More on Load Cycling

 

     In my previous article, I presented a basic program, for building both mass and strength, that demonstrated how you can best utilize load cycling.  The premise is simple, but it’s the key to making consistent gains.  You start with a lighter load and do workouts where you are not taking any of your sets to failure, or approaching failure, really.  Then, you increase the load from week to week until you reach the point that you are approaching failure.  When you reach that point in the program, you back off again and repeat.  This method has been used by various strength athletes—powerlifters, Olympic lifters, and the like—for decades in order to produce consistent gains.

     In this essay, I want to look at some varied ways to make this principle work.  We’ll also look at some different programs.

     This principle is more important than most lifters realize.  It’s also been used more often, even in the world of bodybuilding, than most understand.  Take the programs of old-school bodybuilders, from the “bronze era” to the so-called “silver era” on up to the “golden era,” when Arnold and many of the other most famous bodybuilders trained.  When I was a young man in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, and first took up bodybuilding, I remember reading the programs of many of the bodybuilders of the ‘60s and ‘70s.  I, like many others, read about their training programs and just didn’t understand how they were able to utilize multiple sets on each bodypart and still train those bodyparts up to 3 days a week.  I just assumed, also like many others, that the prodigious amount of volume that they used was due to genetics and anabolic steroids.  There is no doubt that those two things had something to do with their ability to handle such a high workload, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.  Not by a long shot.  For one, bodybuilders these days use a lot more anabolics than old-school bodybuilders did, and steroids, I believe, are the reason that so many modern bodybuilders get great results with very infrequent training.  Second, the training programs printed in the magazines didn’t tell the whole story.  What most old-school bodybuilders did was cycle their training loads, both during the week and throughout the course of running a program.  They also took years to build up to a crazy level of volume, but that’s exactly what any natural bodybuilder should do over the course of many years.

     Over a decade ago, when I was writing regularly for Planet Muscle, I received a call one night from Jeff Everson.  If you don’t know Everson, who died in 2019, he was a famous bodybuilder who was the one-time husband of multiple Ms. Olympia winner Cory Everson, and the former editor of Muscle & Fitness during its heyday.  He was also a heck of a guy who I miss talking with.  Anyway, that evening he called me to discuss an article I had written.  I can’t even remember exactly which one, but he thought some of the material I had written discussing the training of old-time bodybuilders, from the ‘70s and before, was a little mistaken.  He said that, having personally watched a lot of the bodybuilders from the ‘70s train, they didn’t exactly train the way it was printed in the magazines.  He said that, sure, they trained each bodypart 3x weekly, and, sure, they trained with a lot of sets.  But he said they only had one really hard workout each week, and that was the workout that would be published.  He said the other workouts for that same bodypart during the week would be medium or even light workouts.  He also said that they cycled their loads throughout the weeks of running a program.  Looking back on it, I should have asked him more questions, but we ended up talking about some supplements he had sent me to find out my opinion on them.  I have a feeling, however, that he would’ve told me that they trained similar to lifters in other strength-sports (I’m not really sure if you can call bodybuilding a “sport,” but I will acquiesce for the time being), by starting with lighter loads, working up to heavy ones, and then starting back with a lighter load again.

     A good example of how to cycle your loads over an entire program comes from the legendary Marvin Eder.  By the way, if you’re looking to pack on mass, this is just the program for you.  On 3 non-consecutive days a week, Eder did the following:

1. Barbell squats

2. Barbell bench presses

3. Bent-over rows

4. Barbell Military Presses

5. Chins

6. Dumbbell Curls

7. Cool down - 100 reps of light abdominal work

     The key, however, to making this program work is following his load cycle, which went as follows:

• Week 1: 3 sets of 8 reps (after warm-ups) on each exercise

• Week 2: 4 sets of 8 reps

• Week 3: light “active recovery” training

• Week 4: 5 sets of 5-7 reps

• Week 5: light “active recovery” training

• Week 6: 3 sets of 3-5 reps followed by 3 sets of 6-8 reps

     On the 7th week, you would start back with what you did in week 1, but, by this point, you would be stronger and would be using heavier weights for all of the movements.  It may look simple, which it is, but it’s really ingenious.  You can apply his method to almost any program that you run.  Let’s say you want to increase your bench press.  On week 1, do 3 sets of 5 reps.  Week 2, do 4 sets of 5 reps.  After an active recovery week, on week 4, do 5 sets of 3 reps.  And, after another active recovery week, on week 6 do 3 sets of 1-2 reps and then 3 sets of 3-5 reps.

     You could run that program for months on end, and the only thing that you would need to change would be your exercises.  After 12 weeks of the exercises that Eder used, switch over to front squats, incline bench presses, power cleans, behind-the-neck presses, one-arm dumbbell rows, and barbell curls—you can keep the “cool down” the same—or any other same but different movements.

     Eder’s cycling approach would really be a good way to train on any bodybuilding routine.  If you were to “dumb it down” a bit more, it would look something like this: week 1: hard training; week 2: harder training; week 3: easy; week 4: even harder training; week 5: easy again; week 6: really damn hard training.  Seriously.  You could take literally any old-school bodybuilding program from decades past and apply that methodology.  Suddenly, they would go from being “okay” to being one of the most effective, result-producing programs that you’ve ever put to use.

     One of the greatest strength athletes of all time, Doug Hepburn, used load-cycling methods.  One of his favorite techniques exemplifies how to get good results with it.  Select any lift that you want to get strong at.  This works best with the big lifts—any of the movements in Eder’s program above would work well.  For your first workout, use a weight where you could get 8 reps for one all-out set.  Now, do 8 sets of 2 reps with that weight.  It’s going to seem easy.  Hepburn said that was the point.  At the 2nd workout, do 1 set of 3 reps and 7 sets of 2 reps.  At the next session, do 2 sets of 3 reps and 6 sets of 2 reps.  And, you guessed it, at the next session do 3 sets of 3 reps and 5 sets of 2 reps.  Okay, it’s pretty obvious where this is headed.  Stick with that method until you do 8 sets of 3 reps, add weight at the next session, and repeat.  If you use multiple lifts in a session, you won’t just get strong, you’ll gain a good bit of muscle, as well.  That’s what happens when you train multiple big lifts in one session and train fairly frequently.  The overall volume really adds up over the course of weeks, and then months, and, without ever really training “hard,” you end up becoming one big, strong dude.

     A workout program might look like this:

Session 1:

• Squats: 8x2-3

• Power cleans: 8x2-3

Session 2:

• Bench presses: 8x2-3

• Weighted chins: 8x2-3

• Overhead presses: 8x2-3

• Barbell curls: 8x2-3

     To get even more mass-building benefits from the program, add a loaded carry to the end of the squat/pull session.  Do 2-3 sets of farmer walks, sandbag carries, or something similar.  Don’t go all-out, however, and stop each set once the carry begins to get hard.

     Train as frequently as you can.  For most, it’s probably best to start with a 2-on, 1-off, 2-on, 2-off split, training on, say, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.  After a few weeks, once your body has adapted to the workload, go to a 2-on, 1-off split, and take off 2 days only when you feel as if you need it.  If you know that you’re a “low-volume” lifter that simply responds best to less work, you could simply train on a 1-on, 1-off rotation, and then take 2 days off when you feel as if you need a little more rest or any time that “life gets in the way” of training.

     If you look over all of the “easy strength” programs that I have on the blog, you’ll discover that they almost all use load-cycling.  The most common load variation that I use from workout-to-workout with easy strength is this one: 3x3 (heavy), 5x2 (heavier), 2x5 (light to moderate), 6x1 (working up to a “near max”), 1x10 (very light for “tonic” recovery set), 3x5,3,2 (moderate).  Using that system, your weights naturally wax and wane, and, as with the Hepburn method, you get stronger and bigger without really putting in any “hard” work.  Hence, the moniker easy strength.  (If you want a detailed program that you can follow that uses that system, then check out my article “Easy Strength for the Older Lifter.”  If you’re not “old,” like me and a lot of my readers, I also have tips for how you can adapt it to your age.)

     Even many lifters who know about Bill Starr’s heavy-light-medium training, are sometimes surprised to find out—unless, of course, they’ve read my many articles on Starr—that his training didn’t just cycle loads during the course of a week, but did so over the course of a program.  Similar to Eder’s cycling, Starr recommended, once lifters were advanced, that they cycle their loads over a 4-week rotation.  To keep it simple, the first week is hard, the 2nd week harder, the 3rd week all-out, and the 4th week is a de-load week, where you use weights significantly less than the 1st.  As the lifter advances, he will eventually reach a point where even the 1st week of training is a higher workload than what he initially used for the 3rd week.

     Another way that Starr cycled loads was through changing repetitions from week to week.  His H-L-M programs are largely thought of as being 5x5 regimens, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.  Starr started lifters with 5x5, but then moved to other repetition ranges as the lifter advanced.  His general recommendation was sets of 5 in one week, sets of 3 (or doubles) the next, followed by 8-rep sets in the 3rd week.  Then, the lifter trained with near-max singles in the 4th week.  However many sets you use, or, really, whatever program you utilize, this is a good method.  A lot of lifters, when cycling loads via changing reps, continually lower their repetitions as the weeks progress.  The problem with that method is that you do get stronger, but you also start to get slower.  But if you’ll back off to some higher-rep sets after a couple of weeks of heavier training, this will allow you, in the week after, to return to even heavier loads without causing speed degradation.  (Another way to prevent that is through dynamic effort training.)

     No matter what form of training that you do—bodybuilding, powerlifting, something in between—or what kind of training you utilize—high-intensity, high-frequency, or high-volume—you need to take advantage of the principle of load cycling.  If you want to make continuous progress, it’s a necessity.  Without it, progress eventually stalls.  If you choose not to utilize it, you’ve been warned.