How hard do you do these sets? Do you do them to failure?
Make sure you do the main lifts first. The assistance exercises shouldn’t be exercises to hit the muscles you’ve already went all out with on the compound exercises. I think the assistance exercises should be used to hit stuff that doesn’t get hit well enough during the main exercises. Basically just traps, calves, and maybe biceps, but that’s stretching it.
That’s how I look at it, anyway.
Oh yeah, your original question. Yes, I go to failure.
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
Make sure you do the main lifts first. The assistance exercises shouldn’t be exercises to hit the muscles you’ve already went all out with on the compound exercises. I think the assistance exercises should be used to hit stuff that doesn’t get hit well enough during the main exercises. Basically just traps, calves, and maybe biceps, but that’s stretching it.
That’s how I look at it, anyway.
Oh yeah, your original question. Yes, I go to failure.[/quote]
Thanks man, that is what I suspected. I guess the biggest thing in the 5x5 is not to overtrain, and for the first few weeks I was skipping the assistance exercises in fear of doing that.
Friday’s workout is already pretty long, and the assistance exercises make it almost 90 minutes.