How This Fitness Workout Format Can Help Build Strength

If you have built a solid foundation of strength, you may want to lift more weight. Once we have perfected the technique and built a good base, we will try this workout to help discover new levels of strength. This workout works well with the big three -- bench presses, deadlifts and squats -- but you can use this with other lifts as well.

The Reverse Pyramid: 10, 8, 6, 4, 2

This workout, known as the Reverse Pyramid, is a proven method to increase your strength and stamina. It starts with lighter weights and higher reps, gradually progressing to heavier weights and lower reps. If you feel you could do more, add more weight and continue doing sets of twos until they turn into only ones. This is a safe and controlled way to progress to heavier weight, building your confidence in the process.

Here is the workout (sets/reps) we did for pushing bench-press strength and stamina.

The Push-up Warm-up: For five minutes, we did 20 jumping jacks and 5-10 push-ups. Then, we jogged or biked for five minutes, mixing in some dynamic stretches. This comprehensive warm-up routine is crucial to prepare your body for the intense workout, ensuring you are ready to give your best and likely avoid any potential injuries.

Most of the people being tested could lift their body weight for 10 reps or more, so after a warm-up with push-ups and jogging, we did a quick bench-press set of 135 pounds to work on technique and complete the warm-up sets. The person lifting these weights weighed in at 170 pounds. We made this set of 10 reps part of the progression. Here is how the next few sets went:

• Set 2: 8 reps of 175 pounds/5 minutes rest
• Set 3: 6 reps of 195 pounds/5 minutes rest
• Set 4: 4 reps of 215 pounds/5 minutes rest
• Set 5: 2 reps of 225 pounds/5 minutes rest

After doing two reps of 225 easily, he thought he could do more, so we added 10 more pounds.

• Set 6: 2 reps of 235 pounds/5 minutes rest
• Set 7: 1 rep of 245 pounds/workout complete

He tried one more set to see whether he could break 250 but failed. Still, he learned something, achieving a new personal best after not lifting heavy for several weeks since he was focusing on a calisthenics and cardio-based program to improve fitness test scores.

Another option for the last set is to perform a negative rep. This means when you fail at the 250-pound attempt, try to take the next rep down as slow as possible, fighting gravity the entire way down. This will require a capable spotter who knows you are doing a negative; the spotter will have to lift the weight from your chest as you cannot get it up. However, you should help your spotter as much as possible with the lift off your chest.

After a few weeks of trying this workout once a week, you may feel more confident and approach it with a different progression. The 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 is a less tiring version of the above reverse pyramid set. This lesser volume version may see better results with later sets, and 250+ pounds will be accomplished.

You can also do this by determining your ballpark one-rep max with deadlifts and squats in a similar fashion of adding acceptable weight to the bar each set as you progress to a weight that is beyond your abilities. That is how you get stronger -- lift heavy things.

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