pyramid up or down

[gthom47]

normally i always did a pyramid for bench doing 200 for 9 210 for 7 220 for 5 230 for 3, and was wondering if changing it to doing the heavy weight set first then work backwards if that would work.

[marcus300]

Changing things around is always a good idea. Make sure you warm up with a couple of high reps sets and stretches if your going to hit your heavy sets first. You can also try the pre-exhaust method which would incorporate flyes first and then bench, that will keep a different spin on things. You could also try rest pause protocol and even drop-sets. There are many ways to change things around to force new growth......

[gthom47]

yea i would usually do a drop set after my first 4 sets. i was only thinking about switching the order because i was on the 5/3/1 routine where you only had 1 real working set and so yesterday when i went to lift back in a 5 day split i felt like i had gotten weaker.

for example 1 week ago i was on 5/3/1 and was supposed to do 155x5, 185x5, then 210x failure and got 7. then yesterday i lifted and got 170x10 190x6 and 210x2. yesterday i lifted more weight than i did last week but it felt like less since i didnt get anything with 210 since i was applying more stress before i tried it. so if i switched it around id assume i could get more reps with the heavier weight since im not tired before hand.

[auslifta]

It could be for a number of reasons you had a low performance day, diet, sleep, time of day and the days activity level contribute to how well you perform your lifts. I know when I have low carb days my lifts are less intense.

[gthom47]

yea thats very possible thinking back at my diet the previous day. i had food at a buddy's house and had no idea how many calories were in it but i know there could not have been a lot of carbs.