STARTING OFF In order for the program to work effectively, you need to know your max lifts. These max lifts should be clean one rep maxes, do not speculate on these or overestimate yourself. It is better to start slow and have momentum, than to overestimate your maxes and have to repeat a whole block of training. If you only have 3 or 5 rep maxes to go off of, I recommend you find a 1 rep max calculator on Google, you shouldn’t estimate one rep maxes off anything higher than 5 reps. Once you have put in your maxes, the programme will automatically adjust and then you will know what to do. HOW TO TRAIN The programme works in a way where you have a top set and then back off sets for the main lift as well as accessories after. Warming up to the top set should be done in even incremental jumps, for example if you have a top set of 100kg x 1, you would do warmups in 20kg jumps, starting with the bar for roughly 12 reps and lowering the reps until you reach your top set. Following your top set are the back offs, strip the weight off from your top set and get into the back off sets. I would recommend a 3-5 minute rest time between sets on the main lifts and 1-3 mins on the accessory lifts, depending on the intensity of the exercise. RPE SCALE The programme refers to the RPE scale as a way of controlling the intensity of your accessory movements, it is important that you understand and stick to this as closely as you can otherwise there is a risk of not recovering for later sessions. The RPE scale essentially means “how many reps am I away from failure?”, it is also illustrated below. FINISHING AND REPEATING THE PROGRAM The programme can be repeated as many times as you would like. When you have finished the 9 weeks of training, you should deload for a week and test your maxes again. Once you have your maxes again, adjust them on the programme and continue to run it. I want to stress that deloading is extremely important and if you do not deload, it might lead to you running into plateaus faster than you might want. If you do not wish to test your maxes, I would recommend adding 5kg to the lower body lifts (Squat, Deadlift) and 2.5kg onto the upper body lifts (Ohp, Bench).
