Thread: How do i measure progress with changing rep/set paramater

Hi

I have been doing Chad Waterbury's TBT since this year and its now my 2nd time round and close to finishing. I can only train 3 times a week and TBT is ideal for me and I like the variable set & rep progression laid out for me so I dont have to think about it. I am logging my entries on a s/sheet and using formulae to work out what to lift to beat my last performance. The set and rep progression is already laid out in the TBT profile from week 1 - 8. I am having problems determining the figure to beat each time I use a specific exercise.
Say over the 16 weeks I have used Exercise A 5 times where its been used in set/rep ranges of 3x15, 2x8, 3x12 etc. I measure volume as sets x reps x load.

So if I do one week of 3x15 x 10kg = 450
next week (or next time I use same exercise) I might be on a 2x8 rep range, so to beat my "last" performance I have to lift over 28kg which is something I cannot do.

The only thing I can think of is to put the rep range into buckets so that 3x15, 4x5, 2x8 are in the 15-20 bucket & 3x18, 3x15, 4x8 in 45-54 bucket etc. So I should be measuring performance gains of the same exercise based on similar paramaters ?

I have searched the web for specific advice on this and its not clear. My s/sheet can retrieve history of my volume (set x reps x load) for each paramater set (sets x reps) so I would like to automate a predicted 2.5% increase correctly.

So if I change to another routine (eg. waterbury method) I would still like to use any historic 'volume' of what I have lifted in TBT to measure or even start the new routine on.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this ?

Thanks,

BK

Thanks for that. The other reason for calculating volume for me is that if i have a target (whether its my previous vol or avg of last 6 volumes) is so I can use a formula to suggest the required load to beat performance.

Eg. Assuming i use my 'previous' (although i might start using avg of last 6) vol works out as sets x reps x load (8 x 3 x 10kg) = 240 so to beat 240 with 2.5% increase i need to clear 246 & my next set/rep combo is 10 x 3 (30) then formula will be 246/30 = load to lift = 8kg. That was my way of thinking.

Should I only be measuring similar parameters (ie. total reps) ?