With BVT, you use your first set of an exercise as a benchmark for progression. All subsequent sets programmed are blind sets meaning you don’t have any sort of intended rep range and you perform the set without counting reps entirely.

You simply continue using the same working weight and aim for a proximity to failure. For my clients, I have them aim within 4 or fewer reps shy of failure.

The blind sets allow you to add volume via additional sets, so you get your intended hypertrophic dosage, but by not having to hit a certain reps, this normalizes your training stress more which can prevent overreaching and minimize the need to deload.

So let’s say, your target rep range is 8-12. Last week, you overhead pressed 195 for 10 reps, so this week you’ll aim for 12 reps with 195 to max out the rep range.

You do your first set and barely squeezed out 12 reps as you feel your muscles tap out and your joints nearly crack. Naturally, you will perform much fewer reps each set in the blind sets and that’s ok. That’s all the training stress you can handle this week which will likely still give you some adaptations.

However, let’s say sleep/recovery has been on point and a hot girl is watching. You make it look easy cranking out 12 reps with plenty left in the tank. Well, in your blind sets, you can and will naturally do more reps. This ensures you take advantage of all available reps that training day allowed for.

This is what I mean when I say BVT autoregulates the training stress towards your recovery.

Example BVT Progression

Here’s of a sample logbook that uses BVT to progress within a rep range of 10-15 across 4 sets.