Getting a Healthy Heart With Cardio Workout Exercises

or more “heavy” sets (5’s, triples, doubles, or singles). Once you’re done with the heavy work, continue with your multiple high-volume, lower-intensity sets. That way, you save your energy for the heavy work, and then beat your body up after with some high-rep work.

Reverse pyramid training programs fall in line with this type of thinking. They are high volume routines that still flirt with intensity. They involve you performing your heaviest set first, then removing weight and performing more reps for the next set, removing more weight and performing even more reps for the following set, and so on. Martin Berkhan has recommended a reverse pyramid training routine for those following his program, LeanGains. The only down-side with his specific take on RPT is that it involves only 3 sets per exercise, 2 exercise per day, and 3 days per week. More back-off sets may be needed to stimulate growth.

Yet another example is the original pyramid training. This involve starting your working sets with lower weight and higher reps, building up to a low-rep set with heavy weight. Weight goes up and reps go down as you progress from set to set.The down-side with this kind of training is that you’ll be fairly fatigued once you reach your heaviest set. The up-side is that your true strength will always be greater than what you perform during a typical workout. Finnish weightlifter Milko Tokola has a video floating around of his “pig squat training” – essentially a pyramid routine, but more grueling. It is 20 sets of squats, starting with 20 reps, taking 1 rep off each set until the final set of 1 rep is hit. The weight goes from 45 lbs / 20 kg to 462 lbs / 210 kg.

That’s 210 reps total, ending with a single at 84% of his 1RM from one year prior. I don’t know about you, but I feel inferior right now.

Powerbuilding Routine “Theme” #3: Find The Happy Medium

Yet another way to follow a powerbuilding routine is to favor neither volume nor intensity. If you can maximize both as much as possible without interfering with each other, you’ve hit the jack pot. The biggest concern here is to figure out how much of both intensity and volume your body can handle.

If you increase intensity, you can’t perform as many reps per set. You can perform more sets, but if those sets are grinders, each set will deteriorate and you’ll end up failing or doing less reps per set. 5 sets of 6 at a certain weight may be impossible to complete, but 6 sets of 5 just might be possible. 10 sets of 3 would certainly be doable. 15 sets of 2 would be laughable (but would take quite some time to complete).

Chad Waterbury’s 10 x 3 nails this tenant on the head precisely. It allows you to use a considerable amount of weight at a considerable volume, spread across multiple sets. Here are the details:

• Focus primarily on compound lifts.
• Perform the lifts at 80% of your 1RM, for 10 sets of 3.
• Limit rest to 1-2 minutes.
• Either increase weight used each week by 2.5% of your 1RM, or decrease rest between sets.

Others have found success with Waterbury-like routines, including Jamie Lewis of Chaos and Pain whose training regimen revolves around heavy weights with compound lifts performed at singles, doubles, and/or triples for a crap-ton of sets. He still messes around with higher-rep sets for bodyweight or accessory exercises, but the bulk of his routine is similar to Waterbury’s method.

If variety is more what you like, you can try to involve various rep-ranges within in each workout for the sake of powerbuilding. Once again, it’s a little easy to get wreckless here and you should tread with caution before beating up your body with a large number of sets with different weights and intensities.

The primary difference between this approach and the other approaches is that volume and intensity are attacked at all angles, versus focusing on one and supplementing with the other.

Take Cody Levefer’s GZCL Method for example.

The GZCL Method involves three “tiers” of volume-to-intensity to be performed each workout. It all starts with low-volume high-intensity work for the big lifts (tier 1), followed by moderate-volume and moderate-intensity for the same lifts (tier 2), followed-up once again with high-rep bodybuilding-esque sets (tier 3). His program’s philosphy touts that enough intensity AND volume is necessary for progress. Here is a snapshot of how the routine can be adapted to for squats, :

Nothing is safe in this program. It’s all inclusive and anything from heavy singles to light sets of 15 are used. Like I said before, it’s a little easy to go overboard when your mind-set is “I’ve got to hit ALL my bases”. Take heed, increase gradually.

, where he publishes everything for FREE. Do feel free to donate to his site if you enjoy his content. Keep kicking ass, Mr. GZCL.

Conclusion: Everything is Powerbuilding

As made apparent by this article, anything that has both enough volume and intensity is technically a powerbuilding routine. Most dedicated lifters are technically powerbuilders. Ronnie Coleman a professional bodybuilder, was also incredibly strong, making him a bodybuilder. Dan Green, a powerlifter, is jacked out of his mind, making him a powerbuilder.

This isn’t to take away from the discussion, however. It is still useful to see how you can get the same job in different manners.

There are a multiple ways to skin a cat, but the end-result is the same. You simply need to reach the two requirements (volume and intensity), and how you get there is up to you.