Are singless needed to be done every week?

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello coaches. I’m Onur. New to the forum, relatively new to BBM. I hope you are all doing well.
I have been lifting for about 3 months but my numbers are at a novice level; 235/190/125/80@150 BW (23 years old). I admit i didn’t train/eat well.

Here is the question:

Dr. Austin said;

I take it you’re still on the novice LP. Once you graduate from this phase, grinding extremely heavy weights every session is not conducive to long-term progress.

In our opinion,

  1. increasing training volume (and, eventually, frequency when necessary/able), with
  2. appropriate/commensurate reductions in intensity, and
  3. regular, periodic exposure to heavy weights (e.g., singles) while still staying away from failure

is our preferred long-term strategy at that point. Once you do that, you’ll find that you can handle more pulling.

Now i want to ask;

1)Are singles needed to be done every week? Especially for a person who is not competing?
2)Also, can they be replaced with 3’s for instance or anything else?
3)Should a novice do singles?

Thanks for you time and effort.

2

  1. No, they don’t have to be done every week.

  2. You can replace them with whatever you want, although singles are probably a better diagnostic metric of daily performance.

  3. The recommendations that you quoted in that post are specifically for post-novice training. The novice phase is so short that it likely makes little difference in the long run whether they perform singles, though I don’t think it’s necessary in general.

1 Like
3

Thanks a lot.