Do you still get stronger adding weight but not achieving as many reps?

[sbhikes]

I'm female and 50 years old, been lifting for 2.5 years now. I think I'm doing pretty well, but I still have a question for you.

During the week I do a day with sets of 5 and a day with sets of 3, the sets of 3 being heavier. Over time my sets of 5 have drifted into sets of 4, then 3, and my sets of 3 have drifted to doubles and even singles. I did this because if I get hung up on getting all the reps in I can get stuck never adding any weight.

I plan to take a little weight off the bar and get back to sets of 5 and 3 again.

My question for you is during the time my rep ranges have gone down, have I been still making myself stronger with the added weight? It seems so, but maybe I have just been fooling myself and I could have done it all along.

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

Probably you have seen some gains. When you deload you should be a little stronger on your 5s and 3s

[sbhikes]

You are probably right. I didn't deload very much (~5%) but I have been able to do the full amount of reps when before I couldn't. I guess I will keep doing it this way as it gets so discouraging to make no progress and repeat weights just to get reps in.

[vanslix]

I took Andy's philosophy and turned it into my actual scheduled programming with his help.
- first week I do a weight I can do for three sets of six, or one set of five for DL as I don't do well with DL volume.
- second week I do a weight I can do for four triples, or two triples for DL.
- third week I do 3 or 4 sets of doubles with the last set as AMRAP. For DL, I do three singles.
- add weight to each week I can tolerate (2.5 for press, 5 for bench, 10 for lower body) and repeat the cycle. Sometimes I do a deload for week 4.

I don't do percentages. I just ran the iteration a few times and found the weights at each week that feels right and works. I have to say that it's worked great for me. The progress is slow but very steady as I slowly breezed on by sticking points and set new PRs across the board.