Staying in Your Strength Zone
One of the central points of emphasis in relationship to precision point training is to stay within your strength zone. This means that you can do reps within a set as long as you are strong enough to use forceful reps with an even rep speed throughout the set. When you reach a rep where your rep rhythm begins to slow down (I call it the marker rep) it’s a signal to stop a set.
The concept of training while you are strong applies to how many sets you should do as well. If you are giving yourself sufficient time to recover between sets, and you reach a set where your strength starts to decline, stop doing sets for that body part. The process for knowing when your strength has started to decline is simple if you repeat sets of same exercise with the same amount of weight. You simply compare the amount of reps that you can do on each set with the amount of reps that you could do on your first set when you were at full strength. When you reach a set where you can’t do as many reps as you could on your first work set, you know your strength has decreased and you should stop.
For example, if Tom starts out by hitting his marker rep on his 8th rep when doing a set of squats with 275 pounds, then the 8th rep serves as a basis for knowing whether or not he is at full strength when repeating sets with 275 pounds. When he reaches a set where he can no longer make it to his 8th rep before hitting his marker rep, it indicates that he is no longer at full strength. This is when he should stop doing exercises for his quads.
Staying In Your Strength Zone with Varied Weights
The concept of training while you’re at full strength becomes a little more complex if you want to vary the weight. For example, if you hit your marker rep on your 8th rep when doing your first work set of squats with 275 pounds, you may want vary your weight by going up to 285 pounds for your second set, and 295 for a third set. In this case, your marker rep is going to fall on a different rep for each set, and you won’t have any basis for comparing your marker rep on your first set with the other sets. This makes it hard to know when your strength starts to decline and when you should stop doing squats.
A general principle is that you will be able to about the same number of sets when you vary the weight, as when you don’t vary the weight. For example, if you have gone through the process of learning that you can squat 275 pounds for 3 sets before your strength starts to decline, then you’ll be able to do about three sets if you were to vary the weight on each set, although I believe there are exceptions to this principle. The exception occurs when you use a big variation in weight.
Big Variations of Weight My Allow for More Sets In Your Strength Zone
You may normally be able to stay within your strength zone for three sets of squats when pushing to your marker rep on each set, but if you vary the weight enough, you may find that you can do more. For example you may find that you can work up to a heavy lift one rep, then decrease to a weight that allows two sets of 5 reps, followed by a lighter weight for one set of 15 reps while still staying strong for all four sets. This is because the variation in weight is big enough to avoid stressing the same aspects of the energy systems in your muscles across all four sets. The main point is that big variations in weight may enable you to do more sets while still staying at full strength. A caution here is that I don’t recommend the reverse order where you hit your marker rep at 15 reps on your first set, and then follow that with sets of 5 reps, followed by a single, as you’ll be gassed out by the time you do your singles. I suggest using the heavier weight first.
In the next article, I will discuss how to stay in your strength zone when using different exercises for the same body part, and how pyramiding can expand your training volume while staying within your strength zone. Best of training to you.