Practical Programming Questions

[Clobber]

In Practical Programing for Strength Training, 3rd edition, there is an example of a linear progression program displayed in tabular form on pages 88 – 90. As I followed through this athlete’s program I see that at week eight, squats shifted from workout to workout weight increases to the second weekly workout decreased to 80% of the first weekly workout followed by an incremental increase on the third workout from the first.

My question is what did the coach see or what was the reasoning driving this modification from linear progression to sort of two steps forward one step back approach? Was the athlete starting to grind? Or, is there some other reason involved?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

In most cases, when the light day is introduced properly it is because the subjective eye of a good coach pre-emptively inserted the lighter day to avoid having missed reps, midweek. Granted most novices train alone and not under the eye of an experienced coach so usually the light day comes at the wrong time - either too early or too late.