Q: In Old Man, Young Muscle you say to take every set to positive failure. But recently I think you said to stop short. I’ve always trained to failure because of the few sets I do for each muscle. Are you still avoiding failure even though you are doing only three or four sets per body part?
A: “Training to failure” is hard to define. I can tell you what you should not do, especially if you’re either a high-strung ectomorph or old—or both (like me)…
You should not push a set until you’re beet red and shaking, eyes popping out like a cartoon cat being sledgehammered by a mouse. Trying to eek out one last rep is a big cost. It severely over-stresses your central nervous system (CNS), not to mention your eye sockets…
An accumulation of those types of sets in a workout can make recovery almost impossible and derail growth—something I have experience with. More on that with a trip down Memory Lane in a moment…
I never do that anymore; however, technically I do train to “mechanical failure,” which is essentially stopping one rep short of the CNS grind described above.
So as my reps get a bit slower toward the end of a set, which indicates more fast-twitch fibers are firing, I try to gauge when I could only do one more rep—and I stop. Yes, sometimes I misjudge and fail mid-rep, but that’s okay. I simply don’t try to summon some superpower to get through it. Vein-bulging struggle is not necessary…
If you stick on the last rep, don’t hold it till you start shaking. Simply lower slowly back to stretch and put the weight down. That type of half-rep failure rarely happens to me now, as I know when to stop.
I remember back in the day going to failure and then using forced reps and negatives. My young-blood rationale: Hey, if it works for Mr. Heavy Duty Mike Mentzer, it should work for me…
My gains were sporadic at best—and I always needed a nap after my workouts, despite them being short. And driving home from the gym was a life-endangering challenge sometimes, hands shaking, accelerator-foot twitching.
My naive brain didn’t make the connection that Mentzer was not only a genetic freak, as you can see from the photo above, he was also on “special supplements.”
I was merely a young, skinny, muscle-obsessed gym nut trying to apply logic to my training. The short workouts were correct; however, I would’ve built more muscle much faster if I had followed my current “mechanical failure” training without all the crazy straining.
New: Get the ideal exercise for each muscle, the best add-on moves for ultimate mass, complete 35-minute workouts, exercise start/finish photos, and details on building muscle fast and efficiently in Old Man, Young Muscle.
And you still get The Muscle-On, Belly-Gone “Diet” ebook FREE for a limited time when you add Old Man, Young Muscle to your mass-building library. Go HERE.
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
—Steve Holman
Former Editor in Chief, Iron Man Magazine
www.X-Rep.com
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