** The following is a post from our sister site over at Durable Fitness**
In our last post, we described a progressive overload strategy that combines an expectation of adding weight on future workouts coupled with a sub-maximal RPE prescription.
Adding weight on future workouts makes sense, but why steer clear of maximal intensity for most working sets? Two reasons:
- If your priority is durability, your focus should be on a long arc of progress (think years, not months). In simple terms, we prioritize training consistency, enjoyment, and avoidance of injury over making gains as rapidly as possible.
- Research shows that sub-maximal intensity drives strength improvements. In short, maximal effort isn’t required to make progress.
Other than warming up active muscle and tissue, here are two ways your warm-up can contribute to the progressive overload goals above:
- By creating a focused opportunity to refine technique with lighter weight.
- By generating information guiding an appropriate load selection to align with the RPE prescription on your working sets.
Before we go further, warm-ups don’t have to be complicated. In general, you can ditch all the mumbo jumbo, follow the basic steps below, and you’ll be fine.
Ride Basic: A Minimalist Guide to Maximize Your Cycling
Whether you’re a beginner eager to complete your first fondo, or a seasoned pro aiming to refresh the foundational principles of long-term cycling success, this time-efficient guide offers invaluable insights into why and how you can Ride Basic.
Principles of a good warm-up:
- A few minutes of light cardio, then begin lifting with the bar weight. No need for elaborate routines with bands, stretches, or Bosu balls.
- In general, as you approach your working weight, make smaller jumps in weight. Think of your warm-up like a pyramid.
- Practice every rep, from the bar weight, to your last warm-up set with the same technique. You are practicing the craft of lifting efficiently while preparing your mind/body for the heavier working sets to come.
If you’re here for the details, let’s carry on. We’ll assume this warm-up is for squats at 3 X 6 @RPE7. Let’s say your previous squat workout had you lifting 180 lbs with each set landing around an RPE of 7.
For this workout, you should have a loose expectation of adding around 5 more lbs. I say loose because your warmup will inform your load selection on your working sets.
Start with the bar, then add weight in progressively smaller increments on each successive set until you make your final jump (your smallest of the progression) to your first working set.
The image below illustrates how this may look in practice.
Now back to a question posed in the previous post. What do you do if during your warmup everything feels harder than you expected?
The play here is simple: reduce the weight on the bar until your RPE aligns with the prescription. This might have you taking a smaller jump to your first working set. Or taking your last warmup weight as the first of your three working sets.
Critics of a flexible loading approach in barbell training say that ceding control of the weight on the bar to your “feelings” is a bad idea.
They worry a focus on “feelings” leads to subpar effort, and a stalling out of progress.
I haven’t found this to be the case. If anything, offering a wider allowance in your training to other life stressors and fatigue makes it more likely you keep training while helping you develop a more refined sense of when to push hard and when to back off.
Check out other posts over at Durable Fitness at this link.