How to determine the weights for the next cycle?

[H0neyBe4r]

Hi!

I am six weeks into my first cycle, it's still two weeks with the max weight for the 5's and nine days of SD until the second one, but I would like to make the plan for it now, and therefore would like to know how to determine the max weights for it.

Do I add 5% aka one increment, or more?

Another thing, I got the impression that the increments should be at least about 2 kg, and that you should take less steps if that is more then 5% of the max weight for an exercise. Would I raise the max weight for such an exercise by one increment or by 5%?

For example, my max weight for the 5's for Curls was 18 kg (39,69 lbs), and the weights for the two weeks were like this: 12, 14, 14, 16, 16, 18.

Would I raise the max weight by 2 kg (= one increment) and do 14, 16, 16, 18, 18, 20 or would I raise it by 1 kg (= 5%) and do 13, 15, 15, 17, 17, 19?

Thanks in advance!

 

[imported_electric]

This is completely up to you. Do the weights feel light? How much do you feel is a feasible increment?
If you want to be more precise, after your last workout, retest your maxes and use these new maxes for your next cycle.

 

[H0neyBe4r]

Hm, I guess I will raise the max weights by one increment each. They did indeed feel relatively light at the end of the cycle, and will probably feel even lighter after the next two weeks. But I will make my final decision after the following two weeks.

Another question, as I understood it, the idea behind doing two reps with negatives after the 5's was to increase the intensity. And if it isn't possible to do negatives, the advice is to simply do two more weeks of 5's but only with the max weight, which is what I will do for now.

But wouldn't it instead be possible to do two weeks with 3 reps, and start with 75% of the max weight like in the previous cycles? Or wouldn't that be intense enough?

 

[Lol]

H0neyBe4r,

HST is all about managing a load progression over the course of a cycle, keeping ahead of RBE along the way, thus ensuring that each workout provides a good hypertrophic stimulus.

As far as what to do with the post-5s is concerned: nothing is set in stone. If this is your first HST cycle then an extra two weeks of 5s with your previous 5RM loads would work fine. If you have progressed over the cycle to the point where you can now manage a few sets across with your previous 5RM loads (ie. without clustering) then it would be worth incrementing the loads at least once more.

What I tend to do now (for post-5s) is continue to increment loads once a week until I hit new 5RM loads for the first sets of 5. Then I'll do an extra week or two with those loads, clustering reps up to my desired total after the first set (or I'll drop to sets of 3 with my new 5RM loads to help with fatigue management). I might do some negatives for chins and dips but not for my other exercises - they are just not a practical option.

One other piece of advice is not to keep increasing the loads at the expense of form. There is no sense in risking injury.

If I was in your shoes I would continue to increment loads on a weekly basis until I arrived at my new 5RM loads, or until my joints had had enough - whichever came first.

 

[H0neyBe4r]

Thanks for the advice @lol.

One more question, how do you determine the new maxes for the 15's and 10's? Do you simply raise them by the same amount of increments/% you raised the 5's by?

 

[Lol]

@ H0neyBe4r : I tend to just raise them up according to how I found the RM workouts last time around. So, if my squat 15RM session was really hard I might aim for just a small 5lb increase next cycle; if it was easy I might aim for an increase of 10lb or more; if I didn't quite make all 15 reps or my form suffered a lot, I might keep to the same load and try to improve my form next time around.

If you keep a log of your sessions and make a note of how hard or easy each exercise was for your RM workouts you will be able to gauge pretty well how much to add (or not) for your next cycle. Make a note of how you were feeling that session too. Some days you can just lift more; maybe you had more sleep, ate better, just got a PB in a previous lift, the sun's shining etc. All these things and more can make a difference to what you manage to lift in a session.

The most important thing is that, over time, your loads are going up while your form is staying consistent or improving too.

 

[H0neyBe4r]

Edit: Forget everything that I wrote here, on advise of @ryder22 I will do Rippetoes Starting Strength first, instead of doing a second cycle of hst. But thanks anyway for answering my questions.