Disclaimer: Information discussed here is highly focused on powerlifting and powerbuilding type of training (and to some degree classic body building). There's no secrets, no magic tricks, and likely even nothing groundbreaking here that you haven't heard before. Its just positive reinforcement to certain back to basics training concepts and ideas.
Lifting is not exactly molecular science (well, it can be yeah). You lift moderate heavy compound movements three to four times a week, you eat sufficiently and sleep a minimum of 7 hours per night and you will get stronger and bigger. Right? Well… yes. And especially if you’re in youre 20’s. The younger you are, the better you recover and progress – even from doing additional stupid shit that some influencer marketed as the fastest way to gain some size and strength.
But as you get older and more advanced in lifting, it doesn’t really work that simple anymore. Life gets more difficult year by year. Your stress levels are stacking your cumulative fatigue. Your CNS probably can’t take the squat AMRAPs with clustersets at 90% every week. So a well organized plan with a thought out progressive overload is, if not imperative, at least highly recommended.
The primary plan laid out in the first paragraph is exactly what you need to do in the big picture. But lets have a look into some more detailed ideas.
THE MINIMUM EFFECTIVE DOSE
More isn’t always better and less isn’t necessary more. Lets use the most basic of basic principles, five sets of five for strength as our example. You would squat 5 sets of 5 reps at say 70-75% of your 1 rep max to cause a neuromuscular stimulus for growth and muscle fibre recruitment.
Two or three sets may be too little, but what if you did 10 sets of 5 reps? Would that cause a double stimulus for growth? No, it would likely cause a little more stimulus than five sets, but it would also cause double the fatigue. The return of invest in this type of training is rubbish.
The minimum effective dose is a combination of volume, intensity and training frequency, paired with excercise selection. There are no readymade answers for it. You will have to find out where you recover and perform best by tracking your progress and using some sort of autoregulation for daily variations in training readiness.
TRAINING FREQUENCY, VOLUME AND SPLIT
For most people 3 or 4 sessions per week is optimal. In powerlifting you would likely train with an SBD regime with one added extra accessory day if needed. On three sessions you would have the SBD or a variation of the lift (or a close one). In powerbuilding you might do upper/lower or a push/pull split with a bit more volume and less intensity.
For powerlifting 3-5 excercises per session with 3-5 sets per excercise aiming for roughly 15-20 sets per session is a very good base. You will need to figure out yourself how much volume your body can recover from. As a general rule of thumb your sets would be roughly on the range of 1 to 8 reps on main movements, and in powerbuilding and on accessories your sets would range from 4 to 12 reps.
INTENSITY AND LOAD
Now this is where you most likely go haywire. While some people (and, especially younger) may get away with going to failure constantly, it doesn’t mean you should. It’s completely different to go to failure on lateral raises on sets of 15 than going to failure on squat sets of 5.
When training for strength, avoid going to failure until the end of your max block.
The majority of your training should revolve loadwise between 60% to 90% of you 1RM max. Intensitywise, you should have at least 1-3 reps “in the tank” after each set. This is called autoregulation and can be measured with either Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), or Reps In Reserve (RIR).
Each session should leave you feeling still fresh and not like a ten ton hammer hit your body and you’re puking your guts, despite how fun and extreme that may seem.
AUTOREGULATION OR PERCENT BASED?
Both have their place in training, and both are commonly used in conjunction. A topset of five reps at RPE7 should revolve around 80% of your 1RM. But all days are not the same. Today you felt good on squats, the next time you felt like your warmup weights were padded with lead. This is where you AUTOREGULATE the intensity.
The rule of thumb is you gain one rep when going each 3% step down from your 1 rep max. For elite lifters, the percentage is higher. For beginners, lifters with bad form and “rep grinders” the percent is lower. That means, an elite lifter with perfect fiber recruitment and technique may be able to do a double at 90% while a beginner will grind three acceptable reps at 95% but cannot stack their max much higher.
Using autoregulation you control your set intensity by the amount of reps you would be able to perform without major technique breakdown, regardless of percentage. Percentage is the ballpark where you should land, but you land on different sides of the ballpark on different days.
RPE is measured on a scale of 5 to 10, 10 being the highest with 0 reps left, and 5 being the lowest with 5 reps left.
RIR is measured on a scale of 0 to 5, with revers order – 0 being 0 reps in reserve and 5 being 5 reps in reserve.
With autoregulation you get the most out of you individual sessions and cement of good base for progression.
BASIC TOOLS FOR PROGRAMMING
The beforementioned paragraphs provide you the basic tools for building your own program. In addition to this, you should incorporate a variety of different lift variations. On squats your main lift is low bar squat, but you would program also SSB, pin scquats, high bar, box squat etc with different rep and set schemes.
If you’re not satisfied with the progress your making by programming yourself, try out the free Barbell Cult 12 Week Basic Powerlifting program.