Do you guys have any advice on not overshooting heavy singles? I usually take around 85% of 1RM for a final warm up but I’m still unsure how to gauge how much weight I should add to the bar to hit 1@8
1 @ 8 is usually somewhere between ~88 and 92% of your 1RM, though your 1RM performance varies day-to-day. I would establish a sort of bench-mark weight around 80% of your 1RM and use that every time to gauge whether or not your performance is average, below average, or above average. Pending the real-time feedback, you can then select a load somewhere between 5 to 10% heavier than your bench-mark weight.
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I think the bench mark weight should stay the same for the most of your training unless you get considerably stronger or weaker. If it’s dynamic, I think that introduces more variables that don’t really help.
How do you predict an e1RM for the day without any feedback from that day’s performance? I think we can recommend that warm-ups should be at a particular percentage for our audience, but each individual should then jettison those percentages and use the same or similar weights week to week.
I think if your warm-up weights aren’t the same as they were the previous weeks, it’s going to be difficult to gauge your performance week-to-week.
Hey Jordan, sorry for butting in.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Do you have a standard weight you work up to as a gauge and launching point to base the rest of the workout off of?
I suppose when your progress has slowed greatly it becomes more automatic, but if one is still progressing rather frequently, how would you adjust the standard? Maybe adding steps to the top while skipping others on the way up to keep the number of sets relatively constant?
Thanks!
Yep, though it’s different for each of the disciplines, of course. We talked about this a bit in our latest podcast.
I don’t think most people are adding weight to the bar fast enough with big enough improvements in strength such that their “bench mark” warm ups is going to change for months. I don’t think the # of sets needs to be constant either. The purpose of the warm ups is to prepare for the work sets by getting the body ready to do the exercise and determining the load that you should be handling.
Rather than talk in the abstract, what are you squatting these days and what’s your warm up look like?
Ok, well my numbers have never been anything but embarrassing, I know I shouldn’t feel that way but I do, so anyway, reluctantly, here’s where I’m at currently:
Doing the knee rehab so use tempo pin squat for example:
x6 @8 is around 95#, so do a few regular squat sets with empty bar x5 until everything feels ok, usually 3-5 sets. Then do tempo pin squats 45, 65, 75. By now I have a pretty good idea what the day is looking like, so if low then 80-85 for top set, or if really low stop at 75. If feeling it a bit more performance then do 85, depending on that either call 85 top or move up to 90 or 95.
Yea I wouldn’t really use this for approach for pain/rehab programming, as the loads are typically much different than normal.
That said, I have no problem with your current warm-up protocol.