Evaluating and comparing lifting workouts

It's not a simple task to determine whether you are progressing or not from workout to workout. Sure, if you bench press 250 for 3 reps in week 1 and then do 5 reps with 275 in week 4 you can clearly say you have progressed. But how much? And what happens if you bench 250lbs for 5 reps in week 1 and 265 for 3 reps in week 4? Have you progressed?

What I use to analyze this data is a version of the one rep max calculator. You can find many versions by Googling it, here is an example: http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/OneRepMax.html.

It is important to understand that I generally don't want to try one-rep maximum lifts. Why? I don't like injuries. When you lift a significant percentage (or multiple) of your body weight, one rep maxes leave little room for error. A lot of times you will need a spotter (I lift alone almost every time) and even when your form is perfect, you still might get injured. It's just not worth it when you consider the time it takes to recover from an injury.

As will be shown, steady - significant progression doesn't require one rep max performances.

OK, so if you have looked at the one rep max calculator you understand the idea behind evaluating one lift -- for my example, lets say 5 reps of 405 on squats. My calculator says that doing that is equal to a lift of one rep at 473. It really doesn't matter which calculator you use, as long as you find one and stay consistent with it. When I used to do one rep max lifts, I found that these calculators tend to be more accurate on some lifts than others. Generally, it is a decent estimate that will put you in the zip code of where you are at. Again, the goal is progression, so we are looking at the change in these figures anyway.

The interesting piece of my lifting evaluation program is how it examines progression using the one rep max calculator in conjunction with doing more than one set. So back to my example, if you do one set of 5 at 405 on squats -- how would you compare that to 3 sets of 5 at 405? My method is to treat 3 sets as the base workout. Then I average the implied one rep max for each lift of the three sets. Thus, the squat evaluation for 3 sets of 5 at 405 would be 473. If I do 2 sets, I take a 2% deduction, while if I do 4 sets I add 2%. It's a lot of math, but I simply plug the numbers into Excel and it goes pretty quickly:

2 sets of 5, 405 squat = Lift Evaluation of 463.5 (473 less 2%)

3 sets of 5, 405 squat = Lift Evaluation of 473

4 sets of 5, 405 squat = Lift Evaluation of 482 (473 plus 2%)

for 1 set, I do a 3% subtraction from the three set base, and for 5 sets I do a 3% increase. Above 5 sets there is not any additional value.

So where do the 2 and 3 percent figures come from? They are from a little bit of trial and error and a little bit arbitrary -- if person A can do 2 sets of 5 at 405, but can't quite get the fifth rep on the third set - you can imagine the one rep max of person B who can do 3 sets of 405 is higher than that of person A. As you will see later, since we are looking at changes in these numbers, the additional percentage generally is not important.

Once you have a lift evaluation for each exercise, you're ready to compare workouts.

Using my example -- let's assume at the end of your first workout cycle you did 3 sets of 5 reps at 405 on Squats. This translates to a lift evaluation of 473. At the end of cycle 2, you are able to do 2 sets of 5 reps at 410 and one set of 4 reps at 420. Using my calculator, the cycle 2 lift evaluation is 478.2, or an improvement of 1.1%.

And there it is. I evaluate each workout by averaging the percentage improvement I make on each lift in the workout to form an average percentage increase for "chest" day, or "leg" day, or whichever focus muscle group is being lifted. Below is an example:

BACK/SHOULDER
Shoulder DB Press	68.7
	2.1%
Side Laterals	27.2
	3.8%
Rev Flys	34.6
	9.1%
DB Rows	78.4
	-9.6%
CG Pullups	239.7
	38.5%
Pullovers	118.9
	7.5%

The percentage change below each lift evaluation is calculated from the previous cycle. These are my cycle 1 stats on Back -- The average of the percentage changes in these lifts is 8.6%.

I am always amazed at how the human body will continue to gain strength with consistent training for a period of time. Really, to add 7% to the amount you lift every 13 weeks is something that most men that train with intensity should be able to accomplish for an extended period of time. If you do this consistently for 3 years, your lifts will increase by 125%!

Of course, as you become more advanced, the growth rate will slow. It depends on a lot of factors, but at some point after 3-5 years of training, progressive training requires new standards and careful consideration of new factors. Injuries, over-training, workout nutrition to name a few have to be much more closely monitored. One of the main functions of this blog is to discuss and quantify how well these type of ideas work in relation to progressive training.