Ascending/pyramid sets as a form of autoregulation

Hey guys, have been lurking for a while, first question on this forum.

Let me first say that this post is motivated by my complete lack of ability in judging RPE, despite trying for about 9 months. Once in a while I do an AMRAP (or near AMRAP) set and realise what I thought was @7 was actually @4 or @9. Due to this and the fact that I’m no longer an early intermediate, progress has been very slow.

Anyway. The other day I randomly decided to warm up all the way up to my work sets using fahves, instead of the usual tapering into 2s and 1s as the weight increases. Just felt like switching things up a bit and that I could use a little more volume.

Not surprisingly, the work sets felt very hard due to the accumulated fatigue. In a way I suppose this is a good thing, because it prevents from using weights too heavy for my own good.

could this be an effective form of autoregulated programming? I.e. start with the bar, progressively add weight and do sets of 4-7 until you reach a point where it becomes quite hard. And then maybe a heavy single followed by 1-2 back off sets? That would mean a fairly large amount of work done at submaximal weight, which I believe is the idea for intermediates.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

cheers

Kanahan,

I do not think an AMRAP set is a good indicator of accuracy of RPE. You can use Reps in Reserve (RIR) for RPE to help you out, but AMRAPs have a lot of other things contributing to their performance so again- I wouldn’t use them to prove an RPE to yourself. Additionally, each RPE at certain rep range is associated with a percentage. By using these three things together in the context of your past training history- it seems like you should be able to use RPE more productively- especially with 9 months.

We also advocate doing the prescribed rep range all the way up to the work sets and you get used to the extra fatigue. It also helps the lifter be a little more accurate in hitting the appropriate RPE.

I don’t know if I would approve of that programming model being described without seeing it in full, but if it doesn’t look like what we program then…probably not.

Thanks for the quick response! A follow-up question: if one is using sets of 4-7 reps all the way from empty bar to work sets, but wants to put in a single @8 (as I understand you often like to do); where does that single fit in?

I’d do it after a set of 4-6@6 and then you might have one or two singles to perform to hit your @ 8.

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Thanks!