Pyramid Training Method

     You may have seen some pyramid workouts floating around the internet or places like Pinterest that look something like this:

20 calf raises

30 squats

40 toe touches

50 second wall sit

100 jumping jacks

50 second wall sit

40 toe touches

30 squats

20 calf raises

     (I tried this one and yes, I was sore!) While these workouts do resemble a pyramid in terms of going up in the number of reps and peaking before coming back down, traditionally the pyramid method of training is much different. There's nothing wrong with these other pyramid workouts, in fact, I really like them, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain what the traditional pyramid training method is.

     I could get all technical and talk about 1 rep max and all that but I'm going to keep this really simple. You're going to decrease your reps as you increase your weight. For example, if I'm using the pyramid training method while doing bicep curls I would do something like this:

12 reps at 8 lbs

10 reps at 10 lbs

8 reps at 15 lbs

It could even look like this...

12 reps at 8 lbs

10 reps at 10 lbs

8 reps at 15 lbs

10 reps at 10 lbs

12 reps at 8 lbs

It's totally up to you.

     It's totally up to you how many sets you would like to do, what weights you do, how many reps you start at, and how many reps you decrease by. Obviously the less reps you do, the heavier the weight. If you get all the way down to 1 rep, it needs to be so hard that you can only lift that weight the 1 time. If you get down to just a few reps but you feel like you could lift that weight 10 times, you need to change your weights.

     One of the benefits to a pyramid workout is that by starting with lighter weight and more reps, you give your muscles a chance to warm up before hitting the heavier weights. Also, being able to hit heavier weights towards the end will help you overload the muscle and as you may remember, we want to overload the muscle so that it becomes stronger.

     So, have fun with pyramids, leave comments sharing ones you like with everyone else and, as always, leave me an email with any more questions you may have! sarabsorensen@gmail.com

     Since your weight-lifting pyramid workout is going to be unique to you, here's another of the different pyramid workouts like I showed at the beginning of this post to try. Enjoy!

          The PT Pyramid