Running LP indefinitely?

[gymbro]

Let's take a basic 5x5 or similar rep scheme. Add weight every session until it gets pretty hard, and next time deload by ~15-20 and repeat the progression. Choose whatever weekly template you like and apply this to every lift, treating every progression individually. Obviously this is just SS style progression but without necessarily chasing volume PRs, and with a larger weight deload.

Is there a reason something like this won't be effective long term if you're not concerned with 1rm at the time? Intensity should end up high enough for a sufficient stimulus and you could always adjust volume.

[mgil]

It won’t last forever.

Let’s say your squat is 3x5x405. Dropping 20lbs is 385. Doing 3x5x385 might not be enough of a drop if you’re in a surplus of accumulated fatigue.

Maybe 20% would work, but now you’re setting yourself back for weeks.

Problem is with running something like this forever is simply you need to mix things up to build both display of strength/skill as well as optimization of hypertrophy. At some point in time, these objectives will be divergent from simply using sets of 5 (or whatever number you choose).

Yeah, you might not want to drive 1RM explicitly, but getting that number up allows for accumulation of more fatigue to drive other goals.

Stuff gets tricky after about a year or so of training.

[dw]

It's bad because you'll be wasting time on deloads when your problem is not fatigue accumulation but that you didn't gain enough strength to hit your predetermined goal.

Also if it's implied here that you never alter volume, as it seems to be, you'll wind up with your volume levels incorrect.

Also overuse problems if you're only doing the same heavy barbell movements over and over.

It's just bad. Your strength is not going to increase at a predictable rate forever.

[Hardartery]

Nope. It's not enough variation to allow for continued progress past beginner levels. You have to vary reps as well, like has always happened since the dawn of lifting weights. Working up to a specific number of reps and sets at a weight before bumping the weight works a lot longer and a lot better. Simply adding weight until you fail and then backing off and banging your head into the wall again is a great way to fail at getting past the wall.

[DCR]

Let's take a basic 5x5 or similar rep scheme. Add weight every session until it gets pretty hard, and next time deload by ~15-20 and repeat the progression. Choose whatever weekly template you like and apply this to every lift, treating every progression individually. Obviously this is just SS style progression but without necessarily chasing volume PRs, and with a larger weight deload.

Is there a reason something like this won't be effective long term if you're not concerned with 1rm at the time? Intensity should end up high enough for a sufficient stimulus and you could always adjust volume.

I think if you're willing to utilize tools other than just deloads and adjusting volume (although those of course could be among the tools), and also aren't expecting regularly scheduled progress after a point, yes you could do this. I read an interview with JM Blakely awhile back in which he was discussing his 6x6 program for the bench press. As I understood it, other than when he began to peak for a contest, the 6x6 was the only thing that he did - sort of. He explained that, yes, at various points you're going to get stuck. When that happens, your job is to figure out how to get unstuck, and it doesn't matter what tool(s) you use. Deload, adjust volume, adjust/work up reps in some Hepburn-y matter or whatever, assistance work, switch out for a variation for a bit, form tweaks like pauses or timed eccentrics, etc., etc., etc. It doesn't matter, so long as ultimately you work out the means of getting 6x6 for that next 5 lbs., and of course you've got to accept that progress is not actually going to be linear and increases will become more and more scarce as you move up over the course of months and years and have to use more tools and combinations thereof. Bottom line, your 6x6 (or 5x5 or 3x5 or whatever) can't be the only thing that you ever do - you can't just keep smashing your face against the wall over and over with the same weight trying to complete the reps for that next 5 lbs. and expect anything to change - but your preferred set/rep scheme can serve as a lodestar for progress, around which you work and which you always come back to as the measurement of where you're at. Or that's how I understood it, at any rate.

[gymbro]

Thanks for the replies!
I realize my question might be poorly worded.
I guess I'm really asking about running training blocks of varying lengths in parallel for each lift and just letting them play out, instead of treating all training as single training block, if it makes sense.
For example: progress squats for 3 weeks, bench for 4 and deadlifts for 5
Then the next block for each lift is adjusted for volume/assistance work based on it's previous block, without taking fatigue from other lifts into account.

[Shaun]

Let's take a basic 5x5 or similar rep scheme. Add weight every session until it gets pretty hard, and next time deload by ~15-20 and repeat the progression. Choose whatever weekly template you like and apply this to every lift, treating every progression individually. Obviously this is just SS style progression but without necessarily chasing volume PRs, and with a larger weight deload.

Is there a reason something like this won't be effective long term if you're not concerned with 1rm at the time? Intensity should end up high enough for a sufficient stimulus and you could always adjust volume.

I did essentially that for many years and it didn't work.

Essentially, 3x5 at high RPE/low RIR has a poor stimulus to fatigue ratio, meaning that it is difficult to obtain much of a growth or strength stimulus without also obtaining a lot of fatigue - hence the regular required deloads. The stronger you get the more stimulus you need to continue gaining strength, and 3x5 just doesn't cut it past a certain point.

[mgil]

Thanks for the replies!
I realize my question might be poorly worded.
I guess I'm really asking about running training blocks of varying lengths in parallel for each lift and just letting them play out, instead of treating all training as single training block, if it makes sense.
For example: progress squats for 3 weeks, bench for 4 and deadlifts for 5
Then the next block for each lift is adjusted for volume/assistance work based on it's previous block, without taking fatigue from other lifts into account.

Sure, you can program your lifts separately.

Squat and deadlift are a bit tricky since there is crossover, but yeah, you can program them with different goals.

[Hardartery]

Thanks for the replies!
I realize my question might be poorly worded.
I guess I'm really asking about running training blocks of varying lengths in parallel for each lift and just letting them play out, instead of treating all training as single training block, if it makes sense.
For example: progress squats for 3 weeks, bench for 4 and deadlifts for 5
Then the next block for each lift is adjusted for volume/assistance work based on it's previous block, without taking fatigue from other lifts into account.

It is difficult to advance multiple lifts at once, usually impossible. Blakely really only did Bench due to physical limitations so he really only cared about that and was not affected by fatigue from other lifts, so it goes with all advice and info - details matter in applying to ones own life. Past the beginner phase the more lifts you are trying to advance the slower progress becomes in each one and Squats and Deadlifts don't enjoy sharing focus, so from a PL perspective one tends to have to be relegated to assistance work/maintenance level while pushing the other or the accumulated fatigue throws a wrench into things for you.

[KyleSchuant]

Doing multiple runs of the novice linear progression is pretty much the definition of how Starting Strength is used, not in theory but in practice.

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

@gymbro Are you thinking of doing this for powerlifting ? If yes that cannot work because powerlifting requires you to peak all lifts at the same time, that is when you comptete.

On the other hand if you're just a meathead then that's not a concern. Now, one theoretical problem that I can see is that some components of fatigue are systemic and affect your whole body, for instance squats and deadlifts because they load the spine. If you look at Mike Tuscherer's emerging strategies lecture he argues that there is a "time to peak" that is a constant for a lifter and that this time is the same for all lifts. My (unsubstantiated) guess is that this "time to peak" has to do partly with whole body fatigue. A forum member here calls this a "system-wide crash" which I think is a good term.

Now this is all theoretical. Have you tried the approach you suggest ? What were your results and what were the problems you encountered ? Anything can work in weight training, even things that are not supposed to work.

[alphagamma]

I've tried it before and it never worked for me even during the SSLP days. When I crash, all of my lifts crash.

[Philbert]

I've tried it before and it never worked for me even during the SSLP days. When I crash, all of my lifts crash.

The question of overlapping lift cycle timing is completely unrelated to the question of LP forever. Yes, you can run different lifts on different cycles, as long as you are not running the cycle to it's absolute limit (systemic crash, as above.) You also can and should run different set/rep schemes for different lifts.

[5hout]

Thanks for the replies!
I realize my question might be poorly worded.
I guess I'm really asking about running training blocks of varying lengths in parallel for each lift and just letting them play out, instead of treating all training as single training block, if it makes sense.
For example: progress squats for 3 weeks, bench for 4 and deadlifts for 5
Then the next block for each lift is adjusted for volume/assistance work based on it's previous block, without taking fatigue from other lifts into account.

Forgive me if you've heard all this. What you're asking about is called periodization, and there are a lot of different methods.

Linear periodization is where you push some factor linearly for a period of time. So, 5x5x310, 315, 325. But, you could also linearly progress sets or reps.

Undulating periodization is where you wave intensity (via sets, reps or weight) over some time period like weekly. This might look like Week 1 5x5x310, week 2 5x5x325, week 3 5x5x335, week 4 5x5x305, week 5 5x5x315 and so on until deload (of course you could do sets or reps).

Daily undulating periodization is a type of undulating periodization where you change things on a daily basis, it's very popular here (but can be a little much for beginners).

Now, periodization applies to what you want to get better at, general strength, 1rm, endurance, i.e. you might say "this month I'm pushing 1rm. But what about everything else? If you're pushing (say) deadlifts, do you stop benching, stop cardio? You might, if you're focused on a 1rm deadlift max next week/month, but on a longer basis you have to keep training everything else.

This is periodization applied not just to 1 lift, but to all exercise goals (and you can even include sports specific stuff).

There are are several approaches here. Block periodization, concurrent periodization, conjugate periodization and wave periodization are all pretty famous.

Block periodization: Maintenance or low progress mode on most goals, 1-2 goals pushed at a time.
Concurrent periodization: Work on training multiple goals during the same training period. So on a weekly basis this might look like M squat 1rm work, W deadlift 1rm work, F bench 1rm work and then Tu/Thr/Sa general hypertrophy (getting bigger) work.
Conjugate periodization: Work on 1 goal at a time, but cycle between them really quickly so (in theory) everything goes up together and you avoid getting stale.
Wave periodization is you do like 5 weeks training blocks where it'd be (maybe) 2 weeks general, 1 week squat 1rm/maint all else, 1 week deadlift 1rm/maint all else, 1 week bench 1rm/maint all else then reset and repeat (remembering it might be different end goals that a selected for).

So to me it sounds like what you want is wave (sometimes called waved) periodization. I've tried it, and found it was really effective for like 3-4 blocks, but staled pretty quickly after that b/c systemic fatigue accumulates really fast when pushing 3 end goals relative (relative) to the amount of work you're putting in to each goal.

For example after 2 waves in you're expecting to see an increase in some market of 1rm squat str, but you've really done 2 week of 1rm work over 12 weeks, plus some general weeks (count as half a week?) plus some maint. Maybe generously can count this all as 4-5 weeks of "training 1rm squat" over 12 weeks. It'll go up, for a while, but I found it really hard to tune to go up longer. However, it can be a really good program when you're strapped for time to just have some fun while generally maintaining strength/size.