Question about pyramid sets

Flex

Does it make a difference if you start with a lighter weight/more reps and finish with a heavier weight/less reps? Great majority of people I know or most sites Ive read usually follow a pattern of starting with a lighter weight and higher rep range and gradually working to a heavier weight with lower reps when pyramiding sets. Whereas I do it the opposite. On bench press for example, I do my warm up sets then start with a heavy weight for low reps and work up to finishing with a lighter weight but doing greater reps at the end. I dont follow this pattern for every exercise, but I would for most.

Is there any major difference/advantage to doing it one way or the other?

Thanks

kevpants

Yeah a big difference. They're absolute opposites. Pyramiding up to a heavy double or single is about warming up to lifting the heaviest weight possible then coming back down again. Your way is the opposite. Do you pyramid or it it just a slope from heavy to light? What I mean is do you go back up again in the weights?

Flex

kevpants wrote: »

Yeah a big difference. They're absolute opposites. Pyramiding up to a heavy double or single is about warming up to lifting the heaviest weight possible then coming back down again. Your way is the opposite. Do you pyramid or it it just a slope from heavy to light? What I mean is do you go back up again in the weights?

No, using bench press as an example again, Id do 4 sets, something like this

First set - 1 rep
Second set - 3 reps
Third set - 4/5 reps
Fourth set - 7/8 reps

Usually using a weight that Id go to failure with each time. Id do a couple of warm up sets before I start, about 15 reps or so each set

kevpants

Flex wrote: »

No, using bench press as an example again, Id do 4 sets, something like this

First set - 1 rep
Second set - 3 reps
Third set - 4/5 reps
Fourth set - 7/8 reps

Usually using a weight that Id go to failure with each time

Alright. I can't comment really, I can't say whether it SHOULD work or not. Have you gotten much stronger with it?

The only thing is going for a max single straight from the off will probably result in an injury once you get above a certain weight if you don't warm up a lot first.

Flex

kevpants wrote: »

Alright. I can't comment really, I can't say whether it SHOULD work or not. Have you gotten much stronger with it?

The only thing is going for a max single straight from the off will probably result in an injury once you get above a certain weight if you don't warm up a lot first.

Yea its workin grand for me. The reason I began doing my sets that way was because my bench press always plateaued and would take ages to make much progress at all. By doing a 1 rep max first Ive found my lifts have really gone up alot. Wasnt something that I read about somewhere, was just something I tried and found it worked. As I said though, nearly everyone Ive seen training pyramids the opposite way; light weight to heavy weight

Bench press in particular has gone up loads, about 2.5kg a week every week for most of the last 2 months since I started training and eating properly again