This keeps the muscles active and under tension for longer, causing more micro-tears in the muscle fibres — just what you need to promote muscle protein synthesis — the rebuilding process for new, stronger muscle. Pyramid training covers all bases, strength, hypertrophy and muscular endurance, so picking a weight that is too heavy from the start will result in early fatigue and a loss of form.
If you have anything left in the tank at the end of the session, push for absolute failure on the final set. The struggle is real…. There are a number of different ways you can incorporate pyramid training progressions. Here are just a few examples:. Its premium source of whey protein and carbohydrates guarantees rapid amino acid and glycogen store replenishment. They are the perfect calorie-dense food source — our Peanut Butter and Almond Butter are both popular, great tasting, and good for your health too.
Supplement with additional Vitamin C and Vitamin D3 if needed, to further aid recovery. Still a third type of pyramid is a combination of the classic ascending version and the reverse style. Start with light weights and higher reps and work up heavy, then back off to high reps again. A study from the University of Guilanin Iran examined the effect of an ascending and descending pyramid model versus a reverse pyramid on wrestlers.
One group who used the former approach made slightly greater gains in bench-press strength, while those who did the reverse pyramid experienced a bit more growth in leg muscle size. Saladino also cautions that going up and down a pyramid is more work than most people need. If you miss your target number of reps on any set, end the exercise. First of all, the amount of weight is higher than the maximum amount of weight on the pyramid sets.
This allows for some level of variation from set to set, but still provides a clear benchmark for you to progress from. With reverse pyramid training, you start with your heaviest set, and then decrease weight while increasing reps for each subsequent set. Set 1 : 6 reps x lbs Set 2: 8 reps x lbs Set 3: 10 reps x lbs. This is basically the exact opposite of traditional pyramid training, where you literally flip the pyramid upside-down, starting with your heaviest set first. This allows you to maximize the amount of weight that you can lift, while still allowing for the reality of fatigue setting in, and attempting to avoid overexerting your central nervous system beyond what is actually necessary to maximize your progressions.
At the end of the day, each of these approaches have their pros and cons — but in my opinion they are both considerably more effective than conventional pyramid training. Yes, you will definitely hurt yourself — which is why modified straight set and reverse pyramid training both necessitate warming up properly beforehand. All the preceding sets are just warm-ups. The important caveat, however, is that none of those warm-up sets can be taken to muscle failure.
Pyramids naturally include a lot of volume. When following an ascending-pyramid scheme and increasing the weight on successive sets, you ultimately do a lot of sets, ensuring that you do a high volume of work—a marker for growth.
That being said, there are two main drawbacks for this kind of training. First, warm-ups should never be done to muscle failure—or anywhere close—but that's a real concern when doing so many sets, especially when you're strong early in your workout.
It's tempting to take a set to muscle failure, but the penalty for doing so is that your strength is slightly compromised on the sets that follow.
And if you take several lighter sets to failure, you've just undermined what you're trying to achieve, whether it's building strength or size. You want your muscles to be fresh on your heaviest last set; if you've overly fatigued them on the preceding sets, you surely won't be.
Hence, those warm-up sets must stop well short of muscle failure. Second, the above worry may lead you to reach muscle failure on just your last set, which often isn't enough if you're training for maximal muscle size. Reaching muscle failure is important to initiate growth processes. For muscles to grow, they need to undergo a significant amount of stress. One set to failure may not provide the growth stimulus you're looking for.
So while the ascending pyramid works well for someone seeking strength gains, it doesn't work as well for anyone who wants to maximize muscle size. That distinction is important. So, if the ascending pyramid isn't necessarily your best choice for building muscle, what is? Enter the descending pyramid, sometimes called reverse-pyramid training.
And it's exactly what it sounds like: You start out with your heaviest weights for a few reps, decrease the weight, and do more reps on the sets that follow.
It's simply the reverse of the sample pyramid listed above for the bench press. Reverse-pyramid training is ideal when training for muscle size because you reach muscle failure more often.
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