Unfortunately, through my many years of contact sports and weight lifting, I’ve been injured a few times in the past. The other day, one of those old injuries came knocking and I’m a bit stiff this morning. So I decided to do a pyramid workout.
What I’m going to do today is a simple bicep workout that doesn’t put any pressure on my old injury. This workout is a pyramid style session. A pyramid style workout is a progression of weight and intensity with each set. At the same time, you reduce either the number of reps performed or the weight.
Pyramid training is thankfully easy to understand, and pretty useful for putting on a bit of strength and size.
But pyramids aren’t perfect, so in this article I’ll be going over some of the pros and cons of this workout.
Pyramid Workout Pros
Injuries are very rare for a pyramid workout. One of the top advantages of this style is that when doing the “ascending” sets, I get a built in warm up. Starting out light and adding the weight keeps the muscles warmed and ready.
Pyramids are also great for strength gains. Common in the powerlifting community, these sets allow you to generate max power on the last few sets to move the heaviest weights, and none of them are designed to really go to muscle failure.
Finally, a pyramid workout naturally includes a pretty huge amount of volume. When following an ascending-pyramid scheme and increasing the weight on successive sets, you ultimately do a lot of sets, ensuring that you do a high volume of work—a marker for growth.
But these workouts, while a good tool, aren’t perfect. Here, we’ll go over some cons.
Pyramid Workout Cons
While pyramid workouts are great for strength, they’re not the best in the world for size. You can’t take your early sets to failure, since that would mean you lose strength on the last few sets.
So this means you’ll probably only reach muscle failure on your last set. Muscle failure is important for size-oriented lifting. For them to grow the fastest, they need to undergo a not insignificant amount of stress. One set likely won’t provide the growth you’re looking for. There are some tips below to overcome this disadvantage of the pyramid workout, but it will probably lower total volume.
Sample Workout
- Set 1 – light weight: 12-16 reps
- Set 2 – light/medium weight: 10-12 reps
- Set 3 – medium weight: 8-10 reps
- Set 4 – light/heavy weight: 6-8 reps
- Set 5 – heavy weight: 4-6 reps
- Set 6 – max weight: 1-2 reps
Getting the Most Out of Your Workout
Pyramid training is a safe way to train, especially if you have a workout partner. But there are also some things you can do to maximize your strength and size gains. Time under tension training gets to the muscle fibers that are missed in a typical workout. Certain muscle fibers are used during certain situations and by keeping all the muscle fibers working, you stimulate them to grow.
Also, it is important to keep your nutrition on point. When you workout to build strength and size you need to make sure that you are feeding your muscles so they adapt maximally. IronMag Labs has muscle building supplements that increases the efficiency and results of each workout. Their protein powder is made to keep amino acids flowing for up to 6 hours after your workout. They also carry a full line of products that will help further stimulate your hormone production, as well as pre and post workout supplement. There is a 20% off IronMag Labs coupon code here if you want to check them out.
Finally, it is okay to switch up your workouts periodically. Not only does it breathe new life into your day to day routine, you stimulate different muscle groups when you mix it up. I have a home garage gym with standard equipment. But over the last few years I have added some Strongman Gear to change things up. These movements activate muscle groups that pyramid training misses. That said, I always go back to pyramid style workouts eventually. In fact, I usually mix things up every over month or so.
While there are some disadvantages to pyramid training, if you eat right, supplement wisely, use good technique and mix it up every once in a while, you will notice a difference in strength and size.
