Training Rules To Live By. April 19, Estimated reading time: 7 minutes Although living in the information age has its benefits, one of the drawbacks from a health and fitness standpoint is that we are often overwhelmed with conflicting ideas that make it difficult for us to separate facts from fallacies.

To get you started on developing a sound weight training program that will help you achieve your goals, here are 67 general rules about program design pulled from our bank of articles to make your programs better: All programs have both negative and positive features, no matter how well designed or specific they are. Although it is interesting to examine the training programs of elite athletes, it is unlikely that such programs would be appropriate for the average trainee.

Aerobic work places considerable stress on the adrenal system, and the effects can significantly hamper progress in strength training.

It is critical to pay attention to nutrition and supplementation to augment work capacity. Such nutritional support translates into the ability to handle greater average loads when performing multiple sets. One of the keys to optimal recovery is a post-workout nutrition, which requires carbohydrates to lower cortisol levels and increase muscle glycogen.

Depending on the training intensity and the conditioning level of the athlete, 48 to 96 hours of recovery are necessary for tissue repair and protein synthesis. If the training stimuli are too far apart, the overcompensation will fade away and strength levels will eventually return to previous levels.

If training stimuli are too close, overcompensation will not be allowed to happen and a drop in strength can result. The effectiveness of any program is a function of the degree that it challenges your body.

Every time you repeat a training program, it becomes less effective. Beginners may be able to show improvement for several months on a fixed weight training program. Unchanging training routines lead to overuse injuries. After a warm-up, the strength training session should last only one hour. Muscles that are predominately slow twitch, such as the soleus, respond better to more-frequent training. Muscles that are predominately fast twitch, such as the hamstrings respond better to less-frequent training.

Tests of power such as the vertical jump and standing long jump have been used to ensure that the training program is not adversely affecting speed. You must have a clear goal in mind before making the exercise selection. While keeping in mind the risk of developing structural imbalances, it is important to select exercises for the muscle groups specifically involved in achieving training goals.

The reason it works is that the training variable to which you adapt the fastest is the number of reps you perform per set. The Five Per Cent Solution takes advantage of this fact by changing the number of reps you do each session. This means your muscles never know what to expect, so they have no choice but to keep growing. Here are the key things to bear in mind. Rows, squats , deadlifts and presses are the best choices. Make sure you work every body part once every four or five days.

Here is one possible example. Day 1: chest and back. Day 2: legs and abs. Near-maximal and maximal weights must be used. The following are several effective set-and-rep prescriptions for increasing relative strength. Relative strength produces minimal increases in size, so bodybuilders should not use those methods except as an occasional means of introducing variety. For more on his books, seminars and methods, visit www.

You must be logged in to post a comment Login. You must be logged in to post a comment. A cable machine or pulley machine is a versatile piece of workout equipment comprising a pulley system and weights. The pulley Everyone has different fitness goals they want to hit. Depending on your current physique, you may need to build muscle, lose Round, well-carved glutes assume an enormous role in aesthetics — yet have you at any point wondered why glutes are significant Most times when people start a training program, they see results after about 2 months of training.

However, these initial results, In-depth, this may mean anything from your career finally being profitable, investments making One option is to use weight releasers. These are giant metal hooks that attach on either side of a barbell. Here is Josh Bryant giving a perfect demonstration of weight releasers:. As you can see the weight releasers drop down to the ground after they hit the floor. This means the exercise is heavier on the way down and lighter on the way up.

Another option is to use exercises where eccentric-only reps are easy to perform. Great examples include preacher curls and V-bar dips. If you cannot safely lower the weight over 10 seconds then it is too heavy. The 3 then 1 method works for similar reasons to the contrast set method. The eccentric-only singles teach your body to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible.

Then when you go to perform your heavy triples you will be able to lift more weight than usual. If you are an advanced lifter with AT LEAST 2 years of hardcore training experience under your belt then you have to give the 3 then 1 method a shot. It is by far one of the best ways to train for pure strength gains.

Charles Poliquin believed that one of the best ways to train for a mix of size and strength gains is to train in the rep range. The reps are low enough to get the benefits of nervous system adaptations but still high enough to build muscular size. He believes that the best way for most trainees to build size and strength is to alternate back and forth between accumulation phases of training and intensification phases of training.

The accumulation phases feature higher reps and are designed to build muscle mass while the intensification phases feature lower reps and are designed to build strength. Do you notice anything interesting here?

Charles believes that bodybuilders and powerlifters should spend some time training in the rep ranges! You may have noticed that Charles Poliquin likes to use routines where the number of reps varies from one set to the next. Charles also likes to use routines where the number of reps varies from one workout to the next. There is nothing wrong with training this way. However, Charles believed that some trainees got better results if their target reps changed from one workout to the next.

Here are some examples:. You start at the higher end of your rep bracket and decrease the number of reps by 1 at each workout.

It is very exciting to take big weight jumps from one workout to the next. As a general rule of thumb the more excited you are to train the more effort you will put into your sets and the more you will get out of them. If that is the case then go ahead and load up the bar with as much weight as you can handle for the target rep range!

The idea is simple: you pick a weight that you can perform 5 sets of 6 reps with. You keep the weight the same on every workout until you can perform 5 sets of 9 reps with it.

This method works very well for trainees with a more balanced neurotransmitter profile. Use the same weight at every following workout until you can perform 5 sets of 9 reps. Perform 2 forced reps at the end of your 5th set on every other workout. You would start out with 5 sets of 6 reps on all of these exercises and progress them as much as possible at each workout. Charles also likes his athletes to perform forced reps on every other workout. More specifically he tells his athletes to perform 2 forced reps on the last set of each exercise on every other workout.

Forced reps are a high-intensity training technique popularized by the legendary bodybuilder Dorian Yates. At the end of your last set your training partner will help you perform 2 additional reps after reaching failure. He will help you through the concentric range of the 2 extra reps and you will lower the weight back down on your own. These forced reps help you to overload your eccentric strength levels and are fantastic for boosting size and strength.

It is a modified version of rest-pause sets as popularized by Dante Trudel. First you perform 5 reps with your 5 rep max. Then you rest 15 seconds and perform 1 more single. The single will feel very difficult but you will make it! You repeat this process, resting 15 seconds and performing 1 more rep with the same weight until you have performed 8 total reps.

The 5 to 8 method is so effective cor both size and strength gains because you are overloading both your central nervous system and your muscular system. Your central nervous system is absolutely torched because the extra single reps literally feel like all-out 1-rep maxes. However, your target muscle groups also get torched because of the post-failure reps. This method is so effective that Charles Poliquin calls it his 2 training method for boosting functional hypertrophy. Perform 5 reps, rest 15 seconds, perform 1 rep, rest 15 seconds, perform 1 rep, rest 15 seconds, perform 1 rep, done!

This workout uses the safety squat bar with chains as the primary squat exercise. This is an extremely effective exercise that many coaches like Louie Simmons and John Meadows have used with their athletes. There are two main ways that you can perform this workout. It really depends on your unique recovery ability. If you have above-average recovery then you can perform the 5 to 8 method on all of your sets for the first 2 exercises.

This is the approach that Charles usually uses with his world-class athletes. On the other hand if your recovery ability is not your greatest asset then you should perform the 5 to 8 method on your last set of 5 reps only. In other words if you are planning on performing 5 total sets for exercise A1 then your first 4 sets would be performed as regular sets of 5 reps and your last set would be performed as a 5 to 8 method set.

This way you still get the benefits of the 5 to 8 method but you are less likely to overtrain yourself. It turns out you can use wave loading in higher rep ranges for a healthy mix of size and strength gains! The idea is simple: you are going to perform 7 reps on your first set, 5 reps on your 2nd set and 3 reps on your 3rd set. Perform 7 reps on your 1st set, 5 reps on your 2nd set, 3 reps on your 3rd set, 7 reps on your 4th set, and so on.

This method works really well for bodybuilders who want to play around with some lower-rep sets in a safe manner. In other words Charles figured out how many reps his athletes were going to do before he decided on things like the exercise selection, tempo etc. The number of reps is just that important!

Thank you Charles for sharing your gift with the world! You keep pushing because you believe in yourself and in your vision and you know that it is the right thing to do and success will come. Thanks for checking out my site! My name is Dr. If you want to reach your size and strength goals faster then you've come to the right place.

My goal is to make RPD the 1 strength training resource available anywhere in the world.