Using the Weight Lifting Pyramid for Building Muscle and Strength

The weight lifting pyramid is a technique you can use to help overload your muscles.

Weight lifting programs and bodybuilding are based around the idea of progressive resistance or overload. The weight lifting pyramid is a way to use increasing poundages that your muscles may not be used to, even though you do fewer reps. It prepares your body for these heavier weights the next time.

The idea being that in order to build muscle and increase your strength you must constantly increase the stress on your muscles. Then you must give your muscles adequate time to recover and rebuild so that you can again increase the overload and continue to build muscle.

Clearly, to make great muscle building gains, you can't get complacent in your weight lifting workouts. You need to constantly strive to do more.

And, as stated above, this does not mean working out more often or making your workouts longer. You must make your workouts progressively harder and more intense.

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Almost every bodybuilder has used the weight lifting pyramid in their lifting program at one point. The pyramid is usually done in one of two ways - the most popular way and the most effective way.

The most popular version of the weight lifting pyramid has you starting with high repetitions. As each set is performed, more weight is added and you do fewer repetitions. A typical pyramid could look like this:

Set 1

140 x 15

Set 2

155 x 12

Set 3

170 x 10

Set 4

185 x 8

Set 5

195 x 6

Set 6

205 x 4

The problem with this type of pyramid is that you grow tired from the lighter sets and can't truly maximize the amount you can lift in the heavier sets. In other words you might not truly be overloadind the muscles.

One way to circumvent this problem in your weight lifting routine is to use what is called the reverse weight lifting pyramid. This allows you to use a heavier weight on your top sets.

A reverse weight lifting pyramid might look like this:

Warm up 90 x 10

Warm up 140 x 3

Warm up 170 x 2

Set 1

235 x 4

Set 2

225 x 6

Set 3

205 x 8

Set 4

195 x 10

Consider using the reverse weight lifting pyramid to overload your muscles by using heavier weights than they are accustomed to with the typical pyramid training routine.

You must make sure you get enough rest between workouts to allow the muscle building process to take place. Otherwise, you end up overtraining and instead of bigger muscles, your muscles will get smaller and weaker.

When training this intensely, it's very important to take time off from your workouts. You should consider taking a week to ten days off every four to eight weeks to keep your mind and body fresh.

If you don't recover from using the weight lifting pyramid training routines, you overtrain. And if you overtrain, you don't get stronger and your muscles don't get bigger.

In order to design an effective weight lifting program or split, including making these free weighlifting workouts work for you, it's important to understand the fundamentals of weight lifting

And check out our other weightlifting articles.