If you don't train to failure, how do you know when to increase the weights?

[dookie1481]

Yeah, shocking muscles works wonders. You know, 'cause it's physiologically sound and all...

That's pretty fucking funny...

 

[raze]

"wheres the deads and squats?" WHY AREN'T GUYS TRAINING BALLS TO THE WALL ANYMORE? everybody is so worried about overtraining these days...i cant stand it...lol you've got to realize that when ur packin a shitload of calories, sleeping well at night (thats my number 1 mistake...i never sleep), and juicing to the gills...ITS DAMN HARD TO OVERTRAIN. whatever happened to squatting until u threw up or doing dropsets of deads? hell whatever happened to running up and down the rack of dumbbells until you couldnt move ur upperbody because the pump was too painful? BALLS TO THE WALL IS THE ONLY WAY TO GROW....im waiting for the low-volume guys to come out of the woodwork.LOL

all the good old pro's did it that way. sure you can grow without training to failure but i have found the good ol "no pain no gain" rule has worked well for me . i do tend to agree with needtogetas.

 

[glennpendlay]

whether you are doing one of the many specific "5 by 5" programs that are around now or not, the same basic principles of progression apply.

when you start anything new, be it a new workout, new exercise, or new rep range in your training, start conservatively. for instance, if you were to begin to military press, and you were doing 3 work sets (not including warmup) of 5 reps each, and felt you could probably succeed with 150lbs, you should probably start with something more like 135lbs, and go up a steady 5lbs a week for the first 3 weeks... youll not fail, the workouts will be fairly comfortable, but will get progressively harder. after the third week when you do 150lbs for 3 sets of 5, decide if you think you have 155lbs in you the next week. if your sets were relatively easy, go ahead and try for 155 the next week, if they were hard, just go to 152 or 153lbs... judge how much you increase each week by what you feel you are capable of. at some point you wont get all the reps. say you get 5 on the first set, 4 on the second, and 3 on the third when the weight has gotten to 160lbs. then you would stick to the same weight the next week, and hopefully get all the reps or at least get closer. maybe youll get 5, 5, and 4. if so, keep the weight the same the next week, and again try to get all 3 sets. if you get them all, add a couple of pounds for the next time,

If you go a couple of weeks without getting closer to succeeding with all your reps, say for 2 weeks or 3 weeks you do 5, 4, and 3... then make a change. change to 1 work set, change to 5 work sets, change the reps, just make some change. and, start over with that new rep range, or new number of work sets, again with a weight that is comfortable, and again make steady increases, follow the same progression you did the first time.

if you have one week where you actually do LESS than the week before, say you did 5,5, and 4 one week, and the next you do 5,4, and 2... then immedietly change something and start over.

there should be NO subjectivity when selecting weights or deciding when to move up, NO going by how you "feel". if you get all the reps the week before, you move up, simple as that. if you dont get them, you try again with the same weight. if you go nowhere for a couple of weeks or decrease, you change the nature of the workout.

So, this entire "failure" concept is something I recently began studying heavily and thanks to madcow pointing me in the right direction again, I realized training to failure is absolutely not ideal. However, ever since I started lifting 9 months ago I've trained every exercise of every workout to failure, and this was how I could guage whether or not I needed to increase the weights.

Not training to failure is something completely new to me so I'm not quite sure how I would know to increase the weight used unless I had some sort of failure mechanism to know if my strength has gone up or not. Of course, with the 5x5 that problem is taken care of for you with planned progressive overload and the like, but say one is doing a custom program and wants to know when to increase the weights. How should that guy know when to increase?

 

[blut wump]

So simple that hardly anyone could believe it. Progression is the key to progress.

 

[anotherbutters]

So simple that hardly anyone could believe it. Progression is the key to progress.

I like it.

 

[Anthrax Invasion]

Progression the key to progress? You're pulling my leg.

 

[Jim Ouini]

there should be NO subjectivity when selecting weights or deciding when to move up, NO going by how you "feel". if you get all the reps the week before, you move up, simple as that. if you dont get them, you try again with the same weight. if you go nowhere for a couple of weeks or decrease, you change the nature of the workout.

It's great every once in awhile to strip away the minutiae and look at the proverbial 'big picture' (yes I used to be in management )

Having said that, I still haven't grasped DFHT (the one laid out in the old word doc)

 

[siamesedream]

whether you are doing one of the many specific "5 by 5" programs that are around now or not, the same basic principles of progression apply.

when you start anything new, be it a new workout, new exercise, or new rep range in your training, start conservatively. for instance, if you were to begin to military press, and you were doing 3 work sets (not including warmup) of 5 reps each, and felt you could probably succeed with 150lbs, you should probably start with something more like 135lbs, and go up a steady 5lbs a week for the first 3 weeks... youll not fail, the workouts will be fairly comfortable, but will get progressively harder. after the third week when you do 150lbs for 3 sets of 5, decide if you think you have 155lbs in you the next week. if your sets were relatively easy, go ahead and try for 155 the next week, if they were hard, just go to 152 or 153lbs... judge how much you increase each week by what you feel you are capable of. at some point you wont get all the reps. say you get 5 on the first set, 4 on the second, and 3 on the third when the weight has gotten to 160lbs. then you would stick to the same weight the next week, and hopefully get all the reps or at least get closer. maybe youll get 5, 5, and 4. if so, keep the weight the same the next week, and again try to get all 3 sets. if you get them all, add a couple of pounds for the next time,

If you go a couple of weeks without getting closer to succeeding with all your reps, say for 2 weeks or 3 weeks you do 5, 4, and 3... then make a change. change to 1 work set, change to 5 work sets, change the reps, just make some change. and, start over with that new rep range, or new number of work sets, again with a weight that is comfortable, and again make steady increases, follow the same progression you did the first time.

if you have one week where you actually do LESS than the week before, say you did 5,5, and 4 one week, and the next you do 5,4, and 2... then immedietly change something and start over.

there should be NO subjectivity when selecting weights or deciding when to move up, NO going by how you "feel". if you get all the reps the week before, you move up, simple as that. if you dont get them, you try again with the same weight. if you go nowhere for a couple of weeks or decrease, you change the nature of the workout.

Well, how long should one train to failure, then? I mean, once the individual gets up that weight where they can't complete all 5 reps, it's pretty much failure from then on. I mean, say they stick with the weight until they're able to pump out all 5 reps and then increase by another 5 pounds. Well, they'll be training up to failure again at that point. So, once failure is reached, is there a certain amount of time to continue training at that point that leads up to a deloading week and then cycling back down to a newer, higher "starting" weight to progress from in the oncoming weeks?

 

[needtogetaas]

all the good old pro's did it that way. sure you can grow without training to failure but i have found the good ol "no pain no gain" rule has worked well for me . i do tend to agree with needtogetas.

dame fucken rights bro.no pain no gain.airborn

 

[Anthrax Invasion]

dame fucken rights bro.no pain no gain.airborn

Jesus H. Christ, can you please learn to spell?

By the way, bodybuilders are notorious for their AAS usage, so don't attribute their gains to anything but that and lots of food. As was said by, I believe Glenn or Mark, "many bodybuilders make progress in spite of their training, not because of it" - 'course, that's not verbatim, but you get the idea.

Seriously learn a bit about physiology before you sit here trying to make the arguement that failure is necessary or optimal in any way to make progress. Learn the stuff on a molecular level. Then maybe you'd understand.

Wait, no you wouldn't. You're an idiot.