How to Do Pyramid Weight Training Workouts

Updated on June 05, 2023

Young woman on cross training weightlifting. Wearing sports clothing and hijab. — svetikd / Getty Images

Pyramid weight training can help you progress with your workouts or get past a plateau. It can fine-tune your workout and add variety in your workload as you build muscle and improve power and muscular endurance.

Pyramid training is not running up and down the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Although, that would be an excellent workout if you could get permission. Pyramid training is a stepped approach to sets and repetitions.

What Is Pyramid Weight Training?

A pyramid means big at the bottom and narrow at the top. A reverse pyramid means big at the top and narrow at the bottom.

Pyramid training in a weight training context means you start heavy and gradually decrease the weights or reps or you start light and gradually increase the weight or reps. Or you can include both in an extended set for an advanced style of training.

Why Should You Do Pyramid Weight Training?

Research suggests that pyramid training may help increase muscle size and enhance muscular endurance and power. Although, it is not necessarily more effective than other forms of resistance training.

Pyramid training is designed to overload your muscles. Like all overload systems, pyramid training suggests that if you create metabolic stress in muscle tissue it will grow bigger. Note, though, that this type of training may not always hit the sweet spot for strength increases. Although, bigger muscles will increase strength to some extent.

Type of Pyramid Weight Training

There are many options to choose from if you want to try pyramid training. Each type may help add some variety to your standard sets.

Standard Pyramid

Increase the weight and decrease the reps for each set. Adjust the weight and sets for the equipment chosen, dumbbell, barbell, machine etc, and for the maximum that you can tolerate in each set. Example:

Set 1 – 30 lbs x 12 repetitions
Set 2 – 40 lbs x 10 reps
Set 3 – 50 lbs x 8 reps

Reverse Pyramid

In this pyramid, decrease the weight and increase the reps with each set.

Set 1 – 50 lbs x 8 reps
Set 2 – 40 lbs x 10 reps
Set 3 – 30 lbs x 12 reps

Diamond Pyramid

In this pyramid, increase then decrease weight in an extended 5-set muscle blast. (Called a diamond from the rhomboid shape.)

Set 1 – 20 lbs x 12 reps
Set 2 – 25 lbs x 10 reps
Set 3 – 30 lbs x 8 reps
Set 4 – 25 lbs x 10 reps
Set 5 – 20 lbs x 12 reps

Step Pyramid

In this pyramid, you flow up and down or down and up (in weight) like an up and down step series. It could look like this.

Set 1 – 50 lbs x 12 reps
Set 2 – 40 lbs x 10 reps
Set 3 – 30 lbs x 8 reps
Set 4 – 40 lbs x 10 reps
Set 5 – 50 lbs x 12 reps

Or, you could mix and match weight and reps like this, which is probably somewhat easier because you finish low even though reps are higher.

Set 1 – 30 lbs x 12 reps
Set 2 – 40 lbs x 10 reps
Set 3 – 50 lbs x 8 reps
Set 4 – 40 lbs x 10 reps
Set 5 – 30 lbs x 12 reps

How to Warm Up and Cool Down

A warmup should include light aerobic exercise and stretching for 10-15 minutes. Before doing any lifting exercise with weights a few repetitions with a lighter weight than chosen for the main exercise is a good strategy.

A cool down may help to reduce muscle soreness in the following hours. Pyramid training can make you sore. Cool down with light stretching, calisthenics, or with some modest aerobic work on treadmill or cycle.

Pyramid weight training offers so many possibilities for experimentation. It can be a great way to modify standard sets and reps to add variety and challenges into your workout. Give it a try.