[QUIKAZHELL]

QUIKAZHELL on April 16, 2003 at 10:01 pm #8340

mike,
you said in the other thread about training to failure……

“The basic idea behind it is that volume should be minimal and every set should be taken to failure to maximize muscle / motor unit activation. Basically, it sounds good on paper but in reality is a bunch of crock. It might have a place in training for the purpose of variety but it’s purported benefits do not live up to the claims (indicated by several research studies as well as anecdotal evidence).”

can you elaborate? i understand that in the competition phase you would not want to go to failure because all you want to do is maintain strength and going to failure can deplete CNS reserves and tax you body. But how about off season (if you werent competeing)and in a max strength phase. Or how about if you were playing another sport and you have a long off season and just wanted to get stronger. i am having trouble understanding this topic.

[fluke]

fluke on April 17, 2003 at 8:07 pm #19774

i think that training to failure should only be done if you are a bodybuilder. coaching or being an athlete i see no reason to train to failure. as a sprinter (and pretty much any event) you want to stay as explosive as possible. i would definately like to here other peoples opinions.

[Carl Valle]

Carl Valle on April 18, 2003 at 6:10 pm #19775

I think most of us will stay away from failure since dropping a barbell or falling over is extreme fatigue doesn’t seem to work well. The real question is how you distribute the workload and gage CNS or byproduct fatigue. It’s not the last rep that is totally exhausted it’s the reps before that that have me worried.

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on April 23, 2003 at 11:20 am #19776

Quick-
Sorry I saw this thread a long time ago but forgot to answer it. I may be wrong but I think we might have a misunderstanding. When I’m referring to training to failure I’m using it as a general term but am more specifically referring to sets to failure in the 8-12 range. This is what is commonly used to describe this type of protocol, and as I???ll discuss in a little bit, inaccurately called failure. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you might be referring to sets to failure as sets in the 2-4 rep range with very heavy loads. While I still wouldn’t recommend this, it would be for a different reason.

First of all, let???s look at the differences between the two scenarios. One is really an issue of fatigue (8-12 reps) and the other would be more accurately described as failure. From this standpoint, your use of fatigue would be more accurate but would not be the commonly used definition of the term****. Failure as I’ve just described strongly implicates neural limiting factors but rarely takes an athlete to the point of fatigue. In contrast, fatigue is more due to muscular or metabolic factors.

Let me know which training protocol you were referring to and I???ll try and further explain myself.

***I’ve found that many of the things that are thought to be “common knowledge” are almost always wrong.

ELITETRACK Founder

[QUIKAZHELL]

QUIKAZHELL on April 23, 2003 at 8:45 pm #19777

MIKE,
i am refering to very heavy loads in the 2-4 rep range as failure. it seems most people do not want to take this to failure another words have a rep or 2 left in them? why is that and why would going to failure in this sense be bad.

Pheonix said””””
“””I think most of us will stay away from failure since dropping a barbell or falling over is extreme fatigue doesn’t seem to work well. The real question is how you distribute the workload and gage CNS or byproduct fatigue. It’s not the last rep that is totally exhausted it’s the reps before that that have me worried.”””

i always have a spot.;)

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on April 23, 2003 at 10:04 pm #19778

This wasn’t what I was originally referring to but I still wouldn’t use it in training too frequently. One of the reasons is what Phoenix pointed out and the other is the very high neuromuscular (NM) demand. If you were just training for strength alone, training to failure (as we’re talking about it: 1-4 reps) has been proven by many of the best weightlifters (especially the bulgarians who max several times a day for several weeks at a time) as an excellent way to increase weight room numbers. If however, you’re also doing track / jump work, I think the NM demand would be too high to do frequently.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe Charlie has mentioned that if one of his athletes hit a new weight room max or PR on the track that he would drop their intensity down for a period of about 10 days. Note that in the case of weight room maxes hitting these new “maxes” doesn’t necessarily indicate what their true max was because they may have actually been able to go higher but if they exceeded previous bests they were stopped. This is a little more cautious than I’d be but I think Charlie has obviously got the right idea and I think this points to the effect that very high NM demand activities can have on the system and it’s future consequences on training and recovery.

Having said that, I did however use it occassionally (maybe two sets every 2-4 weeks) when I was at OU as a form of testing during intermediate points in the year when I didn’t want to do a full out max. I’d have them use 85+% of the old max and have them see how many reps they could do….basically your normal predicted max test but it would be in regular training day and not necessarily a test day.

All in all though, I think the research still points to multiple sub-maximal sets (even in low rep range) rather than a single set taken to failure. The greater volume of total reps that can be performed at a very high load (85+%) with multiple sub-maximal sets outweighs the fact that none of them are taken to failure.

ELITETRACK Founder

[QUIKAZHELL]

QUIKAZHELL on April 23, 2003 at 10:44 pm #19779

mike
i see what your saying.. but being that i am not competing and just getting back into training again isnt this more benaficial to build strength? (as long as i have sufficent recovery days of course). i can see that if i was competeing or maybee even getting ready to compete i would want to save my CNS reserves for the track but right now i am not competing till next indoor season so i am not worried so much about my CNS reserves.
For example when i bench i have been doing between 80-95% of my 1rmx 5 sets of 3. Possibly my first 2 sets i would of been able to bang out 4 or 5 reps but my later sets i am just barely getting 3 on my own. these sets that i am struggling with to get up i am considering failure. To build strength this would be the way to go am i right? And would doing this lead to hypertrophy or an increase in muscle cross section? i am not really worried about an increase in muscle cross section now but i would just like to know for the future.
just to give you an idea of my size… i am 5’7 151 4.3% bf. benching 300 and as far as my times go 10.6 21.2 hand time pb’s and 22’1 in LJ. many say i look about 170-175 pounds because of my upper body build but i guess that is due to my low body fat %.

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on April 24, 2003 at 5:15 am #19780

In that case, yes, I’d highly recommend it. I’d still do multiple sets at very heavy weights. For example a typical bulgarian workout might be:
C & J: 5 x 2; 5 x 1; where the first 5 sets get progressively heavier until they fail. The remaining sets are performed with that weight regardless of whether they hit the lifts or not. If they hit a lift, they might even go up in weight for another single and repeat until they’ve performed a total of 10-12 sets (including the light ones).
Snatch: Same
Squat: 10 x 2; go up to near maximal weight and do 5 to 6 sets at that weight.

Obviously this would probably be too extreme for you but the point I’m getting at is to do multiple sets at very heavy weights rather than just one or two.

ELITETRACK Founder