Fierce 5 Novice Questions

[youknowit84]

I want to start the Fierce 5 Novice program and have a question about it. He says to add weight each week but then later says to add a rep on the weeks where I'm not increasing weight. I'm a little confused on what to do here. My other question is that if I do increase a set by 1 rep, am I suppose to keep increasing it as I go along with the program of is it just for that workout that day? Is the idea to keep increasing reps so that a 3x5 will eventually be say, 3x10 in a months time?

[radrd]

Is this what you are referring to?

*Reverse flies will increase 5lbs per month and should never increase over 15lbs per hand if using DBs, leg curls (if subbed) will increase 5lbs per week and ab work increases in reps (try adding a few reps each week.) If you are unable to increase weight in these increments due to equipment limitations then, for that exercise only, increase weight every other week. For the exercises in the 5 rep range add 1 rep per set during the weeks you aren’t increasing weight. For exercises in the 8-15 range add 2 reps per set during weeks you aren’t increasing weight.

I believe this applies only if you are limited by your equipment. Putting 2.5 lb plates on a bar is a smaller jump than if you have to add 5 lb to each dumbbell. If you have to make too big of a jump in weight due to limited equipment, you can add reps instead until you are able to manage the significant increase in weight.

[Horizon92]

I want to start the Fierce 5 Novice program and have a question about it. He says to add weight each week but then later says to add a rep on the weeks where I'm not increasing weight. I'm a little confused on what to do here. My other question is that if I do increase a set by 1 rep, am I suppose to keep increasing it as I go along with the program of is it just for that workout that day? Is the idea to keep increasing reps so that a 3x5 will eventually be say, 3x10 in a months time?

I'm not familiar with the program in question, but generally speaking novice programs have some sort of progression system in place to ensure that the lifter is applying progressive overload. As you may already be aware, the key to increasing in size and strength is to - over time - increase the demand on your muscles as they adapt to the previous stimulus you put on it.

Lets say you go in and you do 60kg for 2 sets of 6 reps, and its hard enough that the last rep of each set is slowed down. This will stimulate your muscles to grow as you are putting demands on it which its struggling to deal with. You recover for a few days, get your protein in etc. and after a couple of days you come back into the gym. Now you could do 2x6 again and it would give you some stimuli, however since your body has adapted and become stronger, the amount of stimuli will be less. And over time, obviously, the stimuli will disappear completely as the weight just becomes lighter and lighter. So the most obvious ways to increase the demands on your muscles to keep the stimuli high is to either a) increase the weight on the bar or b) increase the amount of reps per set.

Beginners can often very quickly jump up in weight for a while because they gain a lot of "strength" i.e. ability to lift more through technical proficiency and basically just learning to use their muscles effectively, but also because the less muscle you have the easier it is to gain. After a while, progressive overload happens at a slower pace i.e. you need more total sets near failure to actually increase resistance.

So, this concept of progressive overload applies to all weight lifting programs, and its important to understand that these novice programs aren't made in lab settings with very fickle parameteres where if you don't follow what it says to a tee everything falls apart. Its likely that whoever made this program tried his best to present a reasonable rate of progress for *most* individuals, however he probably understands that there is a huge variance between lifters in terms of beginning size and strength, genetic potential, age, injury history etc.

So, with that being said - I believe what the program says is basically this:

- Every week you add x amount of weight to the bar to keep the stimuli up. If you feel adding weight will make it too heavy, you can instead aim to add repetitions to the set.

If there are weeks that straight up says "don't add weight to the bar" then its pretty straight forward that those are the weeks you should be adding reps. In either case, these sort of progression schemes are too vague and general to realistically stick to for any meaningful amount of time. Understand the basic theory behind it, understand what getting within 2 reps from failure, and make sure you get to that point every workout either via adding reps or weight. Depending on the exercise adding weight will be better than adding reps and vice versa. As an example: Assuming my 5RM, I would much rather add weight to the deadlift than reps. But I would definitely much rather add reps to lateral raises than weight.

[paulinkansas]

I start with 4x12 and work my way up to 4x20 with the same weight. Then I go back to 4x12 and increase the weight. But I'm a frail 60 year old grandmother as you can see. My 8 year old grandkid can beat me up.

[Horizon92]

I start with 4x12 and work my way up to 4x20 with the same weight. Then I go back to 4x12 and increase the weight. But I'm a frail 60 year old grandmother as you can see. My 8 year old grandkid can beat me up.

I get the feeling there is some joke flying over my head with this post, but this is the same basic approach I use in my non myo-rep sets - although I basically never do 4 working sets and rarely reach 20 reps on most lifts. I believe this is called dynamic double progression and in my opinion is very effective. I can't remember who was a big proponent of the following, but I am a big fan of working in multiple rep ranges, so doing low rep sets, medium rep sets and high rep sets for any given exercise. Usually spread throughout the week but can also easily be done in a single session, so for instance on squats you could do 3x3, 2x6 and 1x12 where the 3x3 is heavy enough to be slow, but not so heavy that you couldn't do a couple more, then the 2x6 and 1x12 are getting a lot closer to muscular failure.

[youknowit84]

I start with 4x12 and work my way up to 4x20 with the same weight. Then I go back to 4x12 and increase the weight. But I'm a frail 60 year old grandmother as you can see. My 8 year old grandkid can beat me up.

do you think i should do 4 sets or stick with the 3? i worked out today and felt like i could do more but i'm not sure if he's recommending 3 sets for a particular reason

[paulinkansas]

do you think i should do 4 sets or stick with the 3? i worked out today and felt like i could do more but i'm not sure if he's recommending 3 sets for a particular reason

When i say 4 sets what i really mean is 2 sets of one movement and 2 more sets of another movement per muscle group.

[youknowit84]

Is this what you are referring to?



I believe this applies only if you are limited by your equipment. Putting 2.5 lb plates on a bar is a smaller jump than if you have to add 5 lb to each dumbbell. If you have to make too big of a jump in weight due to limited equipment, you can add reps instead until you are able to manage the significant increase in weight.

ok that makes sense thanks. so if a set calls for 5 reps and I'm only able to do 4 with the added weight, is that good enough? or should I keep the weight and add a rep instead?

[radrd]

If you're able to do 4, I would try the weight again in the next workout to see if you get 5. If you get 4 again, I'd drop the weight down and focus on adding reps the next workout. If you can only get 3, don't try it again until you build reps with the lower weight.