General Training

Few questions for anyone out there who could help!
I train on a 2 body part per session, 4 day a week split! I do about 12 work sets per body part! With 3 to 4 excerxises! I’m wondering first, how many of these should I look to take to failure. Secondly, if I do a compound movement let’s say incline bench press, would I be better off ramping up the weight to a top weight for 8 reps or should I start at the top weight for the first and continue? Or even increase weight and decrease reps?
Thanks alot for any help

I think taking a lot of sets to failure is definitely necessary for muscle growth.

A lot of times when I am lifting, I’ll either ramp and take my top set to failure, or if using straight sets, I will take every single one of those sets to failure as well.

When it comes to strength gains, taking sets to failure everytime you are training is often counterproductive especially when you begin to move very heavy poundages that are really taxing on the nervous system.

For your incline bench I would properly warm-up and ramp up to an 8 rep max. I like ramping because it allows my body to become accustomed to the movement (groove) before I hit something heavy and also gets my muscle/joints/tendons properly warmed up to help avoid injury. There comes a point where your warm up weight and 8 rep max are significantly different and if you go from benching 135 to 315 as your next set, the risk of injury is also increased. That’s why I like ramping.

[quote]austin_bicep wrote:
I think taking a lot of sets to failure is definitely necessary for muscle growth.

A lot of times when I am lifting, I’ll either ramp and take my top set to failure, or if using straight sets, I will take every single one of those sets to failure as well.

When it comes to strength gains, taking sets to failure everytime you are training is often counterproductive especially when you begin to move very heavy poundages that are really taxing on the nervous system.

For your incline bench I would properly warm-up and ramp up to an 8 rep max. I like ramping because it allows my body to become accustomed to the movement (groove) before I hit something heavy and also gets my muscle/joints/tendons properly warmed up to help avoid injury. There comes a point where your warm up weight and 8 rep max are significantly different and if you go from benching 135 to 315 as your next set, the risk of injury is also increased. That’s why I like ramping.[/quote]

x2 Ramping is the bomb

This stuff is all preference and figuring out what works for you.
I don’t like ramping and i never have.
when i do go to failure, i like to do it on my very last set of my very last exercise for the body part. It just makes sense to me, like why would i go to failure on my last set of flat bench if i was going to do incline next? but thats just preference, some would call that pacing myself.

[quote]paulieserafini wrote:
This stuff is all preference and figuring out what works for you.
I don’t like ramping and i never have.
when i do go to failure, i like to do it on my very last set of my very last exercise for the body part. It just makes sense to me, like why would i go to failure on my last set of flat bench if i was going to do incline next? but thats just preference, some would call that pacing myself.[/quote]

x 2 on this.
Find what works for you…perhaps using others experiences as simply a “guide”…ultimately the journey of training discovery is yours. All training techniques and philosophies have their place in the muscle building arsenal…you just have to find the few that your physiology responds best to.
I believe this strongly applies to muscle building nutrition and supplementation too.
And steroids are supplements in my book.

ramping for the win

T-Ramping crew honorary member!