One of the great things about Pavel Tsatsouline's Power to the People protocol is that it does not leave you sore and exhausted for other sporting activities. With PTP I can lift the day before, or even the same day I play basketball without hampering my performance. I constantly hear other players either complain that they are sore or tired from their weight workouts ("Dude, I did leg curls yesterday and my hammies are, like, sooo fried"), or that they avoid weight training because they want to stay fresh for playing ball.

On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for higher volume training. If you have been following the discussion forum at dragondoor.com, many comrades have reported impressive gains on intensive high volume programs such as PTP bear, Smolov and Smolov Jr., Westside, etc. High volume offers benefits in GPP conditioning, maximum strength, hypertrophy, and grease the groove form practice. Unfortunately, these programs will generally leave you wrecked for practicing other sports. They say that that which does not kill you makes you stronger, but by all accounts Smolov walks a fine line between the two.

So how can you get some of the benefits of high volume, while retaining the character of PTP? I believe I've come up with an effective approach, which I call Inverse Progression PTP. It's a fancy sounding name for a basically simple concept. This ain't rocket science--but then again, brain surgery ain't rocket science either.

When I was developing the idea for this approach there were certain aspects of PTP that I wanted to preserve:

--Sets of 5 reps.
I enjoy training with even lower reps and have made good progress on singles, but when I focused on lower reps I found that my ability to do fives really suffered, even with much lighter weights, and I didn't recover as well. When I train on fives I feel my work capacity is higher and I am less "on the nerve", but I can still peak quickly for a big single.

--Doing the money set first.
I like the feeling of being able to immediately "turn on and go" without ramping up; training with ramp up sets seems to train me to require them. I still do a brief general warmup of a few bodyweight squats and mobility drills, but for anything up to a 5RM, I find the first few reps easy enough not to require a ramp. However, I also find that this is more true of the DL, which starts on the floor, than lifts where you feel the weight at the start like squats and presses.

--Back off sets.
After the money set, back off sets usually seem light as a feather, don't cause much muscular fatigue, and are psychologically non-taxing since you can approach them with confidence. I believe they are also great for mentally and physically consolidating progress; hitting a weight on a back off set that you used for a money set earlier in a cycle feels almost as good as a PR.

If you are with me so far, you may be beginning to guess where this is headed. You increase volume by adding additional back off sets to regular PTP. In order to keep the volume manageable and facilitate recovery, the number of back off sets is limited and cycled in waves. Intensity (weight) is also cycled in waves, but in an inverse relationship to volume, hence the name "Inverse Progression". In other words, you do more sets with lighter weight at the beginning of a wave, then as the weight increases you do fewer sets, until at the top of the wave you are doing a straight PTP workout with one back off set. Then you back cycle and start the next wave by dropping weight and increasing volume. Below is an illustration of how a cycle would work for the DL. Notice that the weight increases in a four steps forward, three steps back wave cycle. As the weight increases in each wave, the number of back off sets decreases from four to one (keep in mind that the same idea could be adapted to other types of wave cycles to yield different patterns of poundage and volume progression). This cycle is based on a 1RM of 425, starting at about 70% and increasing 10lbs. each workout.

Money set/Back off sets
(lbs. x sets x reps)
Wave 1
300x5/270x4x5
310x5/280x3x5
320x5/290x2x5
330x5/300x5

Wave 2
310x5/280x4x5
320x5/290x3x5
330x5/300x2x5
340x5/305x5

Wave 3
320x5/290x4x5
330x5/300x3x5
340x5/305x2x5
350x5/315x5

Wave 4
330x5/300x4x5
340x5/305x3x5
350x5/315x2x5
360x5/325x5

Wave 5
340x5/305x4x5
350x5/315x3x5
360x5/325x2x5
370x5/335x5

Wave 6
350x5/315x4x5
360x5/325x3x5
370x5/335x2x5
380x5/340x5

I am in the midst of this actual cycle for the trap bar DL. However, I started even lighter since I had not deadlifted in several months and I wanted to ease into things, plus my actual 1RM at the start of the cycle was no doubt much less than my year old PR of 425. I have just completed the first 370x5 workout and expect to complete the cycle at 380x5. Then I plan to use the peaking program from Pavel's newsletter (see the dragondoor.com newsletter archives) and go for a 1RM. 380x5 projects to approximately a 450x1, so considering that I am coming off a layoff and my previous PR is a year old, I am extremely happy with the progress I have made on this program.

I also think that this program lends itself to modification along the way, depending on factors that might cut into recovery ability at any given time. For instance, in the early stages of this cycle, when the weights were lighter, I rarely took days off, and worked out as many as seven days in a row. This was before the school year started (I'm a teacher) so my recovery ability was greater. As the cycle progressed, the weights got heavier, I got less sleep and had higher stress because of my job, and I started taking more frequent days off.
In general, I would recommend maintaining the integrity of the program by sticking with the planned progression and using extra days off to modulate recovery. But for the last wave near the end of the cycle, if you find the workouts are too exhausting, you might also try pruning the number of extra back off sets and/or dropping the weight of the extra sets after the first two PTP sets.

If you have been thinking of trying a higher volume approach, but haven't been willing to make the commitment, give Reverse Progression PTP a try. It won't kill you and it will make you stronger.