Indeed, many variables, from sunlight to your recent argument with your boss, affect your performance and it is difficult to map out a rigid twenty-week plan and follow it rep for rep.

Multiple sets with a static weight, e.g. 200kgx5x5, are frowned upon by Russian weightlifters. They have the habit of following up a heavy triple or double with a double or a single with a weight reduced by 5-10% before making another heavy lift.

attempting to maintain top condition is detrimental to future progress!

do not train to failure and have patience.

“Human life can be considered one big wave with its climbing, peaking, and declining phase,” writes Polish immigrant coach Thomas Kurz, MS, the author of highly recommended The Science of Sports Training (stadion.com). “Several smaller waves are superimposed on our life wave. Some last years, some days, some hours, and some even less than a second.

Roughly two out of three workouts should be dedicated to building mass with medium reps. Other workouts can zero in on ultra high or ultra low repetitions.

“Ideal training involves changing just one of many variables, until that variable reaches a constant,” writes Dr. Laurence Morehouse. “Then you change another, and then another until you reach your goal.”

Ten to twenty-five pounds of extra poundage is about right. If, for instance, you can do fifteen unweighted pullups, a quarter will bring you down to below ten but not as low as five. Alternating pullup workouts with and without extra weight will bring about the greatest gains.

I will restate my ‘iron communist’ views: 1. You must lift heavy. 2. You must limit your reps to five. 3. You must avoid muscle failure. 4. You must cycle your loads. 5. You must stay tight. Tension is power. 6. You must treat your strength as a skill and ‘practice’ with iron rather than ‘work out’. 7. You must strive to do fewer things better.