Loading set cycling

[AlicaLeila0589]

In terms of cycling through lifts for loading days in the book its recommended to cycle through 3 variants (eg Squat, Hack, Leg Press)
would there ever be call to merely use one (or two) variants repeated every week (or two) if a person was able to progress every week for the blast?
thinking behind this is to allow for a quicker progression of the lift (although at the expense maybe of shortening the length of time the exercise would be used)

[Scott Stevenson]

In terms of cycling through lifts for loading days in the book its recommended to cycle through 3 variants (eg Squat, Hack, Leg Press)
would there ever be call to merely use one (or two) variants repeated every week (or two) if a person was able to progress every week for the blast?
thinking behind this is to allow for a quicker progression of the lift (although at the expense maybe of shortening the length of time the exercise would be used)

Pumped340 gave you a great answer, Alica.

I'll add that when using a given exercise regularly (weekly) it's my experience (I've played with this myself and conversed about this topic countless times now over the decades) that the gains in strength end up have a larger neurological component relative to a muscular component (what we want), even if these are exercises you've been doing for years. What this means then is that, as you say, you progress more rapidly, but there is a shortening of the time you can hold on to that exercise (b/c you plateau more rapidly, relative to time (weeks) as well as number of sessions). This would mean you need to rotate that Loading Set exercise out (or change the order of the compound and isolation exercises), which for some folks can pose a problem b/c they have only so many good go-to exercises for Loading sets.

Ideally, we're seeing strength gains that are representative of muscular gains and eliminating a "practice effect" that accumulates over time. Of course, there's a strong neurological component at work here in advanced trainees, but its my experience that just doing an exercise just a little less frequently prevents the accumulation of a practice effect which becomes the dominant effector of the strength gains.

On the other side of the coin, the exercise becomes a bit novel when rotating among 3 groups - you'll get more sore rotating exercises like this - which suggests that the muscular stimulus for is greater for a given workload.

And... the folks who do really well over years putting on size are ones you'll see who can hold on to exercises and grind out gains with micro loading over the course of many months. This is just an empirical finding and probably has to do with psychological tendencies. (It takes a more tenacious attitude to grind out progress over the course of months without the novelty of ever-changing exercises. That comes of course with the Pump Sets and Muscle Rounds. )

Relatedly, one worthwhile way (in the context of doing Loading sets this way) of progressing on MR's is to pound away at the same ones week after week (unless there's a nagging injury / aches n' pains / "Niggle" that suggests it's better to do something else). This can be a very fun challenge on MR days and is something I suggest for folks who really dig progressive overload and kicking the log book's ass. (This would be opposed to mixing it up with MR's and potentially doing different exercises, in different combinations and order, week by week, but still referencing the log book to try to set new PR's.)

-Scott

[Scott Stevenson]

Have you ever seen this in reverse....someone who used to do an exercise frequently getting worse at it on FT? I've noticed that my pressing has gone down quite dramatically recently and while I do seem to have lost muscle mass from the 3 weeks of low testosterone I also wonder if it's in part because I just got off of an OHP specialization phase. 8 weeks ago I hit a lifetime OHP PR of 14x145 in my first week of FT. I was doing OHP 3-5x per week just prior to this. Then when I repeated it I went WAY down to 8x155. Then this past week went down again to 6x155. All while at 188lb. Meanwhile...pull ups are tied at PR levels of 12x45 full ROM.

No, that's probably the largest strength loss I've seen specific to an exercise. (This, too, seems like it can be a function of losing the practice effect you gained during your specialization phase.)

-S

[ebado]

I’m finishing up my second FT blast, all my loading sets (and MRs) have been steadily increasing except for bench press, including my other chest exercises. My bench has always been crap especially compared to my other lifts and increased super slowly over the years. For whatever reason, it seems gains on bench much are much more neurologically driven for me than other exercises, and I’ve found myself unable to progress on it without more frequent practice (my numbers on it since starting FT have been 240x8, 245x7, 245x7, 245x6). I plan on swapping it out now. I used to bench weekly before starting FT for reference. I totally agree with everything Scott posted above about cycling loading lifts, just wanted to share this insight with Pumped.