During my first year of weight training which was way back in 1979, I didn’t even know that the concept of pyramiding your poundages existed. Of course pyramiding your poundages and reps refers to starting out with a light weight on the first set which is done with relatively high reps, and then increasing the amount of weight and decreasing the amount of reps on each successive set. An example of a pyramid for an exercise would be as follows:
Sets x reps weight
1 x 12 100 pounds
1 x 10 120 pounds
1 x 8 140 pounds
1 x 6 160 pounds
1 x 5 200 pounds
When I started into my second year of training, I read some weight training literature and discovered that most lifters and bodybuilders used the pyramid method for basic exercises. When I applied this concept, my strength took off. It was a nice change because I had no training knowledge at all in my first year of training and had barely made any progress.
When I first began to use the pyramid system, I instinctively used a very light weight on the first set, and even though I added weight from one set to the next, the first three sets were always easy, the fourth set was only moderately hard, and the fifth set was very hard. I did it this way because I wanted to have enough strength in reserve to be strong for my final set in which I used a heavy weight. If only I had kept training that way I could have made progress better than I did. However, I started hearing about the high intensity training methods and it sounded so good and so logical and scientifically sound that I thought I was an absolute fool if I didn’t use high intensity training. Since I believed that high intensity training had to be right, I bought into the idea that the 5th set of my pyramid was the only set that was producing any positive effect on my strength, and the other sets were too easy to make any difference. If anything, they were working against me; at least that’s what I thought, so I eliminated the easy sets from my training and only did hard sets to failure.
One of the reasons I made the switch was that I never really had the opportunity to see champions train. At our current time in history, internet videos give you a view of how champions train. If I had seen some of them train, I may have quit listening to the hype about how hard they train and simply observed their training for myself. If I had, I think I would have discovered that a lot of them trained the way that I instinctively used the pyramid method when I first began training; in other words, the first three sets are easy, and the last one or two sets are harder. Even so, I don’t know if my ego would have allowed for any easy sets when training in a gym amongst other lifters.
When I started into college in 1981, I switched from training in a home gym and went to the campus gym. It was loaded with Olympic bars and lots of 45 pound plates. I also took a weight training class during the second semester of that first year. It seemed like a big deal to always be seen with the 45 pound plates on the bar. Starting out with twenty-fives on the bar was a sign of being a beginner or a weakling, and starting with tens on the bar was cause for total humiliation and deep embarrassment. Even if your max strength for one rep was 160 pounds, it was more respectable to start out with a 45 pound plate on each side of the bar for your first set than to warm up with those dinky little 25 pound plates or 10 pound plates on the bar. Of course this does away with the first three sets being easy. A lifter who has not developed much strength will be struggling on their first set with 45’s on the bar.
Fast forward to the 2000’s when I could watch Ronnie Coleman and Ed Coan train on internet videos. These were lifters that I was told trained hard to reach their elite level of strength. They had surely put forth more effort and out worked everyone else. How could it be any other way? At first I didn’t think of it as a little odd that they both started out on their basic exercises with one 45 pound plate on each side of the bar for their first set. Of course they kept on adding and adding and adding more weight until they were using mega weight. They were doing five hundred pound benches for reps, and 800 pound squats and deadlifts. Then it dawned on me that it’s a little different for them to start out with a 45 pound plate on each side of the bar for their first set than it was for me to start out with a 45 pound plate on each side of the bar. For Ronnie and Ed, starting with a 45 on each side of the bar meant they were using about 25% of their one rep max on their first set of the bench press, and a mere 15% of their one rep max for the squat and deadlift. I had to stop and consider if I was anywhere near the same ballpark in regard to how they were using the pyramid method, and I wasn’t. Regardless of the hype about how hard they trained, they were starting their first sets of a pyramid much easier than I was.
Depending on who you talk to, some consider those first several easy sets as part of the workout when they list the number of sets and reps that they do for an exercise. Ronnie himself would say that he does multiple sets of an exercise. However, there are others who would watch Ronnie and wouldn’t count the first several easy sets; they would just be considered warm up sets and wouldn’t even be mentioned when listing how many sets and reps are done for an exercise. In other words, some people who watched Ronnie Coleman pyramid his poundages for the bench press would have said he did five sets while others would have said he just did one set because the first four sets were just warmups.
I remember reading that Ed Coan just did one or two sets for an exercise when training the squat, bench and deadlift. Then I saw him train on an internet video and he did oodles of warm up sets starting with 135 and kept adding weight to each set. What I saw was much different than what I pictured in regard to how he worked out because there were so many sets leading up to his heavy lifting. Someone else could have just as easily said that Ed did eight to ten sets of each exercise, but somehow those so called warm up sets must have been considered irrelevant in regard to his strength development. A similar incident occurred when I watched an immense bodybuilder train. He was famous for supposedly only doing a few sets per body part and only training each body part once per week. Then I saw him train on youtube. What he called three total sets were actually three different exercises that were each preceded by multiple warm up sets with the weight increasing in the typical pyramid training manner. Other observers would have said that he was doing a total of 12 sets per body part, but this bodybuilder only counted the last set of an exercise because that was the only set where he pushed himself to failure. In his mind, the last set was the only set he did. I’ve learned that watching a lifter train can be night and day different than the impression that I get after reading about how they train.
You can see that some call the first sets of a pyramid warm-up sets that aren’t listed in a workout. Others count them as valid sets and list them as part of a workout even though they may be easy. They believe that those easy sets count as part of the total workout and have a training effect on a lifters strength. In other words, those easy sets are part of what is helping them to get stronger. My personal opinion is that those so called warm-up sets do have a cumulative effect and play a role in one’s strength development, but they need to be used correctly.
I read a scientific study that said pyramiding weights doesn’t work because it will make a lifter tired by the time they work their way up to the heavier weights for an exercise. I thought to myself of course it doesn’t work because the people in the study were using a version of the pyramid method where they were already pushing themselves to near failure on the first set with high reps. Unfortunately some people will hear of this scientific study and think that it has been scientifically proven that pyramiding their poundages is always bad, but hopefully we can see that it does work if it is done differently than the way it was done in the study.
Although it’s not a rule written in stone, I believe the first sets of a pyramid should be easy, not hard. If I were to give guidelines for how to use the pyramid system, I would say that weights of 50% or less of a lifters one rep max should be used on the first two sets with no more than 12 reps on the first set and no more than 10 reps on the second set. The third set shouldn’t be any more than 60% of a lifters one rep max and no more than 7 reps. In my way of thinking, the first few sets of a pyramid can have a positive effect on the nervous system and on force production that I discussed in my last two articles on proper use of light weights and acceleration vs. deceleration of a rep. After doing the first three easier sets at the start of a pyramid, then push the next set to the point where the marker rep is reached. Keep repeating work sets until you reach your limit set (click here if you don’t know what a limit refers to). As an alternative, if you know that your limit set falls on the third set (just using the 3rd set as an example, it may be different for you), you can even do three different exercises and pyramid up for each exercise by starting with easy sets and finishing with just one hard set where you reach your maker rep for all three exercises. If you are going to use the pyramid method, that’s how I recommend doing it. Start out light and easy, and finish the pyramid hard by hitting your marker rep. That seemed like a lot of explaining, but I hope it helps. Best of training to you.