Double Ramps

Increase Your Workload and Work Capacity with this Size and Strength Building Method

     Natural lifters and bodybuilders—in other words, those of us who don’t use any anabolic steroids, testosterone replacement, and other performance-enhancement drugs—need a different strategy from lifters and bodybuilders who do use them.  One of the tenets of my training philosophy, and, therefore, the methodology that my programs utilize, is that building muscle and strength, for the natural lifter, is not just about hard training sessions coupled with enough rest and recovery supplemented with a good nutritional strategy.  Instead, if you’re serious about building muscle and strength naturally, you need to follow workout programs that focus on increasing your work capacity—your ability to handle more and more “work” in the gym—through frequent training using big, compound lifts.  As you do this, and in order to do this, the workload of your training sessions should slowly increase over weeks (and then months).  You won’t be able to do any of that, however, if you train with too much “intensity” at each session.  (Intensity here refers to how close the poundages in your workouts are to your 1-rep maximum.)  You must learn to cycle your training loads—throughout both a single workout and throughout several weeks of training—until, over the course of a few months, your “light” workout sessions use as much workload as, previously, did your “heavy” sessions.

     Please understand that all of the above is not to say that factors such as intensity, rest, recovery, and proper nutrition/supplementation are not important.  They absolutely are.  It’s just that a “good” training program relies on multiple factors.  Putting all of the components together into one cohesive, integral whole is what produces a great training/lifestyle program and then produces a superior (natural) physique/strength athlete.

     One of those components, within a workout itself, is the ability to get more workload into a training session without taxing or fatiguing the lifter.  Too many modern bodybuilders discount the part of the workout session that they consider to be the “warm-up.”  They only “count” the top-end, maximal sets that are taken to momentary muscular failure or, at least, close to it.  This is a glaring mistake.  You need to look at the total workload of each training session; total workload being the amount of weight that you used on all of your sets.  Take Bill Starr’s 5x5 training as an example.  With it, you work up to 1 all-out set of 5 reps by doing 4 progressively heavier sets before that.  Starr didn’t call it the 1x5 workout for a reason.  Those progressively heavier sets matter.

     If you can get a lot of work in a session (and then a program) while also managing fatigue, you will (sooner rather than later) achieve your goals, whether you’re trying to gain muscle, strength, or a combination of both.  One of the best ways to do that is through ramps.  Although Starr called his program 5x5 training, it was really 5-rep ramps that his programs utilized.  Because, as his athletes became more advanced, they used more than just 5 progressively heavier sets to work up to their top weight.  With ramps, you do progressively heavier sets of the same reps (or rep range) throughout a training session, slowly (at least preferably) working up to a top set with a near maximal weight.

     A lot of bodybuilders have always used a “pyramid” system of progression.  They may start with a set of 12 reps, then add weight and do a set of 10, add more weight and do sets of 8, 6, and so on.  The problem with that, and it should be quite obvious, is that it doesn’t manage fatigue.  If you worked up to a max single using that progression, you’re going to be significantly weaker than if you started with 5-rep sets as you progressed, then switched to 3s once the 5s got hard, and then to singles once the triples were difficult.  And if you’re after strength above all else, you will never get truly strong.  You need to be fresh for your top-end, low-rep sets.

     A lot of my training programs utilize ramps.  Once an athlete working under me gets more advanced, however, I have to find other ways to increase the workload while still managing fatigue.  And one of the best ways to do that is by switching to double ramps.  With double ramps, you, quite simply, do 2 sets at a weight before progressing to a heavier weight.  If you have a max triple on your bench press at, say, 275, then you might do 135 for 2 sets of 5 reps, 185 for 2 sets of 5, 205 for 2 sets of 5, 225 for 2 sets of 3, and so on until you get up to 275 (or close to it).  The beauty of it is that you get as much “work” in as do bodybuilders who use the pyramid scheme but you do so without over-exerting the muscle(s) being worked.  Even though most of the sets are “easy,” the workload for your session ends up being fairly high.

     Double ramps are particularly good for movements where you naturally can’t use weights that are very heavy.  If you squat 405, for instance, you can still get a lot of sets in with single ramps.  But one-arm thick-bar dumbbell overhead presses?  Yeah, not so much.  However, with double ramps, you might do 2 sets with 40 pound dumbbells, then 2 with 50, then 2 with 60, and so forth.  Even if the max you can overhead with one-arm is only 70 pounds, you may still end up doing 10 sets.

     Let’s look at some different rep schemes and ways that you can use double ramps in your training.

     Even though I favor programs that use relatively low rep ranges, ramps can be good for higher-rep sets, as well.  If you’re looking for quick muscle gains, I think the 6-8 rep range, for example, is good.  It’s kind of the Goldilocks of reps.  Not too low.  Not too high.  Just right.  So, you might start with double sets of 8.  When those get difficult, switch over to 6s and stay with them until you reach a near max of 6s.  If you get good results with reps around the 8 range, one of the problems is that you often don’t end up doing enough sets when you do single ramps.  This takes care of that issue.

     I already mentioned 5-rep ramps.  They are probably good to start a program with, but there are others that you should use once you adapt.  And, if you’re an advanced lifter, you’ll need to rotate to different rep schemes on a regular basis, anyway.  Of those, the most common one that I utilize (as you may notice if you read enough of my material) are ramps of 5s, followed by triples, and then singles.  Doing double ramps at each rep range allows you to get in enough workload that not only does it build strength but it also induces hypertrophy.

     In addition to 5s and 5-3-1 double ramps, some other good schemes might be: 5-3-2, 6-4-2, 7-5-3, 8-6-4, 3-2-1.  With the higher rep ranges, just be careful.  Because double ramps do sneakily add up the total workload, you may end up being a bit more sore the next day than you had anticipated.

     Another possibility is to do weight ladders.  I have written about this technique recently in both Part 2 and 3 of my on-going “Big and Strong” series of high-set, low-rep training.  The great Hermann Goerner referred to the method as chains since you “chain” together several sets of different poundages.  Unlike traditional ladder sets, where the weight stays the same but the reps undulate, chain ladders do the opposite.  The reps stay the same but the weight changes.  Perfect for double ramps.  Let’s say you are capable of 225 on the bench press for a tough set of 5 reps.  You might do double ramps of 5s with 135, 185, 205, and then 225.  After your set with 225, drop back down to 185 and repeat.  Be careful.  As with the higher-rep double ramps, the workload can really sneak up on you.  If you do 2 series of double ramps with 185, 205, and 225, that’s 12 sets—3 would be 18, plus however many double ramps you used to reach 185 in the 1st place.  So, if you want to utilize this, at the 1st session, I would limit my chains to just 2.  See how sore you are the following day, and if you’re not too sore, you can try more at your next session for whatever lift you are using the method on.

     Double ramps really are a fantastic technique for increasing your workload and then your work capacity, leading to more size and strength.  Add them to your lifting arsenal and discover for yourself their power and effectiveness.