Progression Of Loading To start for the heavy days, pick a weight you can perform for **3 straight 6 rep sets** without any trouble. Now that isn’t to say you should start with an extremely light weight, just make sure there is no chance of failure. Around 75­-80% of your 1 rep max is generally going to be where you want to begin. For the control day, the rules are the same. For the 6 sets of 4 reps, make sure you can comfortably complete the weight you start out with as well. The weight is going to be lighter than your heavy day since you are performing so many sets and the pause variations make it more difficult. So typically for the pause squats, pause deadlifts, spoto presses, and pause upper back movements, you’ll be using around 70% of your normal 1 rep max in those lifts. Now as far as progression, each week add 0-­10 pounds. Now I know your first thought is probably why include 0 (zero)? Well the truth is often times one of the main lifts, usually the bench press,, will develop slower than the lower body lifts due to less weight/force being involved. This may cause you to want to take two weeks to increase by the smallest increment your gym has available (5 lbs for most people in standard gyms). And also, sometimes you may feel great one week, and want to throw on 10 more pounds than last week. This is very possible if you are a beginner, are on a bulk, or are just usually not training for strength with 100% focus throughout the year. But generally speaking, adding the smallest increment (5 lbs for most) each week will be the goal for each lift. Overall the end goal is that the heavy days will be very intense sessions where you have to put 100% of your focus into each working set. The first couple weeks will be easier to build into it, but You may be thinking, does this progression apply to the control days? The answer is yes, you want to progress in the pause variations as well. But like the main lifts, I leave it open to 0-­10 pounds because you need to listen to your body. The heavy days should be intense after a couple weeks so odds are you’ll be fairly sore going into these control days. So if that is the case, then you can adjust by not raising the weight for the control session to match the weekly raise in the normal lifts. Then from there you could start raising both the standard heavy lifts and control lifts at the same rate again with the discrepancy increased between the heavy/control days. The control days should be challenging overall but you should never be at serious risk of actually missing a rep. The heavy days should be where the limits are being pushed at the start of the week.