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Articles on Auto-regulated Training

I hate programs. I mean, I like them, but I hate the thought process behind them and how they lock people into a mindset that they cant ever change anything because the program is so well designed. Just because its written down on a piece of paper doesnt mean it reflects the needs of your body. Thats why I like cybernetic periodization. No, Im not talking about the cool kind of cyborgs that are really killbots from the future. Im talking about using feedback loops to self-regulate a process. Thats what cybernetic originally meant before it became killbots from the future. Everybody talks about changing things up to shock your body and all that. Theres truth to it, but man, people make that ridiculous. Theres smart change and then theres just stupid change. Some things need to stay consistent. If youre changing crap around all the time, how are you measuring progress? Yeah I know the answer, you made good gains, whatever the hell that means. Exercises probably dont need to change all that much. If they do change, it should probably be special exercises that closely resemble what youre doing. I dont see anything wrong with doing box squats or front squats, or doing deficit deadlifts or deadlifts against bands, instead of the regular versions. What really does need to change is your volume and intensity. The total number of reps you do, the total amount of weight moved, and the weight on the bar do benefit from frequent changes. You can do that without switching to a whole new program every few months or every six weeks like the Internet says. Manipulating the changes in volume and intensity is a job for periodization. But I hate most popular kinds of periodization too because the training cycles always depends on percentages of a 1RM you feed it. If only there were a way around that. It turns out there is, and thats what cybernetic periodization is all about. Some things need to stay constant, and other things need to change. Cybernetic periodization lets us set the constants and then adjust the variables on the fly a process called auto-regulation. Exercises are one thing that should stay fairly constant. But the rep range, the total number of lifts done, and the intensity/weight on the bar should change on some kind of cyclical or periodic basis. So what youd do is set up a basic framework first. Pick your weekly template and pick the main exercises you want to focus on. Pick some
Auto-regulating Workouts for Bodybuilding, Strength, & Fat Loss

Matthew Perryman

targets are you trying to rack up a lot of volume to build some muscle? Are you trying to improve your conditioning or lose some fat, so you only need to maintain? Are you trying to build strength on a particular lift? Each of those goals will have different needs. Building muscle mass might have you using higher average reps (maybe 5-10) and higher volumes of work, along with more gradual changes from week to week. Pure strength training might rely on lower reps (1-6) and much more frequent changes. Fat loss or conditioning emphasis might have you doing very minimalist templates with low volume. You get the idea. You need a theme, and from that the rest of the variables will flow. I like to boil auto-regulation down to a handful of variables. Once youve got your constants drawn up, you just sketch them in. The main variables I like to consider: Rep Range As a rule lower will be better for strength development and maintenance; higher will be better for muscle mass training or endurance. Subjective Effort Level Your Rating of Perceived Effort (RPE), a subjective rating of how hard any given set felt to you. This can tell you how hard to push any given exercise, and in return it tells you how hard youre working. Fatigue Level This is a little harder to quantify, but it boils down to a combination of how high your RPE is and how much total work you do. Both RPE scores and time limits are used to control this variable. The use of RPE scores to auto-regulate training has had an explosion in popularity lately, largely thanks to Mike Tuchscherer and his Reactive Training System. But theyre not a new concept; they come right out of Supertraining, and Ive been using them for years myself. I think Mikes scale is the best thing out there, because it sums things up nicely. Realistically, the scale you use doesnt actually matter as long as youre consistent about it. Along with RPE, Id also use the Rating of Technique (RT) whenever possible to assess your form. This doesnt have to be complex, and you know when your form is breaking down (or you should). Theres a difference between a set @9 that was flawless and a set @9 that was very ugly. Like RPEs, you can rate this numerically, on a scale from perfect to horrible, or you can just write down great! or ugly set or whatever. I think most productive training will be done with RPEs between 7 and 9 on Mike Ts scale. A 9 leaves you with one good rep left in the tank, while an 8 leaves you with maybe 2-4 left. An 8 is still pretty hard, but youve got plenty in reserve. A 7 would be heavy speed work, a weight that you can move fast but only with focus and mental effort on your part. Fatigue level is going to mainly depend on how much work you do, but also how high your RPEs are. If youre knocking out a lot of sets in the 9-10 range, heavy grinders and maximumeffort sets, then its going to hit you a lot harder than doing the exact same amount of work in the 7-8 range. So RPE is one way to control fatigue, which is a fatigue stop (i.e., you stop when the RPE reaches that chosen value). Setting a time limit is the other way to control this. Youll be able to knock out a lot more sets in 25 minutes than you will in 15 minutes. The time limit is a hard stopping point; no matter how tired or fresh you feel, you stop when the times up.
Auto-regulating Strategies
That gives us a checklist of things we need going in to written workout: the rep range, a goal RPE, and a time limit. Heres some different ways to put it together into workable strategies.
Percentages
Earlier I was complaining about percentages, but I dont think theyre totally worthless as long as you can regularly update them, say every month or so. I wouldnt really suggest testing a new 1RM every month, but you should have some way of being in the ballpark of where you are. The big problem to get around with percentages is their inaccuracy. You might think youre at 75% when youre really at 70% or 80%. Or maybe you really are at 75%, but youre so beat up that it ends up being too much on the day. Percentages arent flexible.

You can solve one part of the problem by keeping your 1RM value up to date. The other part is solved by keeping percentages as a starting point. Not to long ago I drew up an autoregulating strategy using the numbers from Prilepins Table to select starting weights and rep ranges. I think it went like this: Week 1 5 reps, 75% starting weight Week 2 3 reps, 80% starting weight Week 3 Singles, 85% starting weight You warm up to the starting weight, using the number of reps listed for each week. If its too easy, you add a little weight until youre in the right spot. Usually the percentages were pretty close to the mark though. Once you hit the right weight, you do sets until a reasonable time limit or until you reach the fatigue stop. I think a 15-20 minute time limit is fine for most things. Im pretty sure I was aiming for an RPE of 8, leaving a couple of reps in the tank, and stopping when I hit a 9, or only one rep left. That ends up being a productive workout without killing you. Theres lots of possibilities here. back-off weight and do sets with higher reps (56). Say youre doing triples for the day and you work up to 2103 @9. Thats your daily max. You want a fairly hard workout so youve set your back off to 5%. That puts your back-off weight at 200, so youd do sets of 2003 until they hit an RPE of 9 or until you reach the time limit for the day. Or if you do the same workout but feel like crap, you can cut the back-off sets entirely and just go home. You can also work down the pyramid, backing off with lots of smaller increments. In the example above, youd drop back to 207.5, then 205, then 202.5, then 200, all for triples. This will probably be better for intensity-type training. If you want to get more volume, then just go straight to the back-off weight and do your sets. I think Id probably use that as the default approach. This is the easiest system of all because you dont really have to calculate anything in advance, but you have to be honest about whats going on. If you cant tell yourself the truth about how hard a set was, then youre going to screw this up completely. One thing Ive found is that you should always lean towards conservative. If a set might have been an 8 or a 9, go with the 9. Being conservative will help you in the long run. Trying to push your numbers up just makes you stall out. So to summarize: Instead of using percentages as a starting point, you can just go in and freestyle it. Id still pick a rep range and a time limit, but otherwise just show up, warm up, and ramp up to a top set for the day. After you hit that top set, do your back-off sets. I didnt really touch on the back-off sets or fatigue drop-offs earlier. This is pretty easy to understand. The harder you want the workout, the bigger the fatigue drop-off. And vice versa. All you do is set some percentage of your daily max, and then work to a fatigue stop with that weight. If you want a really easy session, stop once you hit the top set for the day (your daily max). If you want a hard workout, set a target of 10% off the weight of your top set and work down in 5 lb. (2.5kg) increments with lower reps (1-3). If you want more volume, drop straight down to that 1. Pick a rep range. I like sets of 5-6 reps, triples, doubles, and singles. If you like sets of 8-10, thats fine too. If youre using higher reps like that, youll want to plan ahead. Otherwise youll just tire yourself out as you ramp the weights up. 2. Warm up and then ramp up your weights (that is, make reasonable weight jumps from set to set). Keep your RPEs conservative as you ramp up, so you dont wear yourself out too soon. 3. When you hit a comfortably heavy set, around a 9 RPE or only one good rep left in the tank, thats your daily max for this session.
The Daily Max and Back-Off Sets

4. Pick a back-off value depending on how hard you want the session to be. If you want an easy session, stop at the top set (daily max). If you want a hard session, drop back 1015% from your daily max. If you want something in between, shoot for 3-7% off your daily max weight. 5. Do back-off sets with the same rep range until you hit the fatigue stop (again shoot for an RPE of 9) or until the time limit. Just rotate them by setting up A, B, C, and D workouts, or however many you need. If youre doing the H/M/L setup with an upper-lower split four days a week, youd get Day 1 Heavy Upper Body Day 2 Heavy Lower Body Day 3 Medium Upper Body Day 4 Medium Lower Body etc. Or push-pull over three days Of course you can set other parameters. You might want to do some rest-pause clusters with your top set, the Myo-Reps strategy that has been working pretty well. You might want to use strict timed rest intervals on your back-off sets to add a little more fun to the mix. If youre a fan of wave-like loading, where you move the weights up and down, you can do that too. Day 1 Heavy Push Day 2 Light Pull Day 2 Medium Push etc. Fix up something you like with a good template and youve got a system. Changing the variables every week is a solid way to do things if youre pretty strong and if you need regular changes. Heres an example: Week 1 Fives Week 2 Triples Week 3 Singles Each time you repeat the wave, youd add a little weight to the lifts. Theres no reason you have to stick with those rep ranges either. You can do anything you like, 8/6/4, 7/5/3, 3/2/1, whatever. Work up to a comfortable weight for each rep range. Use fatigue stops to know when to quit. Simple.
Daily and Weekly Variation

Daily variation, or undulating periodization as the cool kids call it, just changes the variables from workout to workout. If youre following anything like the basic templates or undulating routines Ive suggested elsewhere, then this is simple. Instead of doing strict pre-written workouts, just do what I suggested and pick your variables according to your goals. For bodybuilding, Id probably alternate heavy, medium, and light sessions by rep range. Heavy would be 5-6, medium 8-10, and light would be 12-15 reps. Id probably focus on higher fatigue levels instead of stopping at the first signs of fatigue; so back-off sets are a good idea, or maybe extended cluster sets (like MyoReps). For strength or athletic kind of training, Id probably stick to six or less reps and manage things by RPE and fatigue stops. Fatigue is less important here so Id tend to lean towards highquality reps instead of trying to grind things out. Id also play around with ramping up to top sets, sets across with the same weight, and wave-like loading. Id stick with upper-lower or push-pull templates in both cases. Maybe full-body if you can pull that off without overworking yourself.
Block Periodization
Block periodization fits well with autoregulation, because all it does is give you some guidelines for your workout variables according to each block. Theres three kinds of blocks that youll come across. Verkhoshansky calls them A-B-C. Issurin calls them Accumulation, Transmutation, and Realization. They both do the same thing. A or Accumulation Lots of volume in the form of sub-maximal sets in the 2-5 range; this would translate to RPEs of 7-8. Fast, smooth lifting. Youd want to train things

pretty often, so either full-body sessions or something like Sheiko does with the Squat/Bench and Deadlift/Bench sessions. Lasts 2-6 weeks B or Transmutation Very heavy, very intense training. High RPEs, working in the 9-10 range with special exercises (board presses, box squats, rack pulls, etc.). The trade-off is less frequency per exercise, so youll want to split things up, probably into upper-lower, and maybe even cut back to just three days a week with the A-B-A rotation. Lasts 2-4 weeks. C or Realization Basically a taper. Drop reps back to just singles, staying around 8085%, and cut back the number of workouts. This phase only lasts a week or two, and its so you recover from the fatigue you built up and can peak properly in your meet or whatever. I dont think Id mess with this as a bodybuilder or casual lifter, but Landon Evans and Jeremy Frey seem to be having good success with this setup for powerlifters.
APRE for Strength & Size

Matthew Perryman
All this talk about autoregulation and about getting strong in more general ways has had me doing a lot of thinking. This workout scheme in particular was inspired by this post of mine and the paper it references. Autoregulated Progressive Resistance Exercise (APRE) is similar to plain old PRE, which some of you may know as linear progression. You show up, do a workout, and next time you throw more weight on the bar. Pretty simple. It also has a tendency to build you up to a plateau that is very hard to break through. Usually you have to go on some more complicated and varied workout to keep improving. Thats where the A-for-autoregulated part comes in. Instead of just mindlessly adding weight each workout, the APRE protocol introduces a little testing and adjusting. Which means Im a fan. Ive discussed elsewhere how I think some kind of linear progression is probably the best idea for most people looking to get strong. The problem is in finding a smart linear progression. I laid out a few options in that post which are worth a look. At the same time, the results of the comparison between APRE and that simple linear progression are intriguing. This fits with a long-held belief of mine: an autoregulated program that has built-in ways to adjust itself will prove superior to any pre-planned workouts. Despite what wed like to believe, the body

doesnt like to fit itself into nicely planned weekly schedules and monthly training blocks. A program that can account for that fluctuation will be a step ahead. Ive gone over other options for this process of autoregulation in another article. Here I want to discuss this particular protocol and some ideas Ive had on incorporating it into a strengthoriented workout routine. The APRE system is not a workout in itself. This is more like a set of guidelines that you follow to determine your work sets. In quick summary:
3RM Protocol 50% of 3RM 6 reps 75% of 3RM 3 reps Reps to failure with 3RM Adjusted reps to failure
And to adjust after the test set:
Reps in third set (6RM protocol) 0-2 3-4 5-7 8-12 > 13
Adjustment for fourth set (kg) -2.5 to -5 0 to -2.5 No change +2.5 to +5 +5 to +7.5
*The adjustments vary slightly for the 3RM and 10RM protocols, but this is the basic idea.
As you can see, thats not a workout. Thats just some suggestions. But theyre powerful all the same, so what we have to do is decide how to use them in a gym-friendly routine. The templates are influenced by a lot of things.

This arrangement has you training four days a week with each major movement pattern being trained each session. Youll be alternating between A and B workouts, so that each exercise will be trained twice a week. This is very compatible with the heavy-light setup Ill describe below.
First Option More Frequency, Less Volume
Day 1 Overhead Press Front Squat Deadlift
Day 2 Back Squat Bench Press
Day 3 Front Squat Overhead Press
Day 4 Bench Press Back Squat
Now lets take a look at what to do here. First things first, Id group this into two days on, one day off. That is, train Monday-Tuesday, rest Wednesday, then again Thursday-Friday and take the weekend off. This is designed for a heavy-light rotation between the lifts so that everything gets one heavy day and one light day, except the deadlift which doesnt seem to like that much volume. The top lift is the main lift for the day to train hard, the bottom lift gets the easy work. Finally Id make it a point to add in an upperback movement on each day for shoulder health
and overall balance of development. You can get away with skipping this on the day you deadlift. I wouldnt do much assistance work beyond this; maybe a few sets of abs or arms would be about it. The pros: youll get a lot of practice with and exposure to the lifts. The cons: if you arent conditioned to frequent training, if you have a lot of real-life stress, or both, this will probably beat you up pretty good and may not be the best choice.
Second Option More Volume, Less Workouts
If that template isnt your cup of tea, heres an alternative. This is a more traditional type of upper/lower or body-part split arrangement that will probably be familiar to most of you. Each day will focus on a big lift and then follow up with assistance work, much like any old powerlifting workout or the 5/3/1 template.
Day 1 Push Press Close-grip Bench
Day 2 Back Squat Front Squats
Day 3 Bench Press Military Press
Day 4 Deadlift Barbell Row

This is straightforward and should be pretty familiar. You do the big lift, do some lighter assistance work on another lift, then whatever you feel like after that. You can throw in some pump n tone body-part work, you can do more specialized assistance, you can just go home. Pretty much your call. Id make the usual suggestions of getting lots of upper-back work for shoulder health, some kind of loaded ab work, and Im partial to back raises and glute-ham raises. Not mandatory, but can be helpful. The pros: pretty basic and effective template thats hard to screw up. Compatible with other kinds of training and can be modified to include more or less work. The cons: not many. This template doesnt have many drawbacks. 3RM version is best for strong athletes interested in increasing maximal strength. So theres your answer. If youre after size, stick to the 10RM version most of the time and toss in the 6RM protocol for a little variety. If youre after strength gains, focus more on the 3RM.
Fine-tuning the test sets

The APRE protocol calls for training to failure in order to establish your RMs. If youre using one of the once-a-week options from above, thats probably going to be okay assuming you have reasonable recovery ability. If youre using one of the high-frequency options and you take your test sets to real grinding failure, you will die. As the frequency of workouts increases, the stress and workload of each workout must decrease. If this doesnt happen, you will know it quickly. I think that given time and training, most people could adapt more than they realize. Because of this, you have to grade your effort. Ive not been explicitly logging RPE numbers, but rather making it a point to pay attention to the feel and execution of the lift. I, personally, can tell the difference in a lift that stays fairly smooth & explosive, versus a lift that was a holy-shit grinder. The more often you train, the less often the holy-shit grinders need to show up. If youre using the Mike T RPE scale, then youd want to cut your sets around a hard 8 or easy 9. Leave a rep or two in the tank, for the rest of you. Having tested the 5/3/1 in the past, youre going to find that this wont be terribly different. Youll spend most of your time doing higher reps than suggested by the protocol, and this is a good thing. The key difference is that there are no percentage-planned work sets (although there is a pre-planned workout) and no planned out cycle. This may seem dodgy, but remember that cycling is built in to this program automatically. Your work sets and your weights for the next session are determined by how well you do on any given day. Youll only wind up working as hard as youre good for, and the actual workload of a session will auto-magically adjust itself based on
Other Options
As with any of these templates, youre free to adjust them as needed as long as you dont screw up the intent behind them. If you can only train three days a week, then rotate through the four workouts in order. If you dont like an exercise I picked, then replace it with something else. Use your head: if you want to replace a bench press with weighted dips, thats fine. If you want to replace back squats with leg extensions, never speak to me again.
Which protocol?
The APRE gives us three options to choose from: 3RM, 6RM, and 10RM. The paper by Mann et al said they used all three over the six weeks of the study. The paper didnt go into a lot of detail regarding how they used the three, except to say that they used the 6RM option most frequently as it was most compatible with the goals of their football players (i.e., strength and muscle mass). In Supertraining, Siff suggests using the 6RM option for the first 6-8 weeks, then switching to the 3RM version. He suggests that the 10RM version can be used at any point as a way of stimulating hypertrophy and local muscular endurance. Its also noted that the

that. So there is cycling involved; its just not a month-long cycle sitting in a spreadsheet. for triples or 80 for sets of six. If you switch to the different exercise I have listed, then follow the same idea. You should have a reasonable idea of where you stand on those lifts, and if you dont, you can figure it out pretty easily. How many sets? Why are you asking me? Go until you feel fatigue set in. Or if you dont want to trash yourself, just do one. Or dont do any. Use your best judgment. Another option worth looking at if youre bodybuilding is this cycle by Barry Merriman. Combine Barrys approach to back-off sets with the 10RM APRE method and youve got a winner. That is, do the 10RM set and the adjusted 10RM set, then two back-off sets as he describes.
Heavy and Light days

The heavy day will obviously be the protocol as written: train to a RM or as close to it as youre comfortable going. If you have a light day, thats easy to draw up: take 90% of your heavy days work weight and cut the reps in half. If youre using the 3RM, do singles; 6RM, do triples; 10RM, do fives. Yes, I know that one isnt half of three. If you want to do 1.5 reps, go right ahead. You could do doubles also, I guess. If I hit 2005 on my 3RM heavy/test day, then Im going to use 180 for singles on the light day. Look too easy, you say? Good. Thats what a light day is for.
Examples
Its push press day with close-grip bench as the second exercise. Im starting the cycle with a push press of 803, so the warm-ups are 406, 603, and then the 3RM test set with 80. I hit 6 reps with 80, which means that I should go up to 82.5-85 on the next set. I go to 85 and knock out three reps, so thats where Ill start on the next workout. If Id only hit say 2 or 3 reps, then Id probably clock it back to 77.5 or even 75 on the fourth set, and use it for the next workout. You see how this is not at all unlike 5/3/1, only the number of reps you get determines the weight you use next time. For back-offs it was a good day, so I decide to take 90% and do a few doubles. Top weight was 85, so Ill use 75 for doubles. Since Im still doing close-grips, I dont want to go to fatigue so I do two doubles and call it done. For close-grips, I know Im good for 110 for 6 reps, so Ill stick to around 80% (90) of that for six reps. Upper back work is weighted chins, so I start throwing them in between the back-off sets of push presses and the close-grips. Do a set of pushing, then a set of chins. And thats it. I would add that if you want to do more bodybuilder-ish work, theres nothing stopping you. Do your big lift, maybe the second light lift if you care, and then have fun with chest/shoulders/triceps as you see fit. Id still limit that to a few quality sets of 8-10 reps on a few solid exercises, rather than the usual 5-set
Back-off sets for more volume

I can see this question coming already so Ill go ahead and tackle it. If youre doing the high-frequency arrangement, do your sets and go home. If you feel great, then take 80% of your top weight and half the reps. Be aware of the workloads, however, and dont whine to me if you wreck something. If youre doing the less-frequent template, youve got more room for back-off volume. The way I have it written, youll be following the main lift with a second compound exercise, and in most cases you may be content to use that as your back-off work; thats how I intended it, anyway. That doesnt mean you have to listen to me. Regardless of what you do for the second exercise, Im going to suggest keeping it to fast and snappy work for higher volume. That is, sets of 3-6 reps and leaving a lot in the tank. The goal is to do a lot of sets and keep a reasonable rest interval, rather than all you bro sets. If you want to back off with the main exercise, then Id suggest either 90% of your top weight for half the reps, or 80% of top weight for the same reps. So if you hit 100 as your top weight on the 6RM protocol, then either do 90
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pyramids on eight different kinds of curls, but hey thats your call. The APRE protocol is from Supertraining, 5th edition (2003). Inspiration for using this in a real protocol, and evidence that it works in real athletes, came from The Effect of Autoregulatory Progressive Resistance Exercise vs. Linear Periodization on Strength Improvement in College Athletes. Mann JB, Thyfault JP, Ivey PA, Sayers SP. J Strength Cond Res. 2010 Jun 10. PMID: 20543732
Sources and Further Reading
Bulgarian-style Training for Strength & Powerlifting

Matthew Perryman
Theres been a recent resurgence of interest in frequent daily training and the Bulgarian weightlifting system, and yet very little written about how to adapt this system from weightlifting to more traditional gym-lifting or powerlifting programs. I want to use this article to sketch out some ideas on how to organize such a system. Those of you familiar with Boris Sheikos powerlifting workouts will find a lot of similarities. Sheiko is far more Russian than the system Im going to outline, with a much more structured approach to daily and weekly volume. As different as these systems appear, superficially, they have the same goal to manipulate intensity and volume between harder and lighter workouts, and across heavier and lighter weeks. The Russian-ness of the Sheiko system means a rigid structure. Percentages are planned in advance, as are exercises and working sets for the following month. While this strategy unquestionably works, I prefer a more flexible approach. While the end-goal is the same, the Bulgarian system manipulates intensity and volume using a fluid, self-adjusted system that doesnt require a previous max or confine you to pre-planned numbers. The wisdom behind this method startles most old dogs (or those that like to think of themselves as old dogs): you train with max lifts on a (near) daily basis, and then plan the rest of your workout from that performance. This goes against nearly everything taught by the mainstream strength & conditioning field. And yet, it works. You get your Hardgainers and other recovery minimalists convinced that Doing Less is the only way to succeed, but Im not going to let theoretical arguments argue with my own results. Make no mistake, I was skeptical as anyone until I tried it. A few months later,
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after setting consistent PRs on my Friday test night with four days of max squatting behind me I became a believer. Regardless of the science behind it, regardless of what you may think about doping claims or your fears of overtraining, the system works. All other considerations are secondary to effectiveness. You are not a fragile ornament ready to collapse into an exhausted mass of goo simply because you squatted more than once in a 7day week. I dont expect to make believers. If youre interested in the system Ive found to be effective, then read on. If you think Im wrong because you read about overtraining on the internet, theres a Hardgainer forum somewhere thats glad to have you. truly spectacular amount of work - even working up to heavy lifts on a daily basis. The urban legend about squats being harder to recover from because they have an eccentric element is just that a legend. Its workload and psychological stress that matters, not the exercise. The template is organized around two possible structures. Youll do a press at every workout, along with A. a squat and a pull or B. two pulls:
Option 1 Squat Press
Option 2 Pull Press Pull
The Workout
I adapted this system from a variety of sources. John Broz, Glenn Pendlay, Michael Hartman, Jamie Lewis, and Anthony Ditillo would be the largest inspiration. Although this is a Bulgarian-inspired system of training, the target is strength in the pool of core barbell lifts. Yes, Ive heard all the arguments about how you can only train the quick lifts (snatch and clean & jerk) frequently because they dont have an eccentric phase and all of that. Let me address that with two observations. 1. Squatting and pressing movements can be trained in the same way as the quick lifts. It is possible to treat even maximal (above 90%) loads as explosive lifts. They will never be fast, but they can be smooth. Im going to suggest that paying attention to your RPE, how the lift feels on a continuum from smooth to grinding, is critical for making this system work. Your nervous system is remarkably adept at matching your perception of difficulty with its actual difficulty, and were going to make use of that. 2. See the above point about your body being more robust than you think. You have an incredible safety margin built into your movement (see Tim Noakess central governor), and if youre smart about organizing your training according to autoregulatory feedback, you can thrive on a
Pull
The squat is self-explanatory. The mainstay is the back squat, but you can sub in front squats or box squats as you see fit. Pressing can be the bench press, or military press, or push press, or inclines. Pulling means either deadlifts or Olympic pulls (whether full lifts, power versions, or just high pulls) for the lower body, or rowing and chinning movements for the upper. On squat days, I lean towards doing the pull for the upper body. On days with two pulls, you can do one upper and one lower (i.e., deads and chins), or two lower (i.e., snatch pull and power clean). Ill cover more on exercise substitutions further down. Ive found that two big lifts for the day is about right. Youd want to focus most of your effort on the squat (or pull) and press movements, while leaving the third exercise as an easier accessory movement. If youre squatting and pressing hard, leave the pull for an easier upper-back exercise like chin-ups or high-rep (Kroc) rows. You could throw real effort into all three, if you think that will be valuable. I can only tell you what Ive found to be useful for myself. Adding more exercises is certainly possible if youve got the time and energy, but beware. This quickly turns into adding things for the sake of adding things, and you do not want that with this style of training. Keep the exercises to the minimum set of most-effective lifts.
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The Daily Maximum and Training Weights

For this system to work it is absolutely critical that you understand what daily maximum means. In most programs you see, the 1RM is based on a contest max the best you can do up on the platform. A contest max means meet-nerves, adrenaline, and the whole psych-up of lifting in front of a crowd. A gym-lift cant approach that kind of mental intensity. The Russians found that the psychological arousal of a competition max can add as much as 10% to a lifters best in the gym. All you guys that need to tank up on caffeine and ephedrine and geranamine, pay attention here: when you rely on stimulants and loud music and yelling to get through your session, youre emulating that contest max, including all the staleness and CNS burn-out that comes with it. If you do this on the Bulgarian system, you will die. Muscles recover much faster than the nervous system. Respect the CNS and you can lift as often as you want. Bulgarian training demands a daily training max, the best you can lift right now without getting worked up. No stimulants, no psych-up, no nerves. Just go lift it. Youll know when this happens. When lifts slow down, getting out of the springy zone and starting to grind, youre there. Some of you may prefer the RPE score. Using Mike Tuchscherers scale, youd stop when you hit a hard 8 or easy 9. You want the daily max to be challenging, to the point that you wouldnt be able to get a second rep with your heaviest weight, but still confident you didnt leave it all in the gym. After hitting your best for the day, you have the option of adding back-off sets. Drop down by 10% and do singles or doubles with that weight. I like to throw in a time limit here. When you first add back-offs, set a reasonable time limit. Ten minutes is about right. As you get more adapted, you can gradually expand that to 15 or 20 minutes. The time limit is to keep you moving; if you have to rest longer than around two minutes on a back-off set, thats your signal to wrap it up. Youre done. The back-off sets are always optional. If youre having a bad day and feel wiped, they can be left out. Remember, always err on the side of doing too little. When you do this right, youll leave the gym feeling like you didnt do enough. This is what you want.
The Introductory Template

Youll start this template on a nonconsecutive three-day schedule, either Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Squat and Press all three days, and one day have a deadlift workout with a lighter squat day. As per above, the back-offs are optional. You might find that you can jump right in (be sure to remember the time limit if you do). Some of you might find that the back-offs are too much while youre adapting. On the three-day schedule, youll probably be fine. Lighter squat means that you only work up to 80-85% of your normal max weights and skip back-offs. You could do front squats on this day, since theyre lighter by definition. The other option for the brave among you is to dive right in and try this 5-6 days a week. Choosing this option requires a different mental strategy, because your day to day performances will start to mess with your head. I had many weeks where Id have unbelievably bad workouts on Tuesday and Wednesday, only to come in Friday and break a PR. Its like the system was taunting me, then rewarding me for sticking with it. If you do this and arent sure of your recovery ability, you might want to program in a lighter rest week every third week. A lighter week means only 2-3 sessions, weights no heavier than 60-70%, and absolutely no back-off sets. If youre a 300+ squatter and 400+ puller, this means 225 squats and 315 pulls. Light means light. This is tonic work to keep your body moving and keep the groove of the movements. Just as the heavy weeks teach you to train heavy, the light weeks teach you to hold back.
Adding Workouts
If you went with the three-day template, youll have the option to start adding workouts as you adapt. These will be light speed sessions at first, limiting weights to around 7080% of your most recent daily max. If you worked up to a 200kg squat on Monday, then you might do a light session the next day with doubles at 140-160kg.
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Once youre lifting nearly every day, Abadjiev suggests adding in morning sessions to work as a primer for the heavier afternoon training, echoing Pavels grease the groove concept. Jason Keenes now vanished Boiler Room Gym site had an article on Bulgarian training which echoed that suggestion. The archived version of the article can be found here, and is worth reading. If you dont have the time or inclination to lift twice a day, I understand I never found any reason to do so. The option is there, in any case. When I trained this way, I took the dive-rightin approach. I started going to the gym five days a week and didnt worry about the weights I could use. I wanted to build conditioning for the frequency first, then let weights increase after I adjusted. This manual labor approach is like getting a job on a construction site. You might hate life the first two weeks. After that, you get used to it. I dont know which way is superior. If I were planning to use this system year-round, I would go for Abadjievs approach, adding workouts slowly as you adapt to each stage. For brief spells, up to 5-6 months Id just jump right into it and let the magic happen.
Unloading Weeks and Recovery Blocks

Ill warn you up front that you will most likely need a few weeks to adjust, and while thats happening you may feel pretty bad. Symptoms will vary, but at the minimum you might expect persistent low-grade soreness, lethargy and loss of motivation, irritability, and the mystery pain. Once your tissues adapt to regular training, cytokines stop signaling the brain to feel bad, and youll tend to feel better (at least in my personal experience). Im coming to the conclusion that this first round of feeling bad, what Broz calls the dark times, is not actually overtraining or its friend staleness. Youre adjusting, the same way youd adjust to a new job as a laborer. When you first started lifting weights, you probably felt pretty awful for a few days after your workout. Did that mean you shouldnt lift again because you felt bad? Of course not. CNS fatigue is the nervous systems version of DOMS. Overtraining and staleness are very real and something we should look out for, but we cant rely on feeling bad to tell us when this is happening. Under Abadjiev, the Bulgarians unloaded one week out of every four, and, for part of the year, theyd use unloading cycles with one hard week and three easy weeks. The other school of thought says to autoregulate your rest days, only taking days off when you really need them, and letting the training guide you. John Broz advocates this approach, as did Anthony Ditillo, and Jamie Lewis of Chaos & Pain fame suggests the same. Ive found this to be effective in the short-term, though youll probably want to take 1-2 weeks of lighter training after a few months of this. You can train your recovery ability to an exceptional degree, but exceptional is still a far cry from infinite. Weve shifted the need for rest away from workout-to-workout thinking, but that doesnt eliminate the need for recovery. My advice is a compromise. I dont have a coach to guide me, so Im reliant on my own feedback to guide my lifting. I dont completely trust my personal feedback due to the head games of lifting, and youre not any different. In the absence of a coach to guide the program, this means we need more structured off-days and down weeks. A good rule of thumb: for every two to three hard weeks, take an easy week. Duane Hansen
Substituting Exercises
Im of two minds on exercise substitution. I think that variety has its place if you arent training for a specific competition (i.e., powerlifting). Variety can be psychologically motivating. You might find that rotating through different kinds of squats (back, front, box) or using different bars (regular, cambered, SSB) is productive. You might likewise use boards or floor presses, or different kinds of overhead work. Pulling can rotate through deadlifts (from the floor, from a deficit, or off blocks at different heights), cleans and snatches, high pulls with clean and snatch grip, or even good mornings. There are no hard rules here. If you want to stick to a pool of just 3-4 movements, thats fine. If you want to rotate, that seems like it would work fine too. What Im getting at is, do what you like and what you find to be most productive.
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on the Power & Bulk boards suggested a very practical approach: I have found it useful in the long run to plan your heavy and light weeks of lifting. The plan that seems to work best is two heavy weeks (where you work as hard and heavy as you can manage) followed by an easy (or deload) week where you cut the total volume in half and rarely (if ever) lift a weight more than 80% of your best. The actual days during the heavy weeks have a bit of wiggle room. Some days you are on top of the world and can do anything. Other days will be not so good. The thing is to work hard enough each day during the heavy weeks (depending on how things are going that particular day) and force yourself to take it easy during the deload weeks. My second point is that lifters need to learn how to really back off after pushing themselves. After a week or two of busting ass, spend a week lifting ridiculously easy weights. The body responds to contrasts in stress, i.e., overtraining followed by undertraining. Most people will train at about the same level of intensity and volume for their entire career and the best they will ever accomplish is to get to the baseline level of performance that they were capable of on the first day that they walked into the gym. Some people will be able to push their body and their performance very, very hard, but they will never learn how to take a break and allow their body to recover from this stress. The lifters who make long-term progress learn how to push their training to the edge of their tolerance and then back off enough to let their body adapt to the stress. The body needs to have periods of stress and recovery to force it to adapt. The mind of the athlete needs to allow these periods of stress and recovery to happen. Often it is harder to spend a week doing less work with small weights than it is to push your body balls to the walls, but the recovery piece is arguably more important than the stress piece, at least in the long-term. I would take this advice to heart. The point of the unloading week is to create contrast. The hard weeks train you to push hard, physically and mentally. The easy weeks should teach you to relax. Relax with the weights, and relax your mind when approaching the weights. If youre only spending part of the year, up 4-6 months, on this plan, I think youd have more leeway with the self-regulated rest days. By the time accumulated fatigue catches up to you, youll be ready for some downtime and a fresh program anyway. Using this system year-round, I would put more thought into structured rest. You might be one of those with really poor recovery, or Real Life factors that limit recovery. If thats you, Id suggest sticking to the two weeks hard, one week easy system. Or just train this way 3-4 days a week.
Gaining Muscle Mass

The objection I hear most often is that highfrequency and gaining muscle are mutually exclusive. Im not sure I buy that. Muscle mass follows the same stress-relax-recover adaptation curve as any other quality: repeated workouts add up their effects over time, with both gains and fatigue building up. Even if you arent allowing full recovery between workouts, youre still ramping up all the fitness-boosting stuff in the muscle cells. Performance (growth, in this case) is masked by the accumulation of fatigue. When you do finally scale back the workloads, the fatigue dissipates and the new adaptation fully realizes itself. Its like stretching a rubber band and letting it pop; the harder you pull, the harder it snaps back. I believe this applies to muscle mass just as much as strength or power. Muscle doesnt recover on a workoutto-workout basis. Leo Costas Serious Growth manuals adapted the Bulgarian system to bodybuilding programs. While I like the look of these programs, I cant personally comment on their effectiveness. Everyone I know who has tried them has spoken highly of them, and always with the qualifier yeah I did great on that program, until I found out it was overtraining. Go figure. My personal view is that, when used for brief phases of hard training and followed by a phase of light training, you could make this work for bulk-building. Costas programs do exactly that, involving a hard ramp-up phase followed by an easier recovery phase. Programs for musclegroup specialization would be another option. If you limit a session to only 1-2 top sets, you can get away with sets of 5-6 on a big lift and sets of 8-12 on an isolation move, which would probably be better for growth. If youre strapped for time, definitely think about rotating through specialization phases, where you train an upper body group and a lower body group, switching the targeted muscles every 3-4 weeks.
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No Musts or Oughts
Everything Ive written in this article should be taken with a grain of salt and always subject to your own findings. Ive tried to qualify everything as opinion, either mine or someone I feel is worth listening to, which means that there are no rules. Training this way is very subjective. I cant give you a fixed list of things you should do, or must do, or ought to do. If you disagree with any point I made and find you do better by ignoring my guidelines, I encourage you to keep doing what youre doing. Nothing here is beyond challenge, and I find that the lack of Must Do rules is a strength of this method. There are only good ideas worth trying for yourself. Your success or failure on this system depends entirely on your frame of mind. Walking into this kind of training with a defeatist attitude, convinced that it wont work, that youll overtrain, that youll get hurt, all but guarantees that these things will happen. The first step to success in this program (or any program) is to trust what youre doing. Believing in the program and enjoying what youre doing creates a placebo effect. Your frame of mind can generate stress or it can encourage recovery.
Wont I fatigue my CNS?

Short answer, no. CNS fatigue is a product of psychological and emotional stress, rather than the weight you lift. If you follow the advice in this article, staying away from weights that make you nervous and not loading up on preworkout stimulants, youll be fine. The assumption that CNS-intensive training requires 48 hours of rest is not faulty, but it does require that youre actually exhausting the CNS. Current neurological research doesnt support the idea that central drive, the oomph of the CNS, diminishes with training unless you make attempts at very high exertion. If you arent getting nervous to lift a weight, and if you take care not to miss lifts in training, then you wont be exhausting the CNS. This system is designed to minimize those exhausting, high-exertion attempts. Meanwhile, your nervous system gradually adapts to the stress of lifting heavy weights. Remember, you always want to leave feeling like you could do more. This feeling of energy and motivation results from the positive, stimulating effects on the CNS, not exhaustion. Follow the guidelines and youll be fine.
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The classic mistake of all of us who want too much too fast is to train too hard, too much, too often. That's right, I throw stones in glass houses and this is one of them, so writing this article is the perfect self-therapy for me. While I can teach others from my mistakes, this is an important reminder of what I must do to maintain progress. By being extremely conscious of the principles of auto-regulation, I have not only maintained strength on my competition diet until the Oslo Grand Prix, but have also increased it where it was almost inevitable that I lose strength in such prolonged caloric deficit. A static program does not take into account your individual recovery capacity, exercise tolerance or progress curve. You can have the most perfect application of the best exercises and the split, but if you do not take into account the daily variations of the stress level, performance will almost inevitably slam into the wall over and over again. It is difficult for many to realize that they can prosper by not squeezing out the maximum on every set of every exercise - only when you agree to work out within your limits most of the time, you can get regular progress. The reason that programs with static progression and training volume as Dietmar, Sheiko, 55, 5/3/1 work so well is precisely because they force you to train submaximally on large parts of the program, and then max out in the last few weeks. The reason I do not think it is optimal to follow such program, is that part of the time you exercise under your capacity, most of the time just perfect, and part of the time over your capacity. The error many people make is to believe that they always have to lift heavier and heavier weights, for more reps and more sets of each exercise - if they do not get results. Ironically enough, it is precisely this mindset that almost invariably leads to stagnation. Muscle growth is not an on/off switch its a sliding scale. If you have lifted 100kg for 5 reps last time, 95kg for 4 reps now will not suddenly give you 0% training effect, it will provide perhaps 90-95%. If you try to lift 105kg six times, it can be so much that you overload the body, and end up with -20% and not 105%. Each additional set after the first one gives a few extra percentage training effect, while the chance to do too much and end on a downward curve increases dramatically. Light exercise has its function it provides, for example, 80% stimulus, rather than 100%, but it gives the nervous system and connective tissue a chance to recover, so that you can work 100%
Auto-regulation for optimal increases in strength and muscle mass

Brge Fagerli
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next time. There are of course both safer and more productive to stay on the rising portion of the curve most of the time. Research confirms that it is not necessary to exercise to exhaustion to get results. If you stay just below the point of exhaustion, you can do more sets and reps at heavier weight, to compensate for not exercising as "hard". This does not exclude the usefulness of an occasional exercise until exhaustion, but that requires that the amount of exercise is limited. The problems arise when you have fatigue as an end in itself, on every exercise, and do exercise after exercise and set after set so far past the point of exhaustion with the help of training partner that he/she gets more pump in his/her arms than you do. The motto should be: do just enough, but not too much. If you do too much, you will not be able to do more next time - it will actually be wise to hold back with a light exercise instead. If you do less than optimal, you will still get a training effect, and probably will up the poundage next time. Do not get hung up on the "pump" or "contraction" - it is irrelevant, even if it subjectively feels good. Do not look at light exercise like two steps forward and two steps back - look at it as two steps forward and then step back to take run-up to go three steps next time! Team up with your body, not against it, by not kicking it when it is already down. Ok, that should be enough hassle with metaphors, so for those who still have not understood the point, there is hardly any hope anyway. What we need is a set of rules that allow you to do a sufficient number of reps with weights heavy enough, but that automatically varies the degree of stress, strain and exercise quantity of each training day, so that you can create just enough stimuli. Viewed over a month, two months, six months and one year, the trend is upwards - you get stronger and have increased muscle mass. At the micro level, i.e. from one workout to the next, you can still be training with lighter weights and fewer sets/reps. We call this auto-regulation, and let's look at the methods I use in my training programs to achieve such impressive results with my athletes.
Heavy training with RPE method

Rating of Perceived Effort (RPE) is simply a subjective scale of how hard you have to try in order to make a lift. I use the RPE method in this context for heavier loads in the range of 1-6 reps, up to 6-8 reps. The most relevant RPE figures are: RPE 7 - very explosive; at least 3 reps in reserve (this can be used as a speedtraining and as a recovery/deload) RPE 8 - heavy, but still quite explosive; about two reps in reserve RPE 9 - now it's very heavy; when a repetition is noticeably slower than the previous one, its RPE 9; you could do one rep, but not two RPE 10 - your absolute maximum lift; you just manage to complete the last repetition (if you need help to complete the lift, it does not count, so note this in your training history) RPE model requires that you are honest with yourself to avoid overtraining. I have seen too many people who stubbornly claim that they train at RPE 8-9, but when I get to see the performance, last rep is usually so slow and little explosive that I can guarantee they would not make the next rep. So it was an honest RPE 10, and not a 9. For those who are unable to walk out of the gym without stretcher, I recommend a static application with 1-2 sets of 5-8 reps, and then 1-2 light sets of 10-15 reps. Here we see a perfect example of HIT advocate, who claim that only one set is enough, as long as it is trained to failure. They often come from high volume program, and as you probably have guessed from my long study at the start here, you can not combine a high training volume, high intensity and fatigue, without getting hurt. HIT is neither optimal for strength nor muscle mass, but by forcing people to do only one set, they are a long way to the left of the rising stimulus curve, the body gets the chance to recover, and strength gains that have been hidden by accumulated fatigue can than be realized. It is a form of recovery/deload.
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Using auto-regulation is, however, more effective, because you can customize the stimulus from day to day and from exercise to exercise during training. Primarily you will work out between RPE 89; start your training by working your way progressively up to today's top set - the heaviest weight you have the capacity to lift right now. You should have a long enough rest between each set, so that you can lift explosively on the next one. At the start of the series up to the top set, 30 second rest will be enough, and as you approach the top set, 1 minute and up to 2-3 minutes rest is recommended. With experience you will know when you are ready to achieve the maximum on the next set, within reasonable time - you do not want to sit on your ass for 10 minutes either. Training sessions should be quick and efficient. You should start the exercise with about half of the predicted top set weight. You should then add between 10-20% weight (5-10kg up to 50kg, 10-20kg up to 100kg, etc.) from set to set, until it starts to get heavy. In the last sets before the top set, increase the weight by only 510%. When the top set is reached (RPE 8-9), you can stop there, but you should do a certain amount of work in this area, so I recommend taking off some weight and continuing until you reach the next point of fatigue (RPE 8-9). We call this a drop kit and a weight loss percentage. How much weight you take off will determine how high training volume will be and how much extra stress you cause to your muscles. 60kg 5 reps, 30 sec pause 70kg 5 reps, 30 sec pause 80kg 5 reps, RPE 7, 1 min break 85kg 5 reps, RPE 8, 1-2 min break 90kg 5 reps, RPE 8.5, 2min break 95kg 5 reps, RPE 9, so you stop here - 6 reps at 95kg and 5 reps at 100kg would both be RPE 10 Take about 1 minute break and reduce the weight by 10% of the drop set. 85kg 9 reps, RPE 9 (10-11 reps would RPE 10) It should rarely be necessary to do more than 4-6 sets before reaching the top set, depending on how heavy you lift. For guys who are at 300kg in the deadlift, it may be okay to start from 60kg, and than 100kg, 140kg and up that is, more sets, both to warm up the muscles and joints , and to ensure that the technique is where it should be. The second option is Mike Tuchscherers RTS model, which focuses on high training volume with heavy mechanical load, effective for both strength and muscle mass. I take lower percentage drop with this model (3%, 5% or 7%), and then do several drop sets until I get to RPE 9 again. There are also longer rest intervals between sets and top-drop set/s for improved neural recovery. 60kg 5 reps 70kg 5 reps 80kg 5 reps, RPE 6-7, 1min break 85kg 5 reps, RPE 7.5, 1min break 90kg 5 reps, RPE 8, 1-2min break 95kg 5 reps, RPE 9, 2 min break - this was the top-set Now the weight is reduced by 5% and you do multiple sets until you reach RPE 9 again. 90kg 5 reps, RPE 8, 1-2min break 90kg 5 reps, RPE 8.5 (you could stop here, but choose to try another set), 2min break 90kg 5 reps, RPE 9 (and you stop here) You see now that by choosing -7% you will be doing drop sets with the lighter weight, and you will have higher training volume - but also higher stress. By choosing -3%, maybe only 1-2 sets for top set, you limit your stress level. Next time you can, for example, run a progression of 60-70-80-90-92.5-97.5, but remember that the point is to let this auto-
I use two types of drop sets

The first option is to drop 10-20%, limit yourself to only 1-2 sets for top set, and than do maximum reps on drop set/s (still is an advantage to stay within RPE 8-9). This combination provides both heavy mechanical load, and extra training volume by more metabolically training. To keep fiber activation in the light set high, rest between the top sets and drop sets should be relatively short, between 30 and 60 seconds. It is easier to illustrate with an example; let's say that your 5RM is 100kg:
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regulate itself with RPE model. Stop at 92.5kg, for example, if you are in bad shape the day - or increase further to 100-102.5kg, if the day's form is good. So it is not necessary to get caught up in what you raised last time, except to estimate the weights you lift today on the way up to top set. The whole point is to the auto-regulate the heavy lifting, so you get stronger over time, and not locking yourself into thinking that it is a failure if you are unable to lift more weight every time. Remember what I said about the training effect its not an on/off switch, but a sliding scale - and that in the long run you will get much better progress by training inside your limits and current recovery capability. In the same way, you end up automatically doing several reps/sets of drop set/s if you are in good shape and fewer reps/set the drop set/s, if the day's form is lackluster. Or you can cut it out completely, if everything just seems too hard. Rather come back stronger next time. Sets before the top set can be regarded as warm-up sets, but with an explosive performance, they will activate the nervous system to do more and more in each of the next sets. When the rest between sets is suitably long and nervous system is optimally activated, the next set of heavier weight will often feel more explosive and lighter than the previous one. In particular, you will feel the reps 2-3 are more explosive than the first of each set. You must have a controlled, but relatively quick eccentric performance, and then explode again as powerful as possible. You shouldnt do this on all exercises - the deadlift should, for example, have a significant stop on the floor. There are advantages in utilizing the stretch reflex, but there are also benefits of exercises where you do not exploit it. For a combination of strength and muscle mass, you should train in the range of 4-6 reps up to 6-8 reps, or do a progression from 6 reps, 5 reps, 4 reps and then recover/deload every 48 weeks. For more strength-oriented training you can work your way down in the range of 1-2 reps, but a so-called volume phase in the range 4-6 reps for 3-4 weeks can also be recommended. In deload phase we ramp-up to the light explosive set at RPE 7-8 without drop sets. This light recovery should allow the realization of training effect, which can be "hidden" because of accumulated fatigue.
Myo-reps
Myo-reps have already integrated the principle of auto-regulation via the exhaustion point. The idea behind the Myo-reps is to achieve maximum fiber activation by training to exhaustion in the first set - the so-called activation kit - and then remain at this point, with successive sets of 2-5 reps with short breaks in Myo-reps series. So there is a balance between fatigue and explosive, effective repetitions at high fiber activation. Since we achieve maximum fiber activation from the first rep when we lift heavier weights in the range of 1-6 reps, it is for the reps up in the range of 6-8 reps to 15-25 reps, that Myo-reps have their distinct advantages. And again - when I say "near exhaustion" lot of people take this literally, and train to exhaustion (RPE 10) on both the activation set and sets of the Myo-reps series. Think explosive, imagine the quality of each repetition - think RPE 8-9 on Myo-reps. Both the amount of exercise and stress are auto-regulated by Myo-reps. In the notation 9-12 3x, 9-12 reps is the activation kit, and sets of 3 reps are Myo-reps series, that you do until you reach a RPE 9 again. Load progress is ensured by using the same weight the next time if you only manage nine reps on the activation kit, and by increasing the weight next time if you manage 12 reps. The number of Myo-reps series after activation kit, and a total number of reps are auto-regulated. You can play with it from workout to workout, because you can also do 2x or 4x instead of 3x, and achieve different effects and training volume by being closer or farther away from exhaustion on every set. Let's say you get 9 reps, and you are close to exhaustion on the activation kit. You can use fewer reps in Myo-reps series, longer breaks, and thus bring in more total reps. So instead of 9+3+3=15 with 5 breathing pause (about 10 seconds) you can do 9+2+2+2+2+2=19 with 10 breathing pause (about 20 seconds). I'm not saying one way is more correct than the other in any situation, as I said earlier in the article that working closer to the point of exhaustion once in a while may be beneficial. The advantage of Myo-reps is just that you will automatically limit the amount of exercise and stress you cause to the system, no matter how you slice it up. Next time, if you became stronger, you could maybe do
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12+3+3+3=21 reps, or 12+2+2+2+2+2+2=24 reps, with the same weight. Training amount is auto-regulated and depends on the day's form if you have a bad day, you end up doing 9+3+2, and on a good day and up with 12+3+3+3+3+3. Remember, however, that you should do at least 2-3 warm-up sets for the first exercise for a muscle group, and at least 1-2 warm-up sets for the second exercise for the same muscle group; sets of 3-5 reps are sufficient for warming-up, before you go on to work the with heavy weights. When doing the Myo-reps with heavier weights, I recommend lowering weights a bit more controlled, to maximize the effect of the eccentric phase. By control I mean lowering weight for about 2-4 seconds, often with a pronounced stop in the bottom position for a second to "feel" a bit of stretch (but do not relax the muscle), and then lift explosively. Always lift explosively. In the higher rep area (15+ reps), you should keep constant tension on the muscle, without locking out on top or resting in the bottom position. With this, you achieve higher fiber activation via the so-called occlusion effect (that can be obtained artificially via blood pressure cuffs in the so-called Kaatsu studies). With lighter weights, you should also keep the rest in the Myo-reps series shorter (3-5 breaths or 5-10 seconds) and work closer to the point of exhaustion (5x or 10x, right up if you can). This provides a greater degree of metabolic exhaustion and its beneficial when the weights are so light that you have less stimulation of the mechanical load. As I will go into, in a later article on nonlinear periodization, there are distinct advantages to the various reps areas, meaning that you will get better overall effect by switching between them in a planned way, than by only training lightly or just training hard, for a whole training phase. A brief summary: 12-15 and 15-20 4x or 5x stimulate primarily cell energy systems and nutrient supply (capillarization, increased blood volume, increased glycogen stores) through metabolic exhaustion, and compensates for the lower mechanical stress with the higher total amount of exercise 9-12 3x provides higher mechanical load, balanced with metabolic fatigue 6-9 2x provides high mechanical resistance and low metabolic exhaustion; it is advantageous to rest longer in Myo-reps series, which then becomes very similar RPE method with drop sets. My exercise routines are primarily based around the RPE method and Myo-reps, but there are several routines I use, that are the built on the same principles. These are the methods that are suitable for exercises that may not be as suitable for Myo-reps, such as bent over rowing, squats, deadlifts, bench presses and dumbbell bench presses (you spend a lot of energy to get the dumbbells into position for each set). Let's look at the two I use most.
Volume Training
First we have the classic volume training, for which I use a notation such as 4-6 sets of 8 reps or 3-5 sets of 12 reps, depending on how many exercises I use for the same muscle group. Here I use the recommendations from Wernbom's meta-analysis - 30-60 total reps per muscle group per workout with heavier weights, more reps at lighter weights, up to 80-120 reps if you train in the 15-25 reps range. If you have two exercises that overlap in the same muscle group, divide it up into 2-3 sets of 8 reps or 1-3 sets of 12 reps on each exercise. Volume Training is certainly nothing new, it is an "old school" method to train and most bodybuilders train this way. When you read an article in FLEX and Muscle Mag and see 4 sets of 12 reps of each exercise, there are many who believe that all the sets are trained to exhaustion. Max hardcore intensity explosion, yeah! Those who have seen in reality how these bodybuilders train, knows that this is not true - it is rather "pumping" with relatively light weights in question. Not to mention that both genetics, training experience and pharmaceutical assistance allow these elite bodybuilders to get away with doing 20 sets for biceps. This is not to say that you will get the same results by copying them, rather the contrary. By staying within the guidelines I provide, and auto-regulating, you will get far better results.
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You should use the same weight on all sets. In practice, for example, you should do 12 reps with a weight you can normally lift for about 15-16 reps. You will only get close to exhaustion on the last set, and in contrast to the static indications of 3 sets of 10 reps, or 4 sets 12 reps programs, you should auto-regulate the amount of exercise you do, and thus with how many sets you train. If you train in the area of 2-4 sets, you should only increase the weight (next time) if you did all 4 sets. As you can see, it is a socalled volume progression from week to week, compared with RPE model and Myo-reps where there is an intensity progression (load on the top set or the activation set load/rep number increases) combined with a volume progression (number of reps/drop sets or Myo-reps series increases). use up to 20% drop, and it may look like this: 100kg x 8 reps, 80kg x 8 reps, 65kg x 11 reps.
The program structure

How to set up the training split is an entire article in itself, but we can start with an upper body/leg split over 3-4 training days per week, or a 55 split. I recommend staying within a certain load and reps area on the same or overlapping muscle groups in one workout, and break it into heavy and light days during the week or training phase. Heavy triples on the bench press and light weight pumping with 15-20 reps on the pecdeck can work too, but I think it's more productive to distribute it on separate days. To give an example, a workout for the upper body can look like this (where you train all muscle groups in the same load ranges): Floor Press 3 x 9-12 Pec-Deck 15-20 5x 9-12 Shoulder Press 3x Triceps isolation exercises 12 reps -10% -10% with a close grip Pull Down 3 x 9-12 Dumbell Row 3-5 sets of 10 reps Biceps Curls 12 reps -10% -10% Or, heres an example where you divide it up in heavy RPE training for back, and lighter Myoreps and drop sets for chest, shoulders and triceps: Chins 5 reps, RPE 8-9, -5% Biceps Curl 6 reps, RPE 8-9, 10% (only a drop set for max reps) Incline Bench with Dumbbells 3 to 5 sets of 8 reps Dips 3 x 9-12 Lateral Raise 12 reps -10% -10%
Drop Set
I also use drop sets, with a notation such as 12 reps -10% -10%. I will illustrate this with an example: The first set is max reps Take 10% weight (it is of course perfectly fine to round up numbers upwards or downwards, to the nearest available weight) Take 5-15 deep breath pause (10 -30 seconds) enough time to change weights and catch your breath Second set is also maximum repetitions New 10% reduction in weight and brief rest Third and final set of max reps again Note that when I say "max repetitions", I still believe that it may be advantageous to remain at RPE 8-9, with RPE 10 (to failure) used only once in a while. Drop rate is kept within the effective range of mechanical loads, so I would not recommended, for example, 15 reps -50% -50% - that is more endurance training than it is resistance training. In the area of 12-15 reps I use the 10% drop, and it may look like this: 50kg x 12 reps, 45kg x 8 reps, 40kg x 7 reps. In the area of 8-12 reps I
Summary
I find it hard to be brief, because I want to describe each method with more detail, but hopefully, you have understand the basics, and also got some useful tools that you can begin to use immediately to improve progress.
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In 2006 I developed the first version of Myoreps, and I later refined it to the current version in 2008. It has proven to one of the most effective tools I have ever used in both myself and my clients, and I will present the basics of it in this article. Myo-reps is, simplistically speaking, a rest-pause method, and the most famous permutation of it is DC/Doggcrapp training. Most of you probably know how to perform a rest-pause set, and I didnt just reinvent the wheel here, I refined it building on research on hypertrophy in recent years. First of all I must give credit where credit is due, to Mathias Wernbom, who presented the most comprehensive meta-review to date on strength and hypertrophy training in 2007, and has been deep into the field of occlusion training the last few years. Matt has provided vast amounts of data to me, hooking both himself and subjects from various populations a lot of them elite athletes (Toppidrettssenteret, Olympiatoppen) to EMG machines and sticking huge biopsy needles into muscles (if you ever had a biopsy performed you will know how excruciatingly painful that experience is). Do a search on Wernbom at PubMed and you will see a list of published papers by him. Im fortunate enough to have access to some unpublished research as well, obviously. Much credit also goes to Dan Moore (originator of the Max Stimulation method), a brilliant man having what must be a photographic recall of various studies and their results. And last, but not least, all of my clients over the years who have provided me with valuable feedback and allowed me to fine-tune and evolve Myo-reps principles and templates.
Myo-reps - a timeefficient method for maximum muscle growth

Brge Fagerli
Growing bigger
Lets first look at the primary identified mechanisms of hypertrophy: I Mechanical deformation: Stretch and contraction under load will initiate a signaling cascade translating into a cellular response, increasing the contractile machinery of the muscle cell. You need to lift weights to grow. Fundamental stuff, indeed. II Motor unit and muscle fiber recruitment: The research is pretty clear on the fact that you eventually need to recruit most of/all of the
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motor units and muscle fibers in a muscle to stimulate maximum muscle growth. A. At approx. 80%+ of 1RM (about 5-8RM loads) you are pretty much at 100% fiber recruitment from the very first rep. I generally dont use Myo-reps for loads heavier than 5RM. B. At lighter loads, you wont recruit all muscle fibers from the beginning, but as you fatigue you will have to call upon more muscle fibers to complete the set. The last few reps of a set will achieve 100% fiber recruitment, so e.g. a 12RM set has approx. 3-4 effective reps at the very end. Not saying that the first reps are ineffective, they are needed to accumulate sufficient fatigue to reach all fibers of the muscle. There has been a lot of research into occlusion-type training where dramatic hypertrophy is observed even with very light loads (20-50% of 1RM) just by tying a blood pressure cuff around an arm or a leg. The main mechanism seems to be an earlier full fiber recruitment effect from the hypoxia (oxygen deprivation) created from occluding the blood flow. Research by some of the most renowned scientists in the field has shown that lifting 30% loads to failure induced more muscle growth than 90% loads to failure, and well have a look at how Myo-reps takes advantage of this mechanism and even improves it further. C. You will also achieve full recruitment transiently by lifting a light load as fast as possible, but only in the turn-around phase from the eccentric to the concentric phase and in the early part of the rep when the weight is still accelerating. By using elastic bands or chains you may increase this acceleration phase by having to push harder vs. slowing down as leverages usually improves at the top of e.g. deadlifts, bench press and squats. D. Metabolic stress, calcium flux and volume: The muscle has to perform a minimum threshold of work with the imposed load and mechanical tension. Reps and the work:rest ratio sets the metabolic state of the muscle. Short duration high-amplitude pulses of calcium into the muscle by high load contractions and rest between sets induced muscle hypertrophy, longer duration lowamplitude pulses such as in cycling or running induces endurance adaptions. Metabolic stress and volume is said to modulate the hypertrophic response, i.e. the load is the primary variable, the sets and reps determines the magnitude and duration of the muscle growth you will get out of it. Your volume threshold increases over time, so as you get more advanced not only can you *tolerate* more volume, you will also *need* more volume to stimulate further gains. This also explains why bodybuilders are more muscular than weightlifters or powerlifters, even though the loads used are less, they perform more work in less time with it. Two additional benefits, and one caveat: 1. Metabolic stress sensitizes the muscle to growth signaling, i.e. you achieve more growth from less work. 2. Metabolic stress increases the supply of energy substrates to the muscle, i.e. glycogen stores, blood flow, oxygenation, capillarization, mitochondrial function, and also the cardiovascular component of the heart and lungs which will improve intra-set and intra-workout recovery in the long-term. 3. If you overdo it, you increase AMPK one of the primary energy-sensors of the cell and this can inhibit protein synthesis and initiate endurance adaptions. This is why extensive interval training (20+ minutes of sprints with short rest, Tabatas with a 2:1 work to rest ratio etc.) doesnt necessarily lead to massive muscle growth excessive metabolic stress and calcium flux combined with depletion of energy substrates turns on endurance and turns off muscle growth. 4. Hormones and amino acids: The usual suspects testosterone, GH/IGF-1, insulin, cortisol, protein.
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Some more important than others, and the hormones seem to play more of a permissive effect in muscle growth, some studies show rapid hypertrophy in knock-out models where the receptor for various hormones are removed altogether. Getting hung-up on transient elevations from what you eat or how you train is pretty much irrelevant and more of a correlative than a causative effect. Amino acids are pretty much mandatory as they provide building blocks for muscle growth, but the body is very good at recycling them which is why you can grow muscle even under fasting conditions. determine your daily strength level and hence, work set load. 1. Pick a load you can perform 9-20 reps with (depending on your programming and exercise selection). I will sometimes go even higher, to 25-40 reps. 2. Go to failure or 1-2 reps short of failure, judged by when rep speed slows noticeably. This is your activation set where you achieve full fiber recruitment. Total failure isnt an absolute requirement, and leaving a rep or two in the tank will allow you to do more total reps, as we shall see soon. 3. By keeping constant tension on the muscle, i.e. shorten the ROM by 10% on top (avoid locking out the weight) and 10% in the bottom (resting the weight or overstretching the muscle), you will mimic the occlusion effect and reach higher fiber recruitment faster. 4. Now the important part rerack the weight and rest for a maximum of 30 seconds unrack the weight and keep going for several short mini-sets of 1-5 reps (depending on the load used). By keeping the rest period short you will maintain fatigue level, and hence fiber recruitment at a high rate. All reps of the mini-set are now effective reps. I simplify the rest period prescription by counting deep breaths, similar to the DC method, where 5 deep breaths iin+out) is about 10 seconds, 10 is 20 seconds and so on. You can get away with the higher end (30 secs) with heavier loads, at lighter loads you should keep rest periods short (5-15 secs) to maintain high fiber recruitment. It is also productive on the Myo-rep series to keep constant tension on the muscle by shortening the ROM. Lets illustrate the difference between a traditional 3 sets of 10 vs. a Myo-rep set, the asterisk * denoting effective reps: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8* 9* 10* 1-2min of rest 1 2 3 4 5 6 7* 8* 9* (a typical drop off in reps if using a 10RM load)
A great summary of the above principles can be found in Keith Baars meta-review. Two things to note here: Kaatsu (blood flow occlusion by pressure cuffs) increases the EMG signal, and hence fiber recruitment earlier. After the first set and a short rest period, you achieve higher fiber recruitment earlier in the subsequent set. This forms the basis for Myo-reps.
The Myo-reps set from start to finish

Simplistically speaking we basically need to lift a sufficiently heavy load, for a sufficient number of sets and reps, sufficiently often to build muscle at the optimal rate. There are many ways of achieving this, and Myo-reps is simply a very time-efficient and productive tool to have in your repertoire. Dont get married to one rep range or one method of training if you want maximum results, a planned and strategic variation with both heavy and lighter loads, high and low volume, high and low frequency is needed if you want to maximize results, but that is an extensive topic to cover and I will save it for later articles. Lets see how you perform a Myo-rep set from beginning to end. I recommend 2-3 warmup sets of progressively increasing loads of 8-12 reps prior to the work set both to increase neural drive, to provide additional volume and to let you
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1-2min of rest 1 2 3 4 5 6 7* 8* 9* So you did 28 total reps in about 6 minutes, where 9 reps were effective reps (at sufficiently high fiber recruitment). Now a Myo-rep set: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8* 9* 10* 15sec rest 1* 2* 3* 15sec rest 1* 2* 3* 15sec rest 1* 2* 3* 15sec rest 1* 2* 3* 15sec rest 1* 2* 3* Here you did 25 total reps in about 2 minutes, where 18 reps were effective. The premise here is to *manage* fatigue to get in more work in less time, and you have to balance the reps and rest periods in the Myo-rep set appropriately. 12-15 +4x 15-20 +5x 20-25 +6x The first part (e.g. 9-12) denotes reps in the activation set, the number after the + is how many reps you will do in the Myo-reps miniseries. So 9-12 +3x will play out like this: 200lbs x 10 +3+3+3+3+2 you werent able to do the third rep of the last set so you stop there Heres how auto-regulation works: Lets say you had a good nights sleep, ate well, had a day off from work, and generally feel great and well recovered. The 9-12 +3x protocol would most likely turn out like this: 200lbs x 12 +3+3+3+3+3+3+3+2 Now, lets say you had a couple of drinks too many at your brothers bachelor party last night, your girlfriend broke up with you because you fondled the stripper, the neighbours cat kept you awake, and youve been dieting for 3 months. The same protocol would most likely deteriorate to this: 200lbs x 8 +3+2 Doing less work when your recovery and adaptive reserves are compromised makes logical and practical sense, and you will most likely come back stronger the next time (provided you stay sober, stop dieting, kiss and make up with your girlfriend or the stripper if she was really hot) vs. struggling to do the same amount of work you had planned to, or even more by adding sets and dropsets to punish yourself for being such a failure as a human being. Stimulate, dont annihilate. You will also note that various muscle groups and exercises have different recovery rates and volume tolerances, so if you consistently get something like 8+3+2 I recommend the following adjustments:
Auto-regulating your way to better results

There are two ways of managing volume here. First, you can prescribe a total number of reps for an exercise, and I would recommend that you get at least 10 reps after the activation set. An example would be (the + denotes 1020sec of reracking the weight and resting): 12 +3+3+2+2 (or 12 +10). Lighter weights generally need more volume, so: 20 +5+5+5+5+5 (or 20 +25) which would also be a productive Myo-rep set. You generally just keep doing mini-sets of 25 reps until you hit the prescribed total rep count. The second way, and my favorite, is autoregulation where you use a set of rules to let the total volume (number of reps) take care of itself based on how you feel that day your individual recovery level. You will also see this prescription in most of my programs where I implement Myo-reps. Example protocols: 6-8 +2x 9-12 +3x
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1. Do 9-12 +2x instead of 3x (3x instead of 4x etc.) 2. Add more rest in the Myo-rep set, e.g. 15 deep breaths instead of 10 3. If you insist on going to absolute failure on the activation set, I strongly recommend a period of leaving 1-2 reps in reserve. Theres not so much to be gained from that last rep or two in terms of muscular stimulation but it vastly increases the neural stress, and it is easily compensated by getting in more total volume at the end. If your recovery rate and volume tolerance is exceptional and you seem to be able to just keep going forever with +3x, you would obviously use the opposite strategy to compensate (4x, shorter rest, work closer to failure). Note that you can also do more reps in the Myo-rep series by doing short ROM partial reps. is a priority muscle group (or another Myo-rep set of the same exercise). Dumbbell presses are less suitable for Myo-reps, as it requires a lot of energy to get them into position and stabilize them. Having only a few seconds of rest makes you run out of breath before you get the load to do sufficient work on the muscles. Im also careful with Myo-reps on squats, deadlifts, and even bent rows as the accumulating fatigue, in the lower back in particular, may compromise technique and increase injury potential.
Concluding remarks
As you can see, a Myo-rep set takes advantage of the primary mechanisms of muscle growth mechanical load, increasing fiber recruitment and maintaining it at a high level to get more effective reps, increasing the muscle sensitivity to the growth stimulus via metabolic stress, modulated by the volume effect (total sets and reps) and doing more work in less time. With Myo-reps you can get in and out of the gym in 30 minutes if you are short on time, you can provide a different stimulus to a muscle group from the traditional way of structuring sets and reps, and it can even serve as a deload following a high-volume phase. Myo-reps is a great tool to have in your toolbox in the quest for a massive and strong physique, feel free to play around.with.it.
What exercises?
I wont go much into detail on exercise selection and template structure, there are many ways of programming your training strategy and I would rather save that for a later article. I will just briefly mention that I usually do at least 2 exercises for major muscle groups, and more if it
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