zig zag versus greater increments

P

precious_roy

New Member
Forgiveness please as I am sure this topic has been discussed in detail before, however I could not seem to find a thread directly addressing my thought.
 Obviously into the 10s and 5s, there must be some sacrifice made between large load progression and number of days spent zaging. But at what cost to number of days spent at the same load do you give up in order to get larger load increments for the later days in the microcycle?
 In the first two cycles that I have performed, I have tried to spend a MAXIMUM of one day zaging, and spread the load increments evenly over the remaining days. However, for myself as well as (I hope) some others, those load increments become REALLY small. I am most impressed with my growth in the upper leg from squats, which I am able to increase 10 lbs per session, by far the most of any one lift. So is it beneficial to spend more than 1 workout at the same weight in order to make future load increases greater?
 Thanks in advance.
 
I think RBE would probably take more than one session to become really bad, unless you are extremely conditioned. So it should be safe to repeat weights a session or two in order to keep your increments sane. The advice on most of the forum seems to be that your increments should be around 5% of your RM, I try to go by that usually.
 
I've found that small increments has lead to quicker strength gains - for example, using only 2.5kgs increments on my incline bench, I've added 30kg to my max. The stronger you become, the less you'll zig-zag for the next cycle right?

That's just my experience.

My advice is not to worry about your increments if you continue to grow. If you don't continue to grow, then obviously something needs to be addressed - but it may not incrementation. It's more likely to be diet, frequency or inadequate deconditioning.
 
Smaller increments are better for strength, larger are better for hypertrophy, within reason of course.
 
Good points all. I think that I may try a non-linear progression next time and see how it goes. Thats kind of a neither here-nor-their approach, but the whole idea is to try new things, right?
 
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