If you do a deep dive on youtube you can find Schwab talking about this.
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Yes Mike was from Pennsylvania. He would tease me about the snow since he moved to the west coast.
Mike Mentzer told me that he was benching 350 and squatting 500 before he ever saw a steroid.
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To be fair, in terms of training, regardless of what weight youāre actually using, if you truly work a muscle to failure youāve objectively worked the muscle as hard as you possibly can. As in, itās literally not possible to work any harder and exceed the physical limitations of that muscle.
So from that standpoint, itās fair to say youāve worked as hard as you possibly can and no-one can say, relatively speaking, that theyāve outworked you, as there are limits to what a muscle is capable of (regardless of what weight yourself or the other person may be using, as objectively, lifting lighter or heavier weights only serve to increase or decrease the length of time it takes to reach that limit) and itās physiologically impossible to exceed that point of momentary failure. And this is without getting into things like using intensifiers beyond that point.
āTo failureā is extremely subjective. Therein lies the biggest problem
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Maybe lift until you canāt move the weight in a positive direction?
Would this include using cheat form and sloppy reps?
Seriously? Thereās nothing subjective about it.
You reach the point where you can either move the weight or you canāt. Thatās extremely objective. Itās as black and white as it gets.
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Talking about with very good, if not perfectly strict form. Use of momentum should be always be avoided.
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Thatās usually considered technical failure rather than muscle failure, so there is a little bit of room for subjectivity there, just depending on your definition of failure.
I know what youāre saying here, but itās not overly difficult to discern between a technical failure and muscular failure.
The kinds of movements weāre talking about here arenāt the kind which are overly complex to perform, so if you perform each rep in a controlled fashion through a full range of motion with good form, when you reach the point you canāt perform another rep in this fashion and complete the repetition, then thatās muscular failure.
Technical failure is far more pertinent to things like Olympic lifting, gymnastics and to a lesser degree the big compound movements such as the squat, deadlift and the bench press where errors in technical execution can be the cause of failure to lift the weight rather than the muscle(s) itself.
Whether itās technical or muscular failure can be discerned fairly easily for the most part by simply attempting the same movement again with improved technique in which case you should then be able to execute the lift, whereas with muscular failure you either wonāt be able to move the weight at all or you will get nowhere near full execution.
Anyway, for our purposes, we really donāt have to overthink this.
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No it would not. Not for me.
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To me, failure is when the target muscle fatigues enough that form breaks down.
For example, take the leg press. Letās say at the 10th rep, the knees start shaking as the muscles are really fatiguingā¦I would stop there. If I cannot control it in excellent form, that tells me the thighs have reached failure.
Same with a chest press. If one reaches fatigue, but then starts requiring squirming, etc. that is not ideal.
Yes, I could eek out another rep, two, or maybe threeā¦but it would only because the target muscle is now being helped by other things. Form compromises in order to eek out more reps. Almost like a forced rep or something. Some have called it āoutroadingā vs the ideal āinroadingā.
One could make an argument for cheat repsā¦which is what I would call in my examples at a certain point. But I feel that is overkill and just adds more systematic fatigue. It also increases the risk of injury.
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What HH said. At our level of skill, we can achieve a very deep level of fatigue/inroading by simply following a set to until good form breaks down. Any contortions or exertions to eke out more reps will simply extend recovery time and reduce your frequency to less-than ideal levels. IF YOU MUST, stop the set when form breaks down and take 3-5 deep breaths and then complete a few more reps where you can limit involvement to just the target muscles ā> because when you convulse and contort, you are not!!
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Increasingly finding with movements Iāve been performing the most consistently for several months that I can reach momentary muscular failure with few to any intensifiers beyond performing a couple of additional reps after a ten second pause. And then being unable to use any further intensifiers even if I wanted to.
Iād speculate that Iām becoming more and more efficient when it comes to recruiting maximum muscle fibres.
And for what itās worth, a prolonged recovery time from going all in isnāt a concern to me as Iām an extremely busy person anyway, and my goal with HIT is to maximise my results while spending as little time in the gym as possible. As Iāve said in previous threads, Iāve found an overemphasis on recovery time to be more fruitful in terms of gains than an underemphasis, anyway.
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[quote=āH1ghIntensity, post:382, topic:270883ā]
Iād speculate that Iām becoming more and more efficient when it comes to recruiting maximum muscle fibres. [/quote]
IāD speculate that you were dead-on ā Recruiting Efficiency driven by greatly improved visualization and/or mind-muscle connection!!
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ā¦
and then 2-3 seconds late youāll move againā¦ and again is ātrue failureā ? witch one is āfailureā?
Thx for agreeing with me
The idea of general failure from Jones, Mentzer, etc. wasā¦training in the set until you cannot continue the positive rep. This usually occurs in the āsticking pointā of the exercise. For example, this will be in the bottom range of a free weight exercise.
Rest/pause, as Mentzer recommended it, was to do multiple failure one reps (or near)ā¦followed by short rests (so many seconds). His take on rest/pause has been written about in more detail. I never found it to produce results and itās extremely demanding on the recovery in that manner.
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Yeah Iām not a fan of Mikeās version of Rest Pause (which I believe is the original). Itās super high fatigue, but doesnāt feel like you get much Return on your investment. Probably just too little volume and time under tension to most effectively stimulate hypertrophy. Additionally, just trying to use your 1RM over and over isnāt really the safest strategy. I definitely prefer Dante Trudelās version of Rest Pause. You get a bit more high quality Intense volume in, and the loads are more manageable. They are kind of built from the same philosophy, but Danteās just works better in execution. I feel like, in general, DC is an improvement over Mike Mentzerās Heavy Duty.
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