How To Program "Fatigue" Singles 

My pleasure! (chick-fil-a pun intended)

Thanks boo

I hate taking 🥈 but I’ll leave the comment for the algo 😒

Thank you man!

Just doing my part to offset the memes and inflammatory comments I make on IG and 2 White Lights haha

Great to hear!

Mic was 🔑!!

I won't be leaving, but I am pretty busy with all the Powerlifting Now videos, so YT will be a little less frequent.

Thank you!!

Camera and mic upgrades thanks to Powerlifting Now

Yep, that is what I see over and over and over again. In regards to my system of programming, and likely what you were doing, it is based around pushing rep work most of the year. So when you alter that come meet prep time, all too often you see that first and/or second block go great, and then things starting to sputter after that. And to clarify as well, you may only need that single the final block, I have plenty of people I do that with too. This video was just a programming strategy that can work for people who need that singles exposure, but need to make sure it is not over prioritized too soon.

Awesome, hope it works well!

Good to hear! I forgot to mention this in the video, but a rep set prior to a single does not fatigue the single that much either, especially on bench. People will be fairly surprised how well they can still do on that single even after hitting a hard rep set.

@@PRsPerformance can attest to this! That primary rep set acted as a primer for me to hit that fatigue single hard and fast

It’s not as easy as telling a lifter to simply take that rep work more serious. I told that to Wascar almost every single week of blocks 2-3. There are many lifters you can tell that to over and over but it doesn’t change a thing, as you have to account for lifter psychology within programming. One of the most important things I’ve learned as a coach is to dictate programming to leverage a lifters psychology, vs forcing them into what you want. Perfect science would dictate a lifter should be able to adapt and change their focus, but that’s not how things always go. And while I’d have some counters to the neural adaptation argument, my point as a whole is that I am willing to take a 2% hit on a top single to increase the average intensity and total tonnage by 6% in this scenario. The majority of the work being done is not the single, it’s all the rep work. So if the lifter has 20+ other repetitions during the workout, I’d prefer those to be take a 6% bump in this scenario vs. over prioritizing 1 singular rep that may take a 1-2% hit. Lastly, as mentioned in the video, this is based on my system of programming where I prioritize repetition work over singles through the vast majority of the year. If your system prioritizes singles as a primary tool for gaining strength through the majority of the year, then that makes a pretty notable difference to the approach you’d take. Lastly as shown, I have multiple examples of how you can periodize the priority of that single based on the lifter. I am by no means saying always keep the single after the rep set.

@@PRsPerformance I fully agree that it's not as simple as telling a lifter to just change their behavior and using programming to influence psychology is a good tool. but there are other tools to manage this, for example, the emerging strategies protocol from RTS, where the backoffs arent based on RPE, but based on the estimated 1rm calculated from the single, this way the load selection is not done by the athlete, but by the performance. on your point of choosing to prioritize a 6% gain in tonnage on rep work while sacrificing 1-2% on a single, I think that is very valid and 51 out of 52 weeks in a year I would do the same. My issue however is that volume work after a single doesn't need to have such a big tonnage drop-off, if any. I will agree with you that if you need to choose between a slightly better single or a big improvement in tonnage lifted on rep work and this is the way to do it, that it's a very valid protocol.

Well again my point through this whole video is it is not as easy as just saying prescribe a load after the top single and it’s all the same. Then it’s very possible that due to the adrenaline dump, that assigned load becomes much harder than planned. In this example the lifter wasn’t sandbagging purposefully, the RPE and velocity showed that the rep work was simply suffering from what he did in blocks prior when he did rep work first.

@@PRsPerformance I get what you're saying. And I don't think your lifter was purposely sandbagging back-offs. But you noted that the fatigue single now is a staple within your protocols. I find your reasoning in this case study very logical, but for other cases I wouldn't be so quick to apply the same protocol, since for other lifters the single before volume might not have a negative impact.

A staple by no means entails everyone I coach does this. Just that it’s developed into a multi-block, multiple version system that a quarter to maybe half of my lifters now utilize in some way. Versus before it would usually be a singular block tool that I used very sporadically. As well as it’s lift dependent. You may use this for only 1 lift.

😂😂😂

Congrats!

🪨🇺🇸🦅

I probably wouldn’t do a specific video on it, as all my other squat videos in summation show how to fix it

You're welcome!

It’s more so to keep priority on the rep sets in the scenario where the lifter typically has a larger drop off proportionately when they do the single first.

@@PRsPerformance - makes sense; thanks!

SSB in the 5-7 rep range

Because then you are leaving the entirety of the program up to the subjectivity of the lifter. If you give 10 lifters the same RPE only program, you will likely find all 10 execute it in a different ways.

As I mentioned, this was all condensed to make it easy to explain. Block 1 and 2 had introductory weeks where he started light as well, so week 1 that is shown is actually week 2. Whereas block 3, week 1 was the actual week 1 where he was taking a notable pullback due to the heavy week prior. There is also secondary day squat data that shows a similar pattern, but for the simplicity of teaching this, it would have made it too cluttered.

That’s what this months video on Powerlifting Now is about, so check that out.

@@PRsPerformance bet thank you so much!

Most people will likely start at 2

@@PRsPerformance Thank you for your reply.

I can't tell if this is serious or sarcasm

@@PRsPerformance i’m serious haha

So I have 2 podcasts, 2 White Lights and Powerlifting Now. Also been a guest on many others that you could check out, including Fully Biased Powerlifting, Weakly Weights, Massenomics, Adam Peeler Fitness Podcast, and The Strong Suit Podcast.

@@PRsPerformance Did not know this, but will check them out! Thank you.

It is a 10% drop plus 6% for the rep change, and when I say top set I am referring to the top rep set.

@@PRsPerformance Thank you, glad my hunch was correct.