Perceived Intensity and Intensity Waving

This is something I have been experimenting with for a while with good results so far.

I haven't gotten a complete handle on it yet but I will break a few facets of it down.

A lot of guys train around percentages and some guys train around PI (perceived intensity).

If you missed my definition of PI then basically it has nothing to do with your 1 rep max, and everything to do with effort.  I like classifications so low, medium, and high are all PI.  Low being a warm up set, medium would be a week of getting the reps in, and high is busting ass (that would vary on the movement as well).

This is just something that has come to me over the last few months of training yet I have been paying a lot of attention to it.

It started a while back when I talked about doing 5/3/1 with some built in hard weeks with built in "just get the reps in" weeks.  I ended up applying this across the board without really thinking about it.

For my week of incline pressing I have done some heavy weeks but in between there is usually a bench week, then a light week of incline pressing.  So like one week I would do 225 for reps.  Then bench heavy, then do a heavy incline session, then bench the next week, and incline light the next week.

For my chins, I would do a week of bodyweight only 5x5, then bodyweight 7x7, then a week of heavy pulldowns with high volume, then a high PI week weighted with 5-4-3-2-1 backoff, seeing what I could hit for a single then going for a PR on the back off.

My deadlift has responded to it, as I am now hitting 500x9-10 regularly, where 500x10 was my standing PR for a long time and 500x6-8 used to be the usual.

Because of my adductor injury I haven't been able to fully implement it on squats but I don't think it would be that difficult.

The dynamic I think I am dealing with here is the dynamic ebb and flow of what I call session grading (80-10-10) and coaxing of strength rather than demanding it, only asking your body to perform hard when you're having an upper level 80% day.

For example, today I did chins with 100x1.5 where I hit 100xnot-a-full-rep about a month-5 weeks ago.  This happened with only 1 other heavy day of chinning in there where I did 75x5.  The other days I was doing 5x5 with bodyweight, heavy high volume pulldowns and such.  On the days where I did the 100xalmost, 75x5, and 100x1.5 I felt really good.  These would be upper level 80% sessions.  Not quite +10% days but close.  The other days I was just getting some chins in, and feeling good.  So in other words, I matched my volume and PI to how my body felt on those days.

I haven't quite figured out the pattern yet, but it's starting to come to me.  It's not heavy/medium/light either because I don't quite see it lining out that way just yet.  It's more like a light/light/medium/heavy pattern.

I'll keep updating my ideas about this as more comes to me.