Pyramid Training (Click Here to Leave/Read Comments)

Have you ever felt that your workouts are getting boring and repetitive? Have you reached a plateau and can’t gain the muscle mass and strength that you’re looking for? If so, why not give Pyramid traing a shot?

The pyramid can be used for any body part, however I personally find it works best with upper body workouts especially chest exercises. The most popular pyramid uses an ascending methodology by increasing the weight with each additionl set. One of the advantages of using the pyramid rather than doing four sets of the same weight is that it allows your body to get used to heavier weights. Working with additional weight causes micro-tears to your muscles and when they recover, they get stronger. Another advanted to using this method is that you can monitor your gains a little eaiser. You’ll know when it’s time to add more weight on when you start to get comfortable with the weights and you’re not exhausting your muscles. Once that happens, you should step up the weights in small increments. Everyone’s body is different. So while it might take two weeks of using the same weights for one person to bump up the weights it might take another person up to a month. The key to the Pyramid, is finding the correct balance of weights from the bottom to the top so that your last rep should almost fail. Once you see your last rep starting to get too easy or you feel like you could have done more at the end of your workout, it’s time to increase the weight.

The best way that I have found to break up the sets and reps is to start with a light warm up of 10-15 reps. Once you are warmed up you can move into your pyramid sets: breakdown should look like this 10-8-6-4-2. Here is a sample using pyramid training for a bench press workout.

Warm up set 135pounds X 10-15 reps
165 pounds X 10 reps
185 pounds X 8 reps
205 pounds X 6 reps
215 pounds X 4 reps
235 pounds X 2 reps

It may take some time to figure out your weight intervals, but the best way to determine your plan is to start off a lot lighter than you think so that you can build up and get used to the program. You should always work with a partner while using the pyramid method because in order for it to be effective, the last rep of each set in the pyramid should be a struggle or a failure. That being said, you should note that if the last 2 reps of a set seem too easy it may be time to increase the weight. One other key to success with this is to always maintain good form. It’s better to have good form with lighter weight than to be all over the place with the barbell stacked!