Down the Rack

I want to share one of my favorite workouts with you.

I’ve done this workout with pushing muscles (bench press), pulling muscles (barbell dead lift) and for the lower body (bar bell squats). In fact, this is a pretty intense workout format that can be morphed into a variety of plans.

I’ll fill you in on the details and you can decide how you’ll use the ‘Down the Rack’ format for your training.

Basically, I start out with a weight that is a challenge for 8-10 reps. I’ll get as many reps as possible, then I’ll take off 20 lbs and get as many reps as possible. Again I’ll take off another 20 lbs and get as many reps as possible.

For example, on the bench, this is what my last rep scheme looked like:

135 x 8 reps, 115 x 8 reps, 95 x 8 reps, skip 2 minutes then repeat two more times.

I’ve done a similar workout using squats and dead lifts.

The mother of all workouts was when I started the workout with the bench press, skipped 2 min, did the same rep scheme for squat, skipped two minutes, and finished with the same rep scheme for the deadlift finishing again with 2 minutes of skipping. This was killer short and deadly for an entire full body workout. My goal is to be able to do the same weight (135, 115, 95) for all three lifts which gets increasingly difficult with each set.