HST experts please comment

[Lestat]

I have now found my 5, 10, and 15 rep maxes for 17 exercises.

Here is my dillema

When I use a 5lb increment, I will be doing a HIGHER weight at the end of my two week 15 rep cycle then I will be doing at the START of my 2 week 10 rep cycle.

Is this acceptable or does it defeat the whole progressive load objective?

The same thing happens when I switch from 10 reps to 5 reps.. for the first two workouts of the 5 rep cycle I am doing less weight then I did when I ended with my 10 rep cycle max.

For example.

On flat bench I will be doing the following

125
130
135
140
145
150 x 15

135
140
145
150
155
160 x 10

160
165
170
175
180
185 x 5

That is using a 5lb increment. When I use 10lbs the overlap is worse.

Brian

 

[Boss101]

This also happens to me. Remember you're working your way up to your 15/10/5 rep max.

Example of my workout using BB Curl

10's

85
90
95
100
105
110

5's

110
115
120
125
130
135

You can increase the weight from 5-20lbs every workout it doesn't always have to be 5lbs. On your 4th day if you feel the weight is to light bump it up 10lbs your next workout. With my experience with HST the first couple of days are easy but not to easy during the 10's and 5's once you get into the second week you might even have to drop a set because it becomes to much.

 

[casualbb]

Ah, you noticed

We call this zig-zagging. The way we look at it, yeah it means that you don't have progressive load for a couple workouts, but it also acts as sort of a rest period. Those days that feel very light really help improve energy and prevent cumulative overtraining. Don't worry about it; you're normal. Two days of overlap isn't actually all that much in the grand scheme of things.

Don't be afraid to use big-ish increments; I'd recommend 5% of your 5RM as an increment size for a given exercise. Doing this, I sometimes had exercises where I'd overlap for 3 days, but it didn't seem to hinder gains at all.

Edit: what you can do, that I've had success doing, is to arbitrarily lower the day 6 (15RM) weight of your exercise. So for bench, just subtract 10 or 20 pounds. Usually the 15RM and 10RM are more clustered than the 10 and 5, so this helps to remedy that. I feel you, though. We slow-twitch guys have very clustered RM's...that makes it tough sometimes.

-casualbb