How Ladders Improve Strength Training

I have three kids, two of whom are three and one. I understand the pain of not having enough time to finish everything I’d like to do. There is a clever trick that you can use to greatly increase the quality of work you’re doing, and potentially decrease the amount of time it takes to get it done. It’s something that we use a lot in our classes to ensure that our clients get through the workout safely, feel great, and get a good amount of work done in a class that runs for roughly 30 minutes.

That trick (it’s not really that tricky, but it is amazing) is called a ladder. I first ran into ladders in Pavel’s Enter the Kettlebell, and then developed a better understanding of them through the work of Geoff Neupert. Following the programs that these gentlemen had written for just over a decade, helped me to go from pressing a 16kg bell fairly easily, to pressing a 40kg bell fairly easily. The nice thing is, that this strength was developed while I was pursuing other interests and with very few days lost to aches or injury, and funnily enough, it was usually due to other activities that I lost the time anyway!

What is a strength training ladder?

A ladder, put simply, is a series of sets in an exercise where the number of reps goes up or down in sequential sets. Usually, it goes from one end to the other (1-2-3-4 or 4-3-2-1) and then resets. A pyramid is similar but it goes up and then down, or down and then up (1-2-3-2-1). Ladders are great because you go from either a hard set to an easy set or from an easy set to a hard set, creating a very obvious distinction between the two sets that are side by side.

This distinction means that you’re either super fresh for your hard set, or your easy sets feel feather light and easy because your body is amped up from the prior set.

The easiest set of one-hand swings I have ever done with a 48kg kettlebell, happened directly after a set of two-hand swings with an 80kg bell. I hadn’t gone to the limit with the 80kg bell, and because I wasn’t exhausted, my body had turned on a whole bunch of systems to be ready to deal with a more heavy load. As a result, when I grabbed the much lighter (but still not light) 48kg bell, my body was super ready. 

Using the same sort of effect, when you go from a set of five with a weight you could use seven to eight times, down to a set of one with the same weight, the set of one feels ridiculously easy, enabling you to apply more focus to the task, as well as getting ‘free money’ (additional work that feels as though it’s expended no effort).

Why does this matter?

Training revolves around three variables: volume, density and intensity.

Volume = the total amount of work done

Density = the amount of work done in a set amount of time

Intensity = the difficulty of the work relative to the maximum that could be done

Ladders allow you to get in more work (volume), at a higher % of your 1RM (which stands for the maximum amount of weight you could lift once or one repetition maximum, and is a measure of intensity), and usually in a more condensed time period.

For people who are time-poor, this can be manipulated to improve results in a variety of ways while minimising injury risk. The free money sets where the ladder is low, allow high-quality work to be done relatively quickly, while the heavier sets, allow the student to practise the focus and skill of lifting a weight that is closer to their best effort. This combination means that fewer long rests are needed, within the total volume of work that is being done.

Something that most of us can understand is the difference between a sprint pace and a marathon pace. Most of us can sprint for a short period of time, say 10-20 seconds all out, before we are exhausted, and then, if someone asks us to turn around and do it again quickly, we will struggle. However, if we were to run 10-20 seconds at a marathon pace, we could turn around and do it again almost immediately. In this instance, the pace is the intensity variable, and the distance that we run would be considered the volume. We could obviously cover a much greater distance at the marathon pace.

If we decide that we are going to fix the pace (intensity), then we need to adjust how far we run to make sure that we don’t exhaust ourselves and end up needing to rest for too long. So if we were to use a pace that we could maintain for twenty seconds, then a ladder might be done that took 3-6-9-12-15 seconds. That means that each ladder would be a total of 45 seconds, but only the twelve and fifteen seconds lots would be particularly tough. A more traditional training plan might use four lots of twelve seconds to achieve the same result, or maybe three lots of fifteen, but those sets will be much harder work and will require a lot of additional rest and emotional energy to make them happen.

If you’re pressed for time or you’re stressed, then that may make those additional sets a much larger mountain to climb, and may even make getting to training just a bridge too far sometimes. An ideal ladder will usually work in sets that are at or below 1/3 of max effort (six seconds in our example) and that don’t crest over about 2/3 of max effort (fourteen seconds in our example), but as you can see, those frameworks have some flexibility.

Ladders simplify life by making a good chunk of the work easy, and they allow people to work in the sweet spot where they are able to be as fresh as possible while they get in a lot of sets, and easily accumulate a lot of volume.

How do I apply ladders in my training?

The starting point might be to purchase resources from Geoff Neupert, or start the Rite of Passage in Enter the Kettlebell by Pavel. You could attend a KB201 course and get the program that is presented there and ask the questions. You could join our group class which utilises training methodologies like the ladder to help you get your training done in around thirty minutes, or, you can try doing it yourself using the very simple method below.

Step 1: Figure out how much you can lift seven-eight times brilliantly. This will become your training weight.

Step 2: Set a timer.

Step 3: Lift that weight for sets ranging between one and five for between twenty and forty-five minutes. Waving the sets up and down. For example 1-2-3-4-5, or 2-3-5, or 3-4-5 (all good options, but that having different training effects). 

Step 4: Perform as many good sets as you can.

Note: 

Ideally, you’ll have some days that are not too hard each week where you will do either less volume or you’ll use lower numbers on the ladder (1-2-3 instead of 1-2-3-4-5) so that you can get a similar effect on a weekly level (laddering your total effort across the week, as well as within the session). 

Have a go!

Life is busy, and while most people who read this will agree that training is important, it’s not always easy to make it happen. Ladders are one simple strategy that I have found helpful as I strive to maintain a healthy body that can support the things that I love doing. Why not try out one of the suggestions above and see if they might work for you? Please send me an email or drop me a line below letting me know how you go.