Hristo Hristov
2005.02.10
During the sixties and seventies of the 20th century, Soviet sports scientist A.S.Prilepin collected data from the training logs of more than 1000 World, Olympic, National and European
weightlifting champions. Prilepin synthesized his ndings in a very simple table named after himself. Prilepin's table gives time tested workout guidelines as to how did elite weightlifters train.
Now, I am talking about training guidelines for pure maximal strength. Here's the table:
Intensity %1RM Rep Range Reps Total Optimal Reps
<70% 3-6 18-30 24
70-79% 3-6 12-24 18
80-89% 2-4 10-20 15
>89% 1-2 4-10 7
Have in mind, that this table is based on a study of weightlifters. However, it is quite applicable to powerlifting and strength training. Prilepin's guidelines are widely used in the powerlifting
circles, and that's simply because they work. If you are looking for ways to re ne your strength
training workouts, Prilepin's table is the answer. Let's rst de ne intensity. Intensity is de ned as
the % of the maximal weight one can do for one rep (1RM). If you can lift 100 pounds one time for a
given exercise, then lifting 70 pounds is de ned as 70% intensity. Upon initial examination of the table, you will notice, that sets of more than 6 reps are not performed. They induce too much fatigue,
and obviously are counter-productive for strength gains, especially in super technical lifts such as
the Olympic lifts. To understand the table, consider designing a workout, where you will lift 75% of
your 1RM. The table suggests that when training with 75% of your 1RM (Intensity Zone 70%-80%):
1.You perform sets of 3 to 6 reps
2.The total reps should be in the range of 12-24
3.The optimal total is 18 reps
4.If you do less than 12 total reps, the training stimulus would be too
weak to elicit positive strength adaptation
5.If you perform more than 24 reps, you are going to slow down, and
fatigue too much
There is one major problem with the table. It gives guidelines for a speci c intensity zone. If
you want to use 65%, 70%, 75%, and 80% of your 1RM in one workout, these weights fall into three
di erent intensity zones.
The rep ranges still rule, but what about the total number of lifts? If you
add the guidelines for each intensity zone, you will end up with a grossly overestimated number
of lifts (in this case, the optimal number of lifts will be 24+18+15=57 lifts!). You will either tire
yourself out, or more probably, won't be able to nish the workout at all.
In this article, I propose a way to get over this shortcoming. I'll give you a strategy to nd
the optimal number of lifts when designing strength training routines using weights from di erent
intensity zones. My rst idea is to introduce, what I will call the Prilepin Number of Lifts Score
(PNLS).
PNLS is a measure of how the performed repetitions in a given intensity zone, relate to
repetitions performed in the other intensity zones. Let's assign a PNLS of 1, to the upper range of
number of lifts for each intensity zone.
Intensity Upper Total Limit PNLS
<70% 30 1
70-80% 24 1
80-89% 20 1
>89% 10 1
When you perform the upper limit of reps in a given intensity zone, this yields a PNLS of 1.
The PNLS for a given zone, will be calculated as Number Of Performed Lifts in Zone
Upper Total Limit . If you do
2 sets of 6 reps = 12 total reps with 60%1RM, the PNLS for these two sets is 12
30 = 0.4 (12 reps
over 30 upper limit reps). Now if you target a PNLS of 1 for the whole workout, you can add more
sets in a di erent intensity zone. If you add 5 sets of 3 reps = 15 total with 75% 1RM, the PNLS
of these 5 sets will be
15
24 = 0.625 So if your workout is like this: Bench Press - 2x6x60%, 5x3x75%
The total PNLS for the Bench Press will be
12
30 +
15
24 = 1.025. A PNLS of 1 is the upper limit
according to Prilepin's table. For most intensity zones, the optimal PNLS falls between 0.7 and 0.8.
Remember, that PNLS is exercise specifi c, so if your workout consists of 5 di erent exercises, each
exercise will have its own PNLS. This was my rst idea of measuring the relation between intensity
and the number of lifts. I quickly discovered a problem in this scheme. Consider these two workouts:
6 sets x 4 reps = 24 reps at 72%1RM (ZONE 70-80%)
6 sets x 4 reps = 24 reps at 77%1RM (ZONE 70-80%)
Both workouts have a PNLS of 24
24 = 1, but workout #2 is harder. Now we need to devise a
formula that further re nes the correlation between the number of lifts and intensity. The formula
should also fall within Prilepin's table guidelines.
I created a table that includes for each intensity of 60%, 70%, 80%, 90%, the upper limit number
of lifts (NOL) according to the Prilepin's table and the sum of the two. Here's what I came up with:
Intensity Upper NOL Intensity + NOL
60% 30 90
70% 24 94
80% 20 100
90% 10 100
Now you see that if we sum the intensity and the number of lifts (the upper NOL limit from
Prilepin's table), we end with a number of around 100.
Here's how I created my modi ed PNLS formula. Because the formula gives a relation between
the Intensity(weight) and the number of lifts(NOL), I will call it INOL.
INOL of a set =Number of Lifts(NOL) at a given intensity
100 - intensity
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