Warm-up for heavy singles

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1

I’m just starting week 5 of the 7 week hypertrophy program and the squat has a heavy single at rpe 8 followed by 3 sets of 6 at rpe 8.

What’s a good way to warm up for this? Would you do sets of 6 as usual, or maybe a few sets of 6 then a few singles ramping the weight up?

Thanks in advance.

2

You could do sets of 6 up until you can make a reasonable jump to a single @7. You want to have a single before the single @8, to make sure you can add weight this week. Personally, before the single @7 I’ll do a double or triple instead of going straight from a set of 5 or 6 to a single.

Here’s what I did for my 1@8 (315 lbs) on squats this week.

Empty bar x 8
135 x 5
185 x 5
225 x 4
265 x 2
295 x 1
315 x 1

3

There’s various ways to go about it. Some people like to work up in singles to their 1@8, and then use the RPE chart to estimate their first 6@8 back off. Some like to do 6s all the way up to 6@6 or 6@7 or so, and then singles. Jordan has even said you can work right up to and do your first 6@8 set, and then do a 1@7, 1@8, and go back and finish your 2 more backoffs. This method is a good time saver.

I do recommend hitting a ~1@7 before your top single, it acts as a good calibration point to decide what your top single should be for the day.

I do something like:
135x6
185x6
225x4
275x2
300x1 @ 7
315x1 @ 8
265x6 @8
…

But you could, for example, do:
135x6
185x6
225x6
265x6 @ 8
300x1 @ 7
315x1 @ 8
265x6 @ 8
…

4

Thanks for the responses guys.

Empty bar x 8
135 x 5
185 x 5
225 x 4
265 x 2
295 x 1
315 x 1

This is pretty much what I did yesterday morning actually although I do like the idea of working up to the 6@8 then doing the single.

5

There’s another thread floating about that has lots of ideas, including different ideas Jordan has suggested. What I like doing is working up with the number of reps your working sets are (i.e. 6’s in this case) to about 20% below your projected/target 1@8. Then I’d do a single 10% below that 1@8, then do the 1@8.

This is what I did on Monday:

Empty bar x 6 x 3
70kg x 6
100kg x 6
127.5kg x 6
137.5kg x 6 (20% below 172.5kg)
155kg x 1 (10% below 172.5kg)
172.5kg x 1@8