Hey all, I just got started on Powerful today which was great even though I've always had a little bit of a quibble with formats where you are supposed to increase the weight (and typically decrease the reps) each round for a given exercise.

I do have a decent range of weights, but not like every possible weight I might need. So sometimes, if I start at a challenging weight for me for 10 reps for an exercise, the weight increments I have mean I cannot safely go up again on the third round, so I just stick with the same weight once more. I've always assumed this was a fair approach, basically doing the most I can for each round even if I am not increasing weight.

But, is it actually better (i.e. based on the ways muscles train, would I be priming myself for more advancement or something) if I was more faithful to the format? Meaning, I would have to start with a lower weight on the first round than I can do (i.e. the first round would be really easy,) so that I can step up my weight increments each round?

To put all those long words into numbers, here's an example of what I'd usually have to do in R1 / R2 / R3:

15lb / 20lb / 20lb

Here's what I'd like to do, but don't have the weight increments for:

15lb / 20lb / 22 or 23lb

And here's what I'd have to do (given the weights I own) if I wanted to actually increase weight each round per the format of the workout:

10lb / 15lb / 20lb

It doesn't really make sense to me that that might be better because I am inclined to push myself and in the "format-faithful" example (the last set of numbers above), I'm doing less than I really can in 2 of the 3 rounds. But it's always bothered me a bit and I'm curious what others do if you don't have the perfect increment of weights available.