Measuring progress

I have recently been exposed to a lot of new information and ideas. I am now going to attempt to integrate some of them into my training.

How do you, lady and gentlemen, “measure” progress, and what are some suggestions on How to do this? I do understand the measurement is likely goal depensent.

Let us take my case. I am a 47 year old who wants to focus on getting as strong as possible, in fact the world’s strongest watchmaker :). This is limited because I am also balancing metabolic and health concerns that will preclude me from getting any “fatter”. Ideally I would have less fat and/or better conditioning so my IFG goes down over the long run. I’m at the end of LP for my squat and doing a HLM. My other lifts are in mixed states of redoing an LP because I am fixing my form with an SSC, but nearing end weights.

If I want to experiment by using blocks with different programs going forward what/how would be good ways to “measure progress”.

Hopefully that makes sense. Thank you.

I think using objective strength metrics like rep maxes or estimated 1RM’S can be useful proxies provided there is a qualitative input to keep things consistent over time. RPE would work in that situation.

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Jordan,

Can you give me a simple example of how this would look (using RPE)?

I have some of the templates and have looked at the charts but I have trouble seeing how to apply that to a single lift.

Do you think it makes sense to train actual 1rm if you’re not competing? In pretty sure you said it did make sense in the NSAID podcast today, but I can’t recall the context.

Thanks

Jordan, or Leah or Austin,

So would it make sense to use one of the templates for just one lift?

I have all of them (yes I’m also a customer, not just a troll).

I haven’t looked at them much because I’m in the process of selling my condo, buying a new house and my wife is in an MBA program and my son is also in college so I am usually relegated to using my phone as my computer. It sucks trying to read excel files on a phone.

Let us say I picked HLM (which I guess is really MMM) can I follow it for just my squat while my form is cleaned up on my other lifts and I run out an LP?

Once my other lifts “catch up” do you just integrate each one in to whatever program your running or does it make sense to move into something else?

Thanks.

This is actually explained pretty clearly in the template instructions. You use a “known” performance - say, 315 x 5 reps @ 8, and use the chart to estimate a 1RM based on that. If, at a later date, you perform a set (either for 5, or at some other rep range) that projects to a higher estimated 1RM, you can make a reasonable argument that you’ve gotten stronger. A positive trend over longer and longer period of time represents long-term progress.

And yes, you can use the templates however you’d like, of course. They are designed to be run as written, but sometimes individual circumstances require individual adjustments.