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Using the “Ladder” Set/Rep Variation

Let's jump start this s**t, it's going to be kind of garbled anyway:

About 4 years ago, Bob (Brock) and I trained together about 6-8 times a week. We'd train at lunch, and then after work. We followed a pretty typical WSB template, but did have ample opportunities for extra workouts.

Once we decided to do a variation of a low fatigue/high volume routine based on the "ladder" technique. We called it "Power Ladders". We chose 3s as our top set kind of arbitrarily. The term “ladder” refers to a progressive repetition scheme. See below. It's illustrated amply.

Testing initially indicated I had a 335 close grip bench. This is how I set it up: Rep range 1-3 or occasionally 1-5. Completion of 3 “ladders” at a set weight would trigger progression.

Note: These numbers are approximations, as I couldn't find my training log from back then to get the actual numbers.

Week 1:
Day 1: 275x1/2/3/1/2/3/1/2/3
Day 2: 285x1/2/3/1/2
Day 3: 285x1/2/3/1/2/3

Week 2:
Day 1: 285x1/2/3/1/2/3/1/2/3
Day 2: 290x1/2/3/1/2/3
Day 3: 290x1/2/3/1/2/3/1/2/3

Week 3:
Day 1: 295x1/2/1/2/1/2
Day 2: 295x1/2/3/1/2/3/1/2/3
Day 3: 305x1/2/3/1/2/3

Week 4:
Day 1: 305x1/2/3/1/2/3/1/2/3
Day 2: 315x1/2/2/1/2/1
Day 3: 315x1/2/3/1/2

Week 5: Tested my CGBP max.
New max was 365.
Bob's results were similar.

30# increase
4 weeks of training.
3 times per week on the movement, often two days in a row
Not one rep went to failure.

Not too shabby.

What do you notice? Higher volume, low "relative" intensity, self-regulating "ladder" pattern, ~4-9 sets per "ladder"

I first read about the “ladder” set/rep scheme in one of those old bodybuilding books by Robert Kennedy. Circa 1988-89. That particular book (and I'll eventually look up which one) gave an example of using ladders to work on chins. Sounded easy enough. Do one rep, take a little break, do 2 reps, take a little break, and so on and so forth until you can no longer improve on your rep count.

jwp said:
It's hard to be a scumc**t when you're sweeping chimneys or downt mines 18 hours a day. Little s**ts!

VanillaGorilla said:
To be honest I would want to keep all three sessions to make the most of the structure, but spread them out further so the frequency dropped to something you could tolerate.

Steve said:
Ignoring how short the diet was (just 6 days), the attempts to extrapolate expected weight loss over 6 mths, the fact the researcher weren't able to measure any significant differences in fat loss using DXA (they instead estimated it from breath metabolites) and the questionable use of using mean averages rather than actual data for such a small sample size probably the biggest issue is they didn't even use a low carb diet - the low fat diet had just 8% of the calories from fat whilst the low carb diet had 29% of the calories still coming from carbs?

Steve said:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155041311500...

A widely publicised study with press headlines everywhere claiming this proves low fat diets cause more fat loss than low carb diets. Yet within a couple of minutes it's easy to see that the study is pretty meaningless and doesn't even look at proper low carb diets.

Why are nutritional scientists not more concerned with looking for the truth rather than designing studies to prove their point of view and why are journalists unable to look past the study headlines?