Bottom up Progression: A Sensible Way to Gain Strength

Top up Progression vs. Bottom up Progression

There are multitudes of progression strategies that lifters use to increase their strength. I refer to one of these strategies as bottom up progression as opposed to top up progression. In my own case, the focus of progression has always been on the heaviest work sets. This is top up progression. I would start my workout with lighter warm up sets and work my way up to heavier work sets, but I pretty much ignored the role that the lighter sets played in progression. From my observations, most lifters think the same way. The focus of top up progression is almost exclusively on progressing in terms of the heaviest sets.

Warm ups are Barely Mentioned

When describing their workouts, many powerlifters don’t even bother to mention how many warm up sets they do, or how much weight they use for their warm up sets when working up to a heavier weight. They may spend twenty to twenty five minutes doing tons of warm up sets to work their way up to one work set of 400 pounds for 5 reps for the squat, and then describe their workout as 1 set of 5 reps with 400 pounds.

Progress from the Bottom, Not the Top

When a lifter who has been working up to a top weight of 400 pounds for 1 set of 5 reps decides to increase the weight, they may keep all of their warm up sets at the exact same weight, and try to increase their top weight from 400 pounds to 410 pounds for five reps. The total focus is on the heaviest weight. It seems rare that anyone gives credit to the warm up sets for having any training effect, but I have come to a point in my own training where I believe that the first step of progression is to use progressively heavier warm up sets. I refer to this as bottom up progression and believe it can be a vital element that contributes to eventually being able to increase the heaviest weights that are done after the warm up sets.

In the last article on Increasing Total Workload for Strength, I gave two examples of working up to a 315 pound squat. The first example consisted of a four set pyramid, and the second example consisted of a ten set pyramid. The point of the article was simply that increasing your total workload by doing more light warm up sets instead of more work sets can often trigger a strength gain. In this article, I am going to refer back to the ten set pyramid that was discussed in the last article and explain bottom up progression where the lighters sets are increased in weight first as a basis for eventually enabling you to increase your top weight. I’ll start by listing the ten set pyramid.

1^st set: 10 reps x 135 pounds = 1350 pounds

2^nd set: 10 reps x135 pounds = 1350 pounds

3^rd set: 10 reps x 155 pounds = 1550 pounds

4^th set: 8 reps x 185 pounds = 1480 pounds

5^th set: 8 reps x 205 pounds = 1640 pounds

6^th set: 6 reps x 225 pounds = 1350 pounds

7^th set: 5 reps x 255 pounds = 1275 pounds

8^th set: 1 reps x 275 pounds = 275 pounds

9^th set: 1 rep x 295 pounds =   295 pounds

10^th set: 5 reps x 315 pounds = 1575 pounds

Total workload for all 10 sets = 12,140 pounds

How to Implement Bottom Up Progression

This workout can easily be adjusted by using bottom up progression and increasing the weight of the lightest weights first. For example, the first three warm up sets can each be increased by five pounds the first week. The second week, you can increase the fourth, fifth and sixth warm up sets by five pounds. The third week, you can increase the seventh, eighth, and ninth sets by five pounds. This will increase your total workload by 295 pounds while still doing the same amount of reps. Once you have increase the weight of all your warm up sets, keep doing the same workout without changing the weights for the next two to three weeks in order to give your body a chance to adjust to the increased workload. Eventually, the workout will become easy enough to add weight to your top set, which is your final goal.

Warning

A warning must be issued when using this strategy. If you are already in the habit of pushing nearly to failure on your warm up sets, this strategy will back fire. The basic strategy is to do a lot of easy warm up sets that combine to produce a substantial total workload without wearing you out. If you are stuck and your progress won’t seem to budge for your heaviest set, do plenty of warm up sets, and focus on increasing the weight of your warm up sets first. By doing this, you will eventually be able to increase the weight of the heaviest set. Best of training to you.