Devil’s advocate: Some Canadian guy went to China to train under an accomplished Chinese WLing coach (google it) and he told him:
“Coach Fang said that it was imperative to perform heavy pulls to failure on a regular basis. He went as far to say that weight should be added to the bar until your back is rounded during the pull or when the bar won?t be budged off the ground.”
[quote]infinite_shore wrote:
Devil’s advocate: Some Canadian guy went to China to train under an accomplished Chinese WLing coach (google it) and he told him:
“Coach Fang said that it was imperative to perform heavy pulls to failure on a regular basis. He went as far to say that weight should be added to the bar until your back is rounded during the pull or when the bar won?t be budged off the ground.”[/quote]
I’ve read that. But I wouldn’t really call that failure. It’s just turning one lift into another one because of the load.
For example when I got my snatch-grip high pull from 125kg to 180kg in 3 weeks I would routinely ramp up my high pull (I consider a high pull as a pull reaching at least the nipple line) until it turned into a low pull (I consider a low pull anything that reaches at least the navel) and sometimes would keen ramping up until it turned into a partial deadlift.
But I never missed a lift, I just turned it into a different lift. Missing a lift means not being able to complete a rep.
Now you can do pulls from the floor this way:
High pull --) low pull --) deadlift --) round back deadlift
I personally am against rounding the back when deadlifting I"ve seen a lot of people get injured lifting this way. But there is no denying that you can get a few pounds more that way and some of the worlds strongest deadlifters pull with a rounded back (e.g. Konstantinov), regardless I would not recommend it.
So, in a nutshell. unless going for an all out max(competition, or whatever)
Do not attempt a rep unless you are almost certain you will be able to complete it.
Do not go to failure, no forced reps etc. So, you do not NEED a spotter.
If your program dictates to complete all sets and reps, and you cannot complete 1 of the reps, you owe it to the session. So you will have to complete the rep or reps that you owe the session separately somehow.
This would require experience. Mind muscle connection etc. A new lifter has no clue what he or she can and cannot do.
Also, an experienced lifter must try not use this as an excuse to not perform the lift.
And, sometimes, you just gotta turn on the after burners, and go for it.
My own experience from the recent Bench Goal training. I achieved 305 for an all time PR. Now, 295 goes up easy almost every time. Heck, i cant tell you how many times I tried 285 over the last few months and couldn’t budge it.
So, as Mister, excuse me, I mean Master Thibaudeau puts it.:
"Real life application: Train hard, train to improve, train to get better than you were last time you were in the gym. But do not attempt a set or a rep you are not 80% sure of being able to do in solid form. The less reps you miss in training while going as hard as you can, the stronger, healthier and bigger you’ll end up being. "
Enjoy your day, I gotta go find some candles to burn at both ends.
Basically I have come to feel that training at a TRUE 100% capacity the body reacts by making it hard for you to do the same thing again for a while-it shuts you down so you don’t kill yourself. When you train at 80%-90% of your true capacity your body reacts by giving you just a little more ability to train without going negative the next time. And that as long as you avoid 100% training, the human body is basically made to do intense work on a 24-48 hour cycle. Train at 80-90% capacity every day or two.
Overtraining is real, but I’ve never run into it by training too frequently, but rather by training too hard and long (and maybe trying to do it frequently too). Also I think that frequent 85% training works because the workouts build performance, but they also restore the CNS and muscles from the previous training session. You restore faster training at 80-90% than when doing nothing at all. I’ve had times when I got stronger using 80% of my “true” max for about 15 total reps, but by the time my weights got up to 85% for 15 reps my lifts stalled. I dropped back to 80% and my max started going up again.
When I got to the point where I wasn’t sure I could get 5 x 3 at a given weight, the stress level doubled on me too. When I knew I could do it, I just felt stronger every day. All of my best progress came from training more than 2x per week per muscle. Oh, and I don’t think training to failure with lighter weights is the same as training with maximal weights for sets of 1-5. Sometimes you just take a bar and do a movement until you run out of steam, but that’s kind of “low stakes” failure. Its not CNS failure.
It’s been said and researched (although I like my own research more than academia) after the most brutal workouts the muscles fully recover within 48 hours and the nervous system takes 10 days…just to go along with you mertdawg…I agree with your training (properly) restores the nervous system better than not, unless you are truly overtrained (not over reached)
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