So I was all prepared to put myself through a deadlift session yesterday. I did my foam rolling, dynamic flexibility, and had my iPod set on shuffle (I must say I have a kick ass trance/house playlist). Time to get down to bidness.
I got to my 3rd warm-set (315) and noticed my back just wasn't feeling it. So rather than being a tough guy and continuing on, I just decided to skip the rest and move on to all the other things I had planned. Some light front squats, glute ham raises, reverse lunges, and some pull-throughs.
Moral of the story? I STILL had a great training session and I was able to work around my back not feeling up to par. By next week, I will be feeling great.
Learn to listen to your body. It will save you a lot of frustration in the long run
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Tony,
This is not related to your last blog post but I'd love to hear your input on a couple areas that've been perplexing me for some time now when it comes to program design:
1) What's the best way to utilize warm up sets in a program? How many do you do and do you need to do them at the start of each exercise or just for the bigger movements or just for the initial exercises/movement patterns? Also, how do you account for time when working them in? I've read alot of stuff on program design and almost all of it seems to totally ignore the time required for warm up sets and just focus on filling up the hour with working sets. So drawing from your experience, what is the best way to implement warm up sets in a program and especially in a program with tight time restrictions?
2) When programming an exercise, most programs seem to just put a static figure such as 3 x 8. Does this mean that you should pick a weight at which you are close to failure by the 8th rep of the 3rd set and have quite a few reps still in the tank at the end of the 1st and 2nd sets? Or do you do some kind of pyramid system by either decreasing weight as the sets go on (in which case which set is the %1RM variable referring to?), or lowering the reps with each set (eg 9,8,7 reps so that the average is still 8 reps per set)?
3) As regards doing activation stuff like pullaparts between sets, even though the effort is not taxing, aren't you still detracting from your levels of ATP that should be recovering between sets? Even though the effort is minimal, surely it still detracts in some way from ATP recovery and thus changes/impairs the stimulus you are aiming for with your rest period?
Sorry to bombard you with so many questions but these few issues have been bugging me like crazy and since I'm just starting out I'd prefer to find out the answer through experienced experts like yourself rather than my own mistakes!
If these questions are too complicated or off topic for your blog you can email me at yudikerbel at excite dot com.
Thanks Tony, keep up the great work. I'm a big fan of your stuff and look up to you as a huge influence in my career. You rock bro!
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