Training

The ladder method

Ladders are a training method that has a long history and can do wonders for your strength, power and hypertrophy. The basic ladder is a variation of 1-2-3-4-5 using the same weight. Here's what it looks like:

• One repetition
• Pause
• Two repetitions
• pause
• Three repetitions
• Pause
• Four repetitions
• Pause
• Five repetitions

The good thing about constant weights is that they allow you to appreciate your perceived rate of exhaustion. If you do the 1-2-3-4-5 ladder with pull-ups, then you will find the sets of one and two reps relatively easy and the sets of 4 and 5 reps correspondingly harder. Yes, this is common sense, but this method will teach you to change your perceived rate of fatigue for many exercises and weights by increasing the volume without too much challenge.

This is important because most people focus on increasing their max weight (100%). This is fine and indeed admirable. Others, like former discus world record holder John Powell, approach the challenge of increasing strength and power by trying to increase their 80% of their 1RM weight. That's the world ladders live in. They are another way to increase volume and they are a challenge for those who like "burn out" sets.

The basic ladder

This is the most basic ladder:

1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3

Do NOT increase the weight when going from three reps back to one repetition. Yes, the single repetition will be easy. You want it to be. It will feel light when you move the weight. This basic ladder gives us 18 total repetitions and this brings us pretty close to the range of the classic 20 to 30 repetitions required for hypertrophy and strength established by Delomere's research.

The most mentally challenging thing about ladders is the pause intervals. Many find the "I do my set/you do your set" method perfect. You pause for as long as it takes for your training partner to finish their set. Of course, the pause intervals can vary based on the number of repetitions in the previous set. You will need almost no time to recover from the single repetition, but you may need more time to recover from the set of 3 repetitions.

A ladder for presses and squats

This ladder works well for bench presses and squats:

2-3-5-2-3-5-2-3-5

Or you could do them in the following way, which is a variation of the classic 5 x 5 scheme. You simply omit the last set of 5 repetitions to reach 25 total repetitions:

2-3-5-2-3-5-2-3

You can use a lot more weight than with the more traditional methods. The sets of 2 to 3 reps are easy and the sets of 5 reps are real killers.

The hypertrophy ladder

For building muscle, especially overhead presses (one arm or two arms), this ladder works very well:

2-3-5-10

Just performing one repetition equals 20 repetitions and it's very easy to get up to 100 total repetitions by doing the ladder five times. In general, however, most of us won't need more than two or three reps. Using constant weights, the progression will look like this:

2-3-5-10-2-3-5-10-2-3-5-10

The ladder full body workout

You can use ladders for your entire workout, but this takes some planning and thought. Here's an example:

• Press: 2-3-5-2-3-5
• Deadlift: 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3
• Squats: 2-3-5-2-3-5
• Curls: 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3

Plan three days per week and "autoregulate" the weights. In other words, increase the weights when they start to feel light!

The rules for ladders

Ladders are surprisingly simple. Nevertheless, there are some guidelines. Ladder expert Steve Shafley gives the following rules:

• Focus on the big exercises. Multi-joint exercises are best, but you can even use ladders for curls. Fast movements such as Olympic weightlifting exercises also work well with ladders as there is little fatigue.
• Choose your repetition range. Setting the maximum at 5 reps and performing a ladder with 1-2-3 reps is a good place to start. Start light.
• Choose the number of reps for the ladders. I recommend starting with three reps. If you can do all three ladders, then you need to increase the weight on the next training session.
• It's all about staying fresh and crisp. Ladders are not about choking out reps with your last ounce of strength. Autoregulation is crucial. There are no percentages, plans or programs to calculate weight. The exerciser must adjust the weights by feel.
• Let the volume do the work. This is often underappreciated. Getting strong, defined and muscular takes time, energy and effort. To increase strength, you need many clean repetitions with good technique to teach the nervous system to move massive weights.
• The speed of the movement and overall effort must be maintained throughout the ladder. If you want to choke out reps, then ladders are not for you.
• Don't dwell on bad days. Ladders seem to work via an adaptation of the nervous system. And as with all systems, correcting the wiring can take some extra time.

Ladders provide the foundation for heavy training. Tom Platz taught us this years ago, "It's not heavy weights that build muscle. It's not high reps that build muscle. It's high reps with heavy weights that build muscle."

From Dan John | 07/28/16

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/the-best-training-method-youre-not-using

Here's what you need to know...

1. You don't have to beat the crap out of yourself every day. All strong exercisers know that they can't keep pushing their limits all the time, otherwise their progress will stall.
2. You don't have to master squats with your own bodyweight before moving on to squats with additional weights. Nor do you need to do heavy overhead squats or band-assisted pull-ups.
3. Doing more work in less time is great, but if you're dragging your training form to beat the clock, you've gained nothing.
4. "Never train to muscle failure" only applies to certain people with certain goals. It is not a rule that must always be followed.
5. The best recovery training session consists of eating and sleeping.
6. If you feel great, then exercise - regardless of what your overly complex periodization scheme tells you.

Good in theory, bad in practice

Some ideas sound pretty good on paper, but don't work in the real world. This happens in training all the time. Someone shares a training methodology that sounds smart with the rest of the world and people don't even think it's necessary to test it out. Instead, they immediately start spreading it as a truth. It doesn't take long for all kinds of ridiculous concepts to start floating around the internet.

As someone who spends his entire day training people in the gym and experimenting with new ideas, I'm more of a practical person than a theoretical one. And as such, I'd like to present you with nine oft-repeated mantras or methodologies that don't stand up to the test in practice.

1. you must first master squats using only your own body weight before you can use additional weight

Of course, you shouldn't put a heavily loaded barbell on your neck if you can't even perform a good squat with just your own bodyweight, but goblet squats and lumberjack squats with light weight are two of the best ways to teach a good squat scheme to those who struggle with performing squats correctly.

Extra weight usually exacerbates errors in exercise execution form, but squats are one of the few exceptions where light weight seems to improve form. However, you should not overdo it with the weight and make sure you have mastered the technique correctly before moving on to heavier weights.

2. band-assisted pull-ups will help you do pull-ups through the full range of motion with your own bodyweight

Band-assisted pull-ups with a band around the knee or foot are often used as a way to help beginners work their way up to full bodyweight pull-ups. The problem, however, is that this rarely works.

Why? Because the band is helping you with the bottom part of the repetition, where most people don't need assistance, rather than helping you with the top part, where most people need help. So you end up seeing the band pull people up from the bottom position until the movement stops almost immediately once the band is no longer providing assistance. Then those people hang there like one of those kittens on those "Hang in There" motivational posters.

Instead, try isometric holds where you hold yourself above the bar, or slow eccentric reps where you jump to the top position and then slowly lower yourself down. You could even use one of those assisted pull-up machines that provide constant assistance from the lowest to the highest point of the movement and strive to reduce the amount of assistance you use over time.

3. you should completely destroy yourself in every training session

The idea that if something is good, more must be better characterizes the strength training community and a lot of exercisers feel the need to beat the crap out of themselves in the gym day in and day out. In fact, most strong people go through a phase during their first few years of training where they perform every training session as if it were their last and refuse to take any time off for fear of losing all their gains.

I know this from personal experience and I think that this "revision phase" of a training career is invaluable for developing a good work ethic. However, sooner or later all strong exercisers will realize - whether due to injury, burnout or the advice of an experienced exerciser - that they can't give it their all all the time or else progress will stall or worse, they will injure themselves.

Sometimes, when life gets hectic and stress levels are high, taking a break or at least cutting back on your training may be the best choice you can make to keep making progress.

4. when you leave the gym, you should feel better than you did before you started exercising

This mindset probably came about to combat the idea of judging the effectiveness of a workout session by how close you are to death after the workout. I understand that, and like many things, this idea is only well-intentioned, but it goes to the opposite extreme.

Unless you're just doing some stretching and foam rolling, you're simply not going to feel any better when you leave the gym than when you went in. If you do, then you need to train harder. At the end of the day, it's a gym, not a spa where they put hot rocks on your butt.

I understand the reservations about exercise fanatics who habitually try to kill themselves, but you still need to train hard and push yourself...unless you think it's cool to just be mediocre, of course. After a good workout session, you should feel temporarily beat up, but you shouldn't feel beat down and paralyzed for days. As with most things in life, the answer lies somewhere between the extremes.

5. recovery training sessions are essential

Recovery training sessions are a great idea in theory and can be very beneficial for the right person. If you're training hard 3 to 4 days a week, it might be wise to add a light recovery training session to your training program, but more often than not, the people asking for recovery training sessions are the obsessive/compulsive types who refuse to give themselves some down time. And this is the same type of person who only knows one pace in the gym: full steam ahead.

What happens then is that these people go to the gym with the goal of doing a light recovery workout, but end up driving your body even further into the ground. You know that guy who says he wants to do some light cardio to improve circulation in his legs and then ends up doing intervals until he almost throws up.

If you already train 5 to 6 days a week, then a "recovery training session" is an oxymoron. Just rest. I always smile when people ask what they should do on their non-training days. Don't do anything! If you can't cope with this at all and insist on doing something, then here is a tried and tested recovery training session for you:

• A1. Eat - 3 sets of SVPWM (as much protein as possible)
• A2. Take a nap - 3 sets of SVMWM (as many minutes as possible)

Perform all three supersets in a row with no rest between sets. Pee breaks are acceptable, but you must sit down.

6. overhead squats are great for mobility and build strength and muscle

Although overhead weight squats look impressive and light overhead weight squats with a light barbell might have some value as an agility exercise that you can do as part of your warm-up, this exercise is completely unsuitable for building strength and muscle.

A large part of deciding which exercises to use has to do with assessing the risk vs. the benefit. Heavy squats with the weight overhead are unnecessarily risky and provide very little value in return, making them a poor choice for me.

Most people don't even begin to have the mobility required to perform this exercise safely and when you combine this with a heavy weight, you're just begging for trouble. I cringe whenever I see someone trying to perform a heavy set of this exercise because there is so little room for error. I honestly think that the main reason exercisers perform squats with the weight overhead is pure bravado, because it's heavy and looks cool.

Even if you have sufficient mobility to perform a good overhead squat, there are many better options for building strength and muscle with significantly lower risks. Front squats, classic squats and one-legged squats would be better alternatives. Heck, I'm not a big fan of the leg press, but I would even go so far as to say that leg presses are a better option than overhead squats.

If you can't perform proper overhead squats due to mobility limitations, then it may be beneficial to use this exercise in your mobility training, but do yourself a favor and choose a different exercise for your heavy training.

7. never train to muscle failure

Like many concepts out there, the idea of avoiding training to muscle failure has merit in certain situations, but problems arise when people try to apply one recommendation to all exercises and scenarios. This is one situation where a small dose of common sense can work wonders. Performing a set of heavy deadlifts to muscle failure is completely different than performing push-ups to muscle failure.

I would not recommend performing heavy deadlifts, heavy squats, variations of rowing with free weights, good mornings or single leg leg workouts to muscle failure. Basically, for any exercise where you could injure yourself if your form deteriorates, you should avoid training to muscle failure.

But for things like push-ups, pull-ups, upright rows, leg curls, dumbbell press variations and other exercises where there isn't as much risk to your body, training to muscle failure can generate excellent growth stimulus and teach you to push beyond your comfort zone.

It's also fairly safe to say that performing a few sets of push-ups or pull-ups to muscle failure will not "fry" the central nervous system.

You should be judicious in training to muscle failure, but with the right exercise and a well-planned training program, even an occasional workout to muscle failure has its time and place.

8. perform as much work as possible within a given time window

Timed workouts, where the goal is to perform a given workout as quickly as possible, have recently become increasingly popular. The weights usually remain constant and thus time becomes the mode of progressive overload.

This idea has merit...up to a point. I like the idea of trying to shorten the rest intervals and do more work in less time. Cool. But once you can perform a given task in a continuous manner using good technique without excessive pauses, the only way to further improve your time is to use worse form and speed up the reps. This is not improvement.

It's okay to set a time goal for a training session, but that time window must allow you to maintain good form the entire time. Once you are able to complete the task within that time frame, it's time to increase the weight and try to get back to your target time, but don't allow yourself to compromise your technique in the name of a faster pace.

9. detailed periodization schemes are the epitome of an effective training program

Talking about fancy periodization schemes will make you look smart to your training peers, and these schemes have their value and raison d'être for competitive athletes whose lives revolve around their training regimen. But for most exercisers, they are unnecessary and overly complicated.

If you have a demanding job, family and personal life, then there will constantly be things that may conflict with your planned training sessions. That's okay. Your exercise program doesn't have to define your life.

On the other hand, you may feel great during a particular week, but your training program calls for a pre-planned off-load week. In this case, it makes no sense not to use the times you feel great to your advantage just because your program tells you to take it easy. For the average person, life itself already provides a built-in periodization scheme, so you shouldn't try to think about this too much.

A simple progressive overload system that follows the normal ups and downs of your life will give you both long-term progression and a balanced life.

By Ben Bruno | 09/19/14

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/9-training-concepts-that-suck

Progression for hypertrophy and fat loss

By Chad Waterbury | 12/31/07

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/progressions-for-hypertrophy-and-fat-loss

There are many essential elements that should be included in any effective exercise program. Obviously, you need to be smart when choosing your exercises. I usually favor multi-joint exercises, but isolation exercises also have their place. Regardless of your exercise selection, however, it is essential that you use a progression plan.

It is very difficult to make any substantial progress if you do not know how to force your body to do something it is not used to doing. An exercise program is only as good as the planned progression that comprises that program. The problem, however, is that a progression plan is often not included in the program.

As someone who designs training programs, I can understand why a trainer may not "prescribe" a progression plan. Here are a few reasons why:

1. individuality

In a perfect world, I would know exactly how your body adapts to the training parameters. But in the real world, I don't know this. And even if I did know, the progression plan might be too much for some or too little for others.

2. lack of experience

There are many trainers who set up internet programs, but sometimes I wonder how many clients these trainers actually train. I often suspect that internet programs are designed for nothing more than the internet.

3. laziness

It's not easy to "prescribe" different progression plans. You need to have a pretty good understanding of how a person will generally adapt to each phase. It's much easier for a trainer to simply tell you to do "X" sets and reps and hope the rest takes care of itself.

The simplest progression recommendation is to pack more weight on the bar. This works well for beginners and for the first few weeks of a training program, but eventually it will stop working. And maybe you have plenty of strength but need to increase your work capacity. Or maybe you're one of those who responds best to increasing reps, while your buddy responds best to moving heavy weights. Or perhaps you are in a fat loss phase. In this case, constantly increasing the weight on the bar is a futile endeavor.

For these reasons, I want to outline the most effective progression plans for hypertrophy and fat loss within this article. The purpose of this article is to help you understand which methods should be used and why. There are many factors that need to be considered - and also a whole host of factors that you may not be aware of.

Let's get started!

Goal 1 - Increased muscle mass (hypertrophy training)

If you are training for hypertrophy, then you need to consume more calories each day than you expend. This beyond maintenance calorie eating plan allows you to cope with the more extreme types of progression because your body is getting plenty of nutrients. In other words, you are in a phase during which overtraining is less likely to occur. For this reason, I recommend the three most intense progressions in this situation.

Load progression

Increasing the load aka training weight with each training session is one of the most effective but also most demanding types of progression. This type of progression takes the biggest toll on your joints and nervous system. The key is to increase the training weights in small increments. This forces your muscles to do more work, but doesn't overload your brain, muscles and joints.

Many trainers, including myself, often recommend increasing the training weight by 2% when you repeat a training session. But many people are anything but ecstatic about this approach. Let's say that on Monday you did five sets of lying tricep presses of five repetitions (5 x 5) with 20 kilo dumbbells.

The next Monday you pull the calculator out of your pocket and you realize that you need to increase the weight by 0.4 kilos (I probably don't need to go into much further detail until you realize the problems with the 2% approach, but I will anyway). You immediately face a huge challenge because your gym only has dumbbells with weight jumps of 2.5 kilos. So you are forced to use a 12% load progression instead of a 2% load progression.

And this is one of the many reasons I favor multi-joint exercises. If you had used close bench presses at 112.5 kilos to train your triceps, then the 2% progression would have equated to 2.25 kilos. Without a leap of faith, you can assume that increasing the training load by 2.5 kilos is a relatively accurate and effective progression. If you are working with the 2% progression and ever find yourself with a 3.75 pound progression, then you should always round down instead of round up (increase the weight by 2.5 kilos instead of 5 kilos).

I like the 2% progression, but its applicability is limited to multi-joint exercises where the weight is above 100 kilos. With less weight, you'll end up running into a wall. Platemates (small magnetic weights) attached to dumbbells and barbells can help, but this does not eliminate the problem.

This brings us to the next progression.

Repetition progression

I like repetition progression for isolation exercises with lighter weights. With a repetition progression, you're not forced to work with minimal weight progressions, but you can still overload your muscles. There are two ways to get the most out of repetition progressions.

First, if you're using traditional set/repetition schemes like 5 x 5, you can simply add one repetition per set when you repeat the workout. Depending on how close your first training session was to muscle failure, you may not be able to perform an extra repetition on each set. For example, if you performed 5 sets of 5 repetitions on Monday, you may only be able to perform six repetitions on the first three sets the following Monday. You may even only be able to do four repetitions on the fifth set.

That is perfectly fine. All that matters is that the total number of repetitions is higher. 5 x 5 equals 25 total repetitions. 6, 6, 6, 5, 4 equals 27 repetitions. Stay with the repetition progression until you can do two more reps on each set (5 x 7). At this point, increase the weight to the next available weight level and start the process again with a new set/repetition range that you can complete with the heavier weight.

The second way to use repetition progression is based on a target number of repetitions. Let's say you want to do 25 total reps with a weight that you can move four to six times when you are rested. The next time you perform the workout, increase the total reps by 2 to 3. Continue this progression until you reach 35 total reps.

At this point, increase the weight and start again. I prefer this approach because I feel like exercisers get too obsessed with target numbers of reps and sets. What they should really be focusing on is the total number of repetitions per exercise per training session.

Frequency progression

Increasing the number of workouts for a specific exercise is the most effective progression I've ever used for hypertrophy. But frequency progression is not for everyone. First, you need to have the luxury of training more frequently. Second, you need to understand the levels of the movements.

For simplicity, I break down exercises as follows:

• Upper body pull and push exercises on the horizontal plane
• Upper body pull and push exercises on the vertical plane
• Squats and deadlifts

If you don't know which muscles are emphasized in which exercise, this information is probably too advanced for you. But if you understand that wide grip pull-ups primarily work your latissimus and upper back muscles, then you should read on.

Frequency progression is not complicated if you don't make it complicated. If you struggle with pull-ups and want a bigger upper back, then you should increase the frequency of pull-ups. However, if you were to simply add more volume, then you would only increase your recovery time. Start with three pull-up sessions in the first week. Add a fourth pull-up training session the next week and a fifth training session in the third week.

Increase the number of your pull-up training sessions to six in the fourth week. Maintain the frequency of six pull-up training sessions during the fifth week. Perform one pull-up workout during the sixth week before going back to anything between three and six pull-up workouts in the seventh week.

Here's an overview of what the pull-up frequency progression looks like:

• Week 1: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
• Week 2: Monday morning, afternoon, Wednesday, Friday
• Week 3: Monday morning, afternoon, Wednesday, Friday morning, afternoon.
• Week 4: Monday morning, afternoon, Wednesday morning, afternoon, Friday morning, afternoon.
• Week 5: Monday morning, afternoon, Wednesday morning, afternoon, Friday morning, afternoon.
• Week 6: Wednesday
• Week 7: Continue with your pattern from any week between weeks 1 and 4

Note that I did not increase the number of training days per week. Instead, I increased the total number of workouts by doing morning and afternoon workouts. I found that two workouts in one day worked better for hypertrophy than increasing the frequency to six days per week. There should be at least six hours between each morning and afternoon training session.

In week 7, you have a few different options. If your upper back is still lagging in its development, you can go back to six workouts. Just make sure you take an off-load week every fourth week and only do pull-ups during one training session. The other option is to go back to three, four or five training sessions per week. Again, every fourth week should be a de-load week. The frequency you should use depends on what your schedule allows.

Summary

Use the 2% load progression for multi-joint exercises, use the repetition progression for isolation or light exercises, and use the frequency progression for the exercises that work lagging muscles in their development.

Goal 2 - Burning fat (metabolic training)

When training for fat loss, you need to consume more calories than you consume each day. This diet plan with a calorie intake below maintenance calories requires less demanding types of progression, as the risk of overtraining is higher if your nutrient intake is low. For this reason, I recommend progression methods that don't require you to move heavier and heavier weights, but instead increase your metabolic rate by increasing your excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC).

Before I get to the progression, let me first explain what EPOC is.

After you finish your workout, your body needs more oxygen. When you train with weights or just run outside, your body uses a lot of oxygen. Your body needs to pay off this oxygen debt to maintain homeostasis. Basically, your body needs to return to its pre-exercise state. It does this by replenishing energy stores, reoxygenating the blood, restoring circulating hormone levels, lowering body temperature and bringing breathing and heart rate back to normal.

All of these steps are known collectively as EPOC and all of these steps consume energy. Therefore, the higher your EPOC, the more calories you will burn after your workout. EPOC is also known as the afterburn effect of exercise.

Therefore, if you are training for fat loss, you should use progressions that force your body to use more oxygen. Here are these progressions.

Rest progression

Progressively reducing your rest intervals without changing the training load is my favorite method for increasing fat loss. Since you're not increasing the load, your muscles won't be beaten down by the lack of nutrients in your diet. Instead, you are forcing your energy systems (mainly anaerobic glycolysis) to work harder.

Before I describe how to use pause progression, I need to get back to my opening statement about the importance of choosing the right exercises. There is no room for isolation exercises in a fat loss training session!

Does this mean you should never do shoulder raises, external rotator exercises or other joint integrity exercises? Of course not. If you need to strengthen your lower trapezius or rotator cuff, then you should include exercises for these areas in your training program. But this is not part of your fat loss training session per se, but additional training that you perform after you have completed your fat loss training.

Beyond proper exercise selection, the pause progression is quite simple. You start with a fairly short rest interval of say 60 seconds between each exercise in a circuit and reduce the rest intervals in 5 second increments with each repetition of the workout. Here is an example:

Week 1, training session A

• 1A) Pull-ups

o 60 seconds rest

• 1B) Dips

o 60 seconds rest

• 1C) Repositioning

o 60 seconds rest and repetition

Week 2, training session A

• 1A) Pull-ups

o 55 seconds rest

• 1B) Dips

o 55 seconds rest

• 1C) Repositioning

o 55 seconds rest and repetition

The first factor you must respect is the initial length of the pause intervals. If 60 seconds is not demanding, then the pause intervals are too long. In other words, if 60 seconds of rest is not enough to make you sweat, then you are not doing yourself any favors. You need to start with an effective plan if you want the progression to work. If 60 seconds was too long for your first training session, you should reduce the rest intervals by 10 seconds on the next repetition of the training session. From this point on, stick with the 5-second pause progression described above.

You can stay with the pause progression for as long as you are training for fat loss. I've worked with people who started with 60 second rest intervals and three full body workouts per week and worked their way up to 10 second rest intervals with the same exercises, same weights and same reps. They all shed a substantial amount of fat by dramatically increasing their EPOC. The pause progression works wonders for most of them.

Set progression

Adding an additional set for each exercise during a training session is another effective progression for metabolic training. This type of progression is effective because an additional set is less demanding than an increase in training load or additional repetitions, but is still enough to increase your work capacity. There are two ways to use set progression, depending on how your workouts are structured.

If you follow the typical set/repetition plan - say 5 x 5 - then you simply add another set each time you perform the workout again. So if you did 5 sets of 5 reps on Monday, the following Monday you will do 6 sets of 5 reps. The weight will not change and the same applies to the rest intervals. You add more sets as long as you achieve results. If you are a beginner exerciser, you may be able to go from 5 x 5 to 10 x 5 over the course of 5 weeks and continue to get results.

If you are an experienced exerciser, it is likely that your body will adapt more quickly. In this case, it may make sense to limit the set progression to 3 weeks and start with a higher volume. You could go from 8 x 3 to 10 x 3 over the course of 3 weeks.

There is another way to use set progression if you have a target number of repetitions for each exercise. Let's say your target repetition count is 25 reps with a weight that you can do 4 to 6 reps with when you're rested. And let's say your pull-up sets on Monday looked like this:

Set 1: 6 repetitions
Set 2: 5 repetitions
Set 3: 5 repetitions
Set 4: 5 repetitions
Set 5: 4 repetitions

The following Monday you will add a sixth set and perform as many repetitions as possible, which would look like this:

Set 1: 6 repetitions
Set 2: 5 repetitions
Set 3: 5 repetitions
Set 4: 5 repetitions
Set 5: 4 repetitions
Set 6: As many repetitions as possible

All in all, I like to emphasize pause progression. For fat loss, three full-body workouts per week is the upper limit for most people. Use the pause progression on Monday and Friday and use the set progression on Wednesday.

Summary: use the pause progression for two training sessions per week and use the set progression for one training session per week. Stick to circuits that consist of multi-joint exercises.

Final words:

It doesn't matter if you're training for hypertrophy or fat loss - you need to implement an effective progression. Use these methods and you will always force your body to do more work over time. This ensures that you will never be treading water.

Related blog posts:

>> Train long, not hard

>> Muscle-specific hypertrophy: biceps, back and lower body