This is my first post here. I’m 23 years old and I’ve been training for 18 months.
Reading some of the articles I realised I’ve been training in a wrong way as I’ve always lifted to failure.
My question is:
How can I know if im going to fail before trying? you know, if I’m going for 8 reps and my muscles start shaking at 7th. Should I still try the last (8th) rep?
How often may I go to failure? Once a month, a year?
If you’re going for 8 but during the 7 or 6th rep you feel you’re not going to make it, just stop. You arn’t really expected to get every rep of every set. Say you’re doing 5 sets of 8 reps, you can expect something like 8 8 8 7 5 reps. This is fine and you could still stop one or two reps (you choose) short of concentric failure each set.
There are a few theories regarding how often an natural trainee should go to failure. Ian King recommends stopping two reps short on everthing one week, one rep short the next week, and finally go all out during the third. Thibaudeau recently said he goes to failure on the last set of each excercise, but at no other time. Other programs like Westside, go to failure every week with one to three excercises, but never with any other lifts.
There’s no real way to calculate a rep-maximum without trying it, because different fiber make ups allow for varying degrees of endurance and such. You’ll get be pretty good at estimating them though. If you go to exrx.com and look around for a 1RM calculator, it’ll give you your 1rm and various %'s of it in 5% increments. Thats kinda similar to what you’re asking, then you can always find a way to convert to rep-maximums…
I don’t know what your goals are but if you want to build mass you should always go to “fatigue”. Fatigue is what you are refering to and it means you can no longer complete a rep unassisted at a certain weight. Just make sure you can recover. True muscualr failure only exists in theory. Even if you do drop sets all the way down to when you cannot even manually contract your muscle with NO weight. It is likely do to your nervous system and lactic acid buildup. Your nervous system will always hold you back. Then again you could involuntarily contract your muscles with massive electric shocks and you will get very close to true muscular failure. Don’t try this at home. IT HURTS!!
I first noticed my “always training to failure” problem when doing curls. The first weeks the last reps where difficult but I could struggle to do them. But then as weeks passed the last reps where imposible, as i got some sort of reflex and couldn’t contract the muscle anymore while holding the weight. Biceps seems to get numb.
My training partner was using the same methodology as me (read always to failure) and got the same problem.
Reading some articles here at T-nation I got to conclusion that the problem was that. The difficult is that the line between going to failure and training hard looks blury to me. And I was looking for some clear “stop there” signals.
I’ll try stoping when I think I’m not going to finnish the next rep. I’ll tell you how it goes.
if you are actually getting weaker then i think you may be overtraining. try cutting back if the volume of your workout is too high but you should always try to squeeze out 1 more rep than last week or use more weight. i suggest going to “failure” but cutting back on sets.
Knowing the exact moment of muscular failure is very hard to predict. I would suggest paying close attention to the concentric speed on your lifts. For instance, if your tempo is 2010 and you are not able to grind out another rep in a 1 sec time span, stop your set.
Personally I never train to failure because I think it is too taxing on the nervous system, but I?m not trying to add mass and my goals, recovery, ect…are probably different than yours, so different rules apply.
Some training coaches like Charles Poliquin advocate failure on every set, while T-nation readers know that Chad Waterbury and Charles Staley are less enthusiastic about going to failure. Staley has a great article on this topic.
I liked Staley’s article. I like the concept of not plaining to fail but see failure as something that happens from time to time.
Probably always failing means I’m using too much weight.
I don’t think overtraining is the problem. I train 4 times a week, and try to keep volume within reasonable limits. In the curling story I forgot to mention I use more weight now than in the beggining. But the last reps feel different and I thought maybe my CNS is the problem.
Probably always failing means I’m using too much weight.
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Bingo! I think you hit the nail on the head with this statement. Many people will suggest when starting a new program or changes in a program, always start conservative. This way you will be able to better judge what you will be capable of the following weaks.
SO first week start with a weight you know you can get all the sets/reps but will still be difficult and the next week slightly increase the weight or reps and continue in this fashion. Once you can’t complete all the reps/sets keep that weight for the next week until you knock 'em all out.
I’m not at all knowledgable on this, but Chad Waterbury gives some very clear advice on when to train to failure in his Big Boy Basics article(under that name in archives, 2003)