Thoughts on 1 Rep, 2 Rep, 3 Rep, 4 Rep,+ Progression?

[mathew2sellers]

Just contemplating mixing up my workout. Someone suggested to me to take some exercises and do it in a pyramid style. Take push-ups for example. Do 1 push-up then wait a set amount of time. (He didn’t specify but probably something like 15-60 seconds. 30 would seem like a good middle ground.) Then do two pushups. Wait. Three pushups. Wait. Four pushups. Wait. Five. Wait. Keep this going till you hit failure. If you can get up to 15 full sets, pick a harder exercise. (Doing 15 sets is 120 reps in total.)

Looking at the viability of this, I’m unsure personally and also the word “pyramid” is a misnomer since there is no going down. That being said there could be some benefits if nothing else to add variety. Sort of comes with an automatic warm up since you’re slowly building up the load. But I admit I’m a bit dumb as far as biological elements of a workout goes. Seems like endurance training to me but I’m not sure. (Though to be fair I need more endurance so maybe it’s not a bad idea.)

Anyway, as I said I’m dumb so if anyone smarter than me has any opinions on this regimen I’d love to hear it.

Edit: If this regimen is actually has a name, would you mind letting me know?

 

[betty44]

@mathew2sellers It's called ladders. Pyramid is if you go down again.

I do this following kboges' pull-up approach and went up from 10 to 15 pull-ups in ten weeks. I do three pull workouts per week. First one is three sets of maxreps (until technical failure) with 5 min rest between sets. Second one is ten sets of 50% maxreps with 1 min rest between sets. When you manage to do all ten sets at 50% maxreps you add a rep. Third workout is five sets of ladders with 30 sec rest between sets. Especially with the ladders you get a lot more volume than with doing maxreps.

 

[prayerpartner]

@mathew2sellers I like doing this sometimes. It's a great way to accumulate more volume than you might otherwise. For example you might get into mental traps struggling to hit like 10 in a row, but with this scheme by the time you get to 5, you've done already 15. You're getting more tired at the same time as the sets are getting harder. If you can get to set 15, you should have picked a harder progression a long time ago though.

 

[jermyn]

@mathew2sellers Good question. What is your goal? Is your goal strength? If so, this sort of pyramid probably isn't that great. When you think about it, only a few of the sets are actually difficult.

For example, if your max is 10 Pushups, then only the sets that have 7,8,9,10 pushups etc are going to actually be a challenge. Sets 1-6 will probably be so easy that you should have simply skipped them.

So instead of doing pyramids, I'd suggest setting a rep range like 8-10 and working in that rep range. Then as you get stronger, increase the progression/load etc.

 

[mathew2sellers]

@jermyn Good thoughts. I’m never “satisfied” with my strength since I can always improve but I am decently strong with weighted pull ups, dips, etc. I do think I focus too much on pushing myself hard from a strength standpoint as I don’t have comparable endurance and get tired easily whenever I do too many reps. So recently I’ve been trying to increase reps instead of weight.

 

[kira07]

@jermyn If your max is 10, you will never get to 10 in a pyramid with 30 seconds of rest. Also, to me, a pyramid has both up and down increments. Like 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1.

 

[raymo]

@mathew2sellers It seems kinda silly to me to do 1-2 rep sets in a warm-up. For warmup sets I tend to do 5-10. For the working sets I'm increasing difficulty with weight or leverages. For some exercises I might work up to a PR doing sets of 3-5 for if I'm aiming to do a set of 3 for the PR.

You can try doing with reps and see how you like it.

 

[kemada]

@mathew2sellers Seems like a fine idea as a change of pace.

It's kind of like a reverse giant set.

Where a giant set you set a total rep goal. Take the first chunk to failure, then short rest, another chunk to failure, ... So your reps might look like 15, 12, 8, 8, 6, etc until you hit the target total.

This almost does like same thing except front loads the reps for the fatigued chunks.

 

[alittlebird]

@mathew2sellers Its called a Ladder. I do this for Chin Ups, going from 1 to 4 or 5. Four gives me 10 reps, 5 gives me 15. Repeat for m ore reps. For Push Ups you might go by 2s, like 2,4, 6. Or do another exercise, like 1 Push Up, then Jumping Jacks of KB Swings. Then go up the ladder. Or...go up the ladder with Push Ups,, and down a Ladder with Squats, for example. 10 to 1 on the Squats.

 

[carldavid93]

@mathew2sellers I do this with kettlebell swings, except the waits are also similarly increasing, and I use breaths to count the wait, like 1 rep, 1 breath, 2 reps, 2 breaths, and so on till 20.

This technique is supposed to be good for increasing VO2Max.