Hey lifters,
I read the 6-Week Bench PRess Cure article and saw the training routine in it.
At some exercises was a hint that you should do some exercises “1 rep shy of failure”.
Does it mean that you finish a set when you would be able to do one more complete rep?
OR does it mean that you end a set after the last possible complete rep? (…and the "1 rep " would be the partial rep to the point of momentary muscular failure)
The first one is that what I understood, but the second one told me a friend in the gym.
So I am a little bit confused about that.
Thanks in advance for your help!
stay strong,
Tommy 
It means to push yourself as hard as you can without injuring yourself. Lets say for bench press if doing one more rep would cause the weight to crash down on you, or that doing it would cause the rep to be done in bad form such as the bar path would be shaky, one side of the bar is higher than the other side, or you losing upper back tightness and your shoulder(s) or ass coming off the bench then you shouldn’t do it since you posted this in the power lifting forum.
Bodybuilders would go one step further and not complete the rep if they would lose tension in said muscle. For example if they were training chest with bench press and got 9 reps in a set but they know instinctively by doing 1 more rep they would lose tension in their pecs and would have to complete it with their triceps and shoulders they would terminate that set and wait until they can target their chest again next set.
[quote]JoabSonOfZeruiah wrote:
It means to push yourself as hard as you can without injuring yourself. Lets say for bench press if doing one more rep would cause the weight to crash down on you, or that doing it would cause the rep to be done in bad form such as the bar path would be shaky, one side of the bar is higher than the other side, or you losing upper back tightness and your shoulder(s) or ass coming off the bench then you shouldn’t do it since you posted this in the power lifting forum.
Bodybuilders would go one step further and not complete the rep if they would lose tension in said muscle. For example if they were training chest with bench press and got 9 reps in a set but they know instinctively by doing 1 more rep they would lose tension in their pecs and would have to complete it with their triceps and shoulders they would terminate that set and wait until they can target their chest again next set.[/quote]
Thats a terrible explanation. That is not describing failure whatsoever. Just because you fail a rep does not mean that the weight will come crashing down on you or youre doing it with terrible form.
Failure is simply when your muscles arent able to complete a full rep, and I suppose you could include that this is while still maintaining good form. Thats it. So yes, with that program you will want to go to the very last rep, without actually having a spot have to help you.
OP, you explained it perfectly, under that protocol you end a set when you would be able to do one more complete rep with proper form.
It means to push yourself but don’t fail. Failing is just not that useful in weight training. It’ll happen sometimes on max effort, but there’s no reason to fail on accessories. It just hurts your recovery while not providing any meaningful benefit.