Quick question here… As we move into warmer weather I plan to transition my training from strength specific to more general hypertrophy/conditioning based programming (6 reps is low end of range on main lifts). During these phases I seem to lose my ability to perform moderately heavy singles (@7 or @8) and I am hoping to prevent that this summer. My question is (assuming it would be helpful to keep a heavy single on my main lifts), would it be better to perform a 1@7-8 before my work sets and ensure I have full capacity to do so, or perform a fatigue single after my work sets to ensure training stimulus is directed at my first priority? This is with the understanding that the single isn’t being used as a way of maintaining or gaining strength but just keeping the practice of the single rep effort so I don’t have to re-learn once I move back to a strength block.
My opinion is that it’s just not worth the training resources to do singles in a situation like this. I don’t think you’re likely to be stronger when testing 1RMs (assuming you are) in the future by including this.
On the other hand, I do have some concerns if there’s a big fall off in e1RM when changing programming. If it’s < 5% on SBD (assuming you’re doing them) and conditioning volume is much higher/training is less specific, then that’s fine in my opinion. If it’s more than that, I would want to take a closer look at the programming.
Do the heavy single first. If you wait until after your work sets, you’re just going to be fighting through too much accumulated fatigue to move the weight with any decent technique. Keeping it at the start lets you maintain that skill without burning yourself out for the volume work.
Do the heavy single first. If you wait until after your work sets, you’re just going to be fighting through too much accumulated fatigue to move the weight with any decent technique. Keeping it at the start lets you maintain that skill without burning yourself out for the volume work.
We do fatigue singles all the time with great technique, as the preceding training is not taken close to failure to accumulate lots of fatigue. The benefit is that people tend not to overshoot the loading and they don’t make the single the center of their workout.
There’s a time and a place to put the single first.