Top Set Progression - Static RPE vs Dynamic RPE Systems

One area of my programming where I have tried to be more deliberate lately is the way in which I am prescribing RPE for indicator sets for Priority 1 Comp SBD variations within a training block.  The idea of using a top set or top single has become more and more popular within the world of powerlifting programming.  While the idea of using some kind of top set or indicator set is not terribly new anymore, sometimes I wonder if it is always necessary, or does social media pressure have everyone thinking that they need to know exactly where their performance is at all times, obsessed with the expression of our performance, always feeling the need to show a certain level of preparedness to the world at all times.  This is almost the powerlifting version of physique athletes feeling like they need to stay lean year-round for content purposes.  Tons of people got insanely strong using bread and butter linear western style percentage-based programming before tools like top sets, RPE, and E1RM were ever around.  Either way, I personally find indicator sets to be very valuable in programming and tracking training for 3 main reasons:  Performance indication, Specific Skill Practice, and Post-Activation Potentiation. 

Performance Indication

For me, the main benefit of prescribing sub maximal RPE based indicator sets for almost every main SBD variation is that it gives me immediate feedback across a training week as to how training is progressing for our priority-1 squat, bench, and deadlift.  It also lets me know how lower priority variations are progressing, variations that I think will create the appropriate stimulus to drive technical progress and physiological adaptation in a main lift.  Tracking Estimated 1 Rep Maxes across multiple variations can quickly let us know when there is too much stimulus and/or not enough recovery, without having to train too heavy or too close to failure, too often.  While Estimated 1 Rep Maxes are just that, estimates, generally inflated by higher rep schemes and lower RPEs, they are still valuable for gauging progress from week to week, over a block, or from macrocycle to macrocycle, as well as being able to compare E1RMs across rep ranges at different times. 

Skill practice

Another main benefit of having some top end, either in absolute load, or proximity to failure, within your training day is the benefit of skill practice.  Regardless of the rep range, some kind of top set to start a prescription will usually yield the heaviest lift of the day, and sometimes this lift will also be the most proximal to failure, though it does not have to be.  In the sport of powerlifting there is necessity for some kind of heavy training to provide the stimulus needed to lift heavy weights.  Intensity matters. On top of that, the skill changes when weights get heavier.  The ability to control the weight changes, the way the bar moves changes, how things feel in your hands or on your back changes, and this all coincides with the necessity to strain against said heavy load.  This heavier load will also help us identify what needs to be worked on for the day, whether that is a certain cue or part of our technique.  Go heavy enough, identify what needs to be worked on, then back off and practice perfectly. 

Post-Activation Potentiation

Post-Activation Potentiation is fancy way of saying that if I lift something lighter after I lift something heavy, my performance in the lighter task should be better than it was if I just started with the lighter task.  For example, if your program has a 4x5 at 70%, if you do 1 rep at 75-80% beforehand, the first set at 70% should be faster, stronger, cleaner, and technique should be better, all in all yielding better practice and greater force output, than if you simply jumped into your first set at 70% and that was the heaviest weight you touched for the day.   As lifters, I think we all know this inherently, this is one of the main benefits of doing some kind of warmup before jumping right into lifting heavy things.  The warmup potentiates performance for the rest of the workout.

The first studies done on this concept were pretty aggressive, having sprinters work up to a 1RM squat, rest for 10 minutes, and then testing sprint performance.  While successful, the impracticalities of having a squat rack next to a track, and the total time taken by the protocol to yield the bump in sprint performance, may not justify that exact strategy.  Over time we have learned that you don’t really need to go that heavy, just heavier, whatever that happens to mean.  If you are jumping or sprinting, 30-60% of a 1RM squat or deadlift pattern should be heavy enough to create the preload stimulus content needed to potentiate plyometric performance.  It is probably also more economical when it comes to time, as the heavier you go the longer it will take, and more rest will be required before executing the primary task, in this case, the plyometric movement.  There is a fine line between going heavy enough to potentiate performance and going too heavy that you suppress performance in the primary task.  If performance is negatively impacted, either the preload stimulus, or the post stimulus recovery, need to be adjusted, or both! 

In a powerlifting setting, this is one of the many advantages of using some kind of top set, indicator set, or over warmup.  While not always necessary, these strategies can improve training performance in the short term, and these small improvements compounded over the long term should lead to better and better training outcomes.  The bonus is that in powerlifting, that more intense work to start the session is probably more valuable because of its specificity to the sport.  The way that heavier work tends to potentiate the rest of the training is a bonus. 

In a hypertrophy setting you can probably potentiate your stimulus by doing some kind of over warmup as well.  This will help individuals recruit more motor units earlier on in a set, facilitating the fabled mind muscle connection, creating more mechanical tension per rep, while also probably yielding more reps, creating a larger stimulus for growth. 

Static RPE Systems

One of the best tools I learned from Mike Tuchscherer’s emerging strategies framework was the idea that holding a training stimulus constant, while anchoring on RPE, will tell you more about if and how the training is working, than if you are adjusting variables from week to week.  How can you really know what a program is doing for you, how you are recovering, responding, and adapting, if the stimulus is different from one week to the next.  If you really, really want to know what you think you want to know, no training variables should change.  If all loading is anchoring on static volumes, intensities, exercises, tempos, sets, reps, RPEs, then the actual loading on the bar will give you the feedback to tell you if there is too little training stimulus, too much, or if you have found that goldilocks sweet spot where you are training hard, recovering, and adapting from week to week. 

My favourite time to use a static RPE top set prescription is when I first start working with a person.  Again, how can I learn anything about this person if I am adjusting top set RPEs, or changing loading parameters from week to week?  The goal early on is that we should get a pretty good indication of how someone is responding to a microcycle workload, how long we can repeat that microcycle for before the athlete stops responding to it, from there trying to anchor block length on that time frame, making sure that we milk the most out of that stimulus each training stimulus we use, before changing things up and presenting a new training stimulus.  While I don’t know if I am sold on the time to peak idea, I am sold on the time to deload idea, or the idea that there is a certain amount of time that we can milk a stimulus before it needs to be changed. 

In an ideal world you could just train at an RPE 7 all the time, never get close to failure, never really strain too hard, milk moderate amounts of sub maximal back off volume, and keep progressing over the long term.  Just living in the pocket.  Train at a 7, PR at a 7.  I really love this mentality and find it very valuable to teach athletes this mindset.  It’s not very everyone, but for individuals who adapt well to this strategy it is worth eking out every bit of progress you have while you can.  One of the problems is that not everyone will respond to this type of strategy, at some point more intensity is required and you do need to strain.  The answer there would be to simply prescribe heavier top sets more frequently, or work more intensity into the back off volume, but then that might be too heavy too often.  Or the psychological stress of having to get under RPE 9 lifts week after weak can take it’s toll.  There are also individuals whose performance will get worse for the first couple weeks that a training stimulus is presented.  Static RPE models will be very demotivating to this type of responder.  With either strategy you will also run into the problem of an individual that overshoots regularly, whether this is due to their ego, poor load selection, inexperience, or a volatile lifestyle out of the gym.  If that isn’t the issue, some people will just be bored by the program repeating week after week after week.  At the end of the day we are working with humans who are taking their hobby seriously, and some humans get bored! 

Dynamic RPE Systems

So how do we keep our athletes more engaged if we are trying to hold most of the variables constant within a training plan?  One simple and effective way of doing this is to manipulate the RPE of your priority 1 Comp SBD variations from week to week.  There are a few ways that you can do this, either having the RPE progress linearly over a training block, or using more of an undulating strategy, alternating heavier and lighter weeks. 

Progressive

Individuals participating in the sport of powerlifting all share one major goal.  Make the number go up.  Hit a new high score.  We’re all just out here trying to level up like Goku and Vegeta.  So for people who do not love the monotony of repeating the same training stimulus over and over, or who get bored saying the same training week after week, their personality wanting to more easily witness growth and progression over the length of the block, our simplest strategy is to progress the top set RPE over a block, facilitating load progression.  Adaptations take time, so even if the athlete isn’t actually getting stronger yet, performance based on E1RM may even go down at times, we should still be able to witness the load on the bar increase as the block goes on, allowing the final week of the training block to act as somewhat of a test week to see how the training plan is going, or climax to the strategy used during the block.  From there, resetting with some kind of deload or washout period, before reinitiating the crescendo the flowing block.  This strategy allows us to control load progression and is helpful for getting athletes commit to following the training plan, knowing that if things are done correctly, we should be able to facilitate a rep PR or something of that nature by the end of the block.  Now, where this can go wrong is if we peak things too early. Say we were using a linear RPE strategy, hoping to start week 1 at RPE 5, ramping up to RPE 9 by the fifth and final week of the block. Whether the athlete starts too heavy early in a block, and hits the planned RPE cap a week or two early, or life happens and we end up hitting an RPE 9 due to fatigue, how you adjust is going to be up to you, you can either control some load and bring things back down, or you can continue with the progression and see if you can strings things out as originally planned.  As always, these kinds of decisions are going to depend on the individual. 

Undulating

I am a big fan of any kind of undulating planning model.  Prioritizing heavier and lighter training sessions, or training weeks, is a tool I have often found valuable in my own training as well as others.  Whether you are undulating rep schemes, RPEs, workloads, whatever it happens to be, the main benefit of using a strategy like this is that it keeps the training stimulus novel from session to session or week to week, constantly forcing the body to adapt to different stimuli, while ideally keeping the athlete recovering well, engaged in the training, and progressing.  Undulating top set RPE has the advantage of the program acting like it’s own taper and fatigue management system.  After your heavier weeks of training, you train lighter, allowing the body to full recover and adapt to the heavy stimulus it was presented with the week prior, hopefully facilitating more performance progression the flowing week when you go heavier again.  An example of where I find this strategy valuable is for individuals who experience disproportionate levels of low back soreness or fatigue from higher amounts of deadlift intensity to the point where they cannot maintain or progress that same RPE in a one-week timeframe.  Either that or the deadlift stress bleeds too much into squat performance within the microcycle.  I like using a 7,6,8,5,9 RPE progression over a 5 week block.  I find it very valuable in facilitating performance in the heaviest weeks of the training plan. 

One of the downsides of an undulating model is just that, the stimulus is undulating, or changing, so it is harder to know exactly how an individual is adapting to the presented work.  This is an example of really needing to take your time experimenting and individualizing a block strategy over time.   Does the undulation change the block length?  How much change from week to week?  Are small changes different enough?  Are big changes too big?  Do we need to do this for all 3 lifts?  Are we just finding patterns in randomness and then anchoring on them?

Practical Application

                  So how and when do I use these different strategies? My most common period using a static RPE model with a client is in our first block of training together.  I try to make the first block of training pretty vanilla, in an attempt to explore how an athlete responds to said vanilla training stimulus.  Moderate frequencies, rep ranges, intensities, and I hold top set RPE constant, to learn how the athlete responds both physically and mentally to the programming being presented.  Usually stringing this block of training along as long as I can.  Often there are changes that need to be made even in the first few weeks, whether the workload is simply too high, or it is very apparent that the prescribed programming is too easy, or not enough.  There is often a lot of teaching that goes on during this period, whether it be technical, related to RPE and load selection, practice expectations, all of that being more reason to attempt to keep the training prescription the same, until both coach and athlete are on the same page.  Once a manageable training dosage has been set, stringing things along until the athlete seems to no longer be progressing from the training, fatigue markers get too high, or the athlete begins to regress.  This period will also present opportunities to learn the psychology of an individual as well.  As mentioned previously, a lot of people have a hard time with the monotony of a repetitive training dose.  Learning this early on can be very valuable, but you need to make sure everyone is on the same page first.  Holding the stimulus content will also allow you to individualize block length by learning how long an athlete can withstand a workload, so that if we do want to use a dynamic RPE system later we know how many weeks we can manipulate top set RPE before a change is needed.  Otherwise, we risk attempting to have an athlete hit their heaviest lifts of the block too early, or worse than that too late, when they are no longer progressing from the stimulus or they have accumulated too much fatigue.  

Troubleshooting

As always, human error is going to be the biggest issue you run into trying to write finely detailed training using RPE.  Some people under rate, some people over rate, some people overshoot out of pure ego and inability to appropriately select load, and sometimes even very experienced lifters overshoot by accident.  These things will happen.  I try to not harp on people too badly when they overshoot, at the end of the day they are working hard and just want to lift heavier weights.  I spend a lot of time trying to teach people how to work up to top sets, what kinds of jumps they should be looking at to get to their top set, what signs to look for that may indicate a certain RPE, and how much growth we can really expect from week to week.  If we are still unsuccessful, some strategies we can use to curb overshooting and poor load selection are a) to give ranges, b) to prescribe top set loads and have a person rate them, and c) forcing people to start light and making larger manipulations in RPE over a block.  

Assuming lifestyle variables outside of the gym are constant enough, we can guesstimate roughly where a top set should land based on performance from the week prior.  We can then use an RPE chart to prescribe a load range that we want an athlete to end up in.  This allows us to curb bad habits of individuals who are prone to overshooting, while forcing under shooters to be confident in putting a heavier load on the bar.  We can use the suggested range strategy for both Static and Dynamic RPE systems. 

If we want to give the athlete even less control, we can simply prescribe the exact load we want and have an athlete rate the RPE of that set, this will give us pretty good feedback on how things are going from week to week and letting us know if the block is proceeding as we hope. Rather than a static RPE model this can become more of a static top set load model, letting us see if we can simply get better at moving a certain load over the length of a block, indicating performance improvement, at least sub maximally. 

  For some people, you will need to start very light and make bigger top set progressions over a block.  Earlier on these sets become more like over warmups than top set, allowing the athlete to build up a lot of good practice earlier on in the block, and then expressing that practice later when things ramp up.  Some individuals just do not have the patience or maturity to take small 0.5 RPE (~1.5%) jumps from week to week.  You might need to start your top set progression from an RPE 5 range and take jumps of 1-1.5 RPE from week to week. 

                  Whatever system you use in your own training, I hope you found this ramble valuable in discussing the positives and negatives of different styles of block top set RPE progression.  At the end of the day, we all just want to fine tune things so that we can go send it on the platform.