By Dr. Greg Shepard
The BFS Set- Rep Rotation Systelll by Dr. Greg Shepard Since so many coaches have purchased our SetRep Log books and we have made recent updates to improve the understanding of the system, we have decided to include that update plus discuss some finer points in this journal: The most important update is doing away with figuring out Averages. This not only makes the system easier to understand but also reduces the actual time necessary in recording the athlete's lifts.
EXAMPLE The Old Way 3 X 3 SET RECORDS BOX SQUAT TSome Finer Points Athletes can easily break 8 or more records per week if they will look at their rep records as they attempt to break their set records. When this is done and poundages are selected correctly, an athlete can take off and I mean really take off on his personal progression. The BFS Set-Rep system has been designed to make this great personal progress a continuous process and to eliminate those plateaus dedicated athletes hate. It is very important for a coach to encourage the athlete to follow the program carefully and to record each workout religiously.
By checking each athlete's set-rep log as often as possible both athlete and coach can share in the excitement of goals being accomplished and challenges being met To the right of this page, we have included an example of thp 5-4-3-2-1 workout to illustrate some finer points of the system. The workout day is March 17th and this example shows the process involved in selecting poundages.
JN ow a II we do is record the TOTAL amount lifted. Then four weeks later, all we need to do is break that TOTAL record' TA Total of 7 Records Were Broken on 3-17!!
HSelecting Poundages Let's examine very closely what happened on 3/17 of the above example. First of all, we see a bodyweight gain of two pounds. This means we should be stronger tha n last month. Our challenge, our goal and objective is to smash that 1105 total. As can be seen on the rep record side, some rep records had been broken since the 5-4-3-2-1 workout of February. Not only do we want to smash the total record this workout but we wan t to break as many rep records as possible along the way. For the first set, we must select a weight for 5 reps. If we select only 210 pounds this would put us 5 pounds ahead of the 2/17 schedule but only tie our 5 rep record.
Therefore, we selected to attack 215 pounds for 5 reps. We selected 220 pounds for 4 reps because this keeps us ahead of last months set record and also breaks our 4 rep record. The same logic was applied to the rest of the workout In addition to the54-3-2-1 workout, we had a little time and energy left and decided to go for a 10 rep record at 175 which you can see recorded on the bottom right of our above example. What did we accomplish? We smashed our set record by 45 pounds! We also had a wonderful time breaking 6 rep records!
Our confidence level for athletics has to go up a good notch beca use we broke a total of 7 records on only one exercise!' It is really easy to break 8 records per week It is also easy to do this week after week for a year! Can you imagine the difference in your a thletes who break 400 persona I records in a years time? Awesome, Totally Awesome'
From BFS Magazine — November/December 1983. Part of the BFS Magazine Archive (1980–2014).
