Prilepin's Chart - Understanding It, And How To Maximize It's Use

Soviet sport scientist A.S. Prilepin designed what he believed to be the optimal relationship between intensity and volume for lifters aiming to develop various strength qualities, to both impose a great enough demand, but not overwork one's capacity to recover, and his table has been a staple in the weight lifting, powerlifting, and strength training realms ever since. The table provides a very good baseline structure to work with when developing a strategy designed to increase strength, to which one can scale up, or down, the overall volume based on individual needs and recovery demands. One thing to consider is that the table was largely, if not entirely, based on the training of Olympic lifts, which do not have the same eccentric demands as traditional strength lifts, so the overall time under tension must be taken into account as well when using this table to design a strategy. An example would be to limit the optimal rep range from 4, to 3, when performing deadlifts in the above 90% zone. To use the table, one must first know how much weigh they can lift for one rep, and simply use a calculator to determine how much weight to actually use for their working sets after that. It doesn't matter how much weight you use, just as long as it falls between the recommended guidelines for whichever quality you're trying to develop most. The same can be said for loading schemes, in that it doesn't matter if you do 8 sets of 3, 6 sets of 4, 4 sets of 6, etc, when working in the 55-65% zone - you have the free will to perform the sets however which way you choose, as it's the quality of work performed in each zone that matters most. Once again, it comes down to effort, focus, intensity, concentration, and execution!