Reverse Pyramid Training – Part One

Hey guys, back for more blogging after an extended move out here in Seattle. I’ve been playing around with two new (to my body, at least) training philosophies, reverse pyramid training and HIT. I caught wind of both through my friend Martin Berkhan and his website.

For those of you unfamiliar with Martin, he’s one of the first guys who, to my knowledge, has put together intermittent fasting with a targeted  exercise protocol. I contacted Martin not so much for his nutritional insight but rather for his take on training. He and I come from very similar places. Overweight during childhood into our late teens and early 20s, we both dropped serious fat through excessive cardio and dietary restriction. Our baseline was skinny and weak, and we both had a long way to go at the start of our training careers.

Intelligent HIT – the kind promulgated by Martin, at least – keeps volume to a minimum. Major movements are trained infrequently. Martin has taken his cues from guys like Arthur Jones and Stuart McRobert, altering the workout week to an extended 8-day schedule and emphasizing  progressive overload over volume. I put together a program, e-mailed back and forth with Martin to refine it, and pursued it with gusto over a period of four weeks. There were some things I really loved about the program and, yes, there were some downfalls. Before I delve into the relative pros and cons, which I’ll discuss in a follow-up post, let’s discuss what I did.

The Modality

My mission at every workout was to see improvements in either reps or weight. I saw consistent improvement for the first three weeks and then actually lost strength on the fourth week. I’ll go into this a bit later, but first some numbers.

I’m a pretty small guy – 5’6”, 142lbs at the program’s inception, 147lbs at program’s end. I objectively gained ~ 1 – 1.5lbs of lean mass over the period. The rest appears to be water and increased glycogen storage from more carbohydrates. Keep in mind, I’m coming off an extended layoff, a result of medically diagnosed overtraining, so my recovery is nowhere near what it used to be.

For the past four weeks I was in the gym three times every eight days. My bench press improved by 30lbs for five reps. My deadlift improved dramatically, over 80lbs for four reps. Back squat didn’t move as much as I would have liked, from four to six reps with a 15lb increase in weight.

Reverse pyramid training is quite the interesting methodology. For a given set, in Martin’s program a major compound movement, your first set after warm-ups is a top set, followed by a drop in weight. This second set, unlike the first, is not a max effort. The intent is to beat your max effort set by one to two reps. During this training period, major compounds were performed in the 4 – 7 rep range, sets kept to a maximum of two. Accessory movements varied in execution and mapping but with an everpresent emphasis on reaching concentric failure.

As a quick example, let’s take a look at one of my bench press sessions courtesy of my training log:

Bench Press, Set 1: Barx10, 95×10, 135×7, 185×5, 195×2, Rest 3min, 210×4

Rest 3min

Bench Press, Set 2: 200×5

And that’s it. During the same workout I performed one set of max reps on close-grip bench to failure, and one set of max reps on incline DB bench to failure. This would be all the chest work I’d do for the entire eight day cycle.

No doubt this is a strength-based program. Hypertrophy herein is a product of progressive overload. I think it’s a great set-up, perhaps the best set-up of the abbreviated programming philosophy. The reverse pyramid methodology wasn’t used on every set, as I’ve noted, so don’t jump into the gym trying to reverse pyramid every movement.

So if you find strength stalling, or you’re just bored with your current training, try adding in a reverse pyramid set as an alternative to your usual lifting. Next time I’ll discuss my take on the program as a long-term strategy for bodybuilding and hypertrophy.

Tagged as: training