Well recently i noticed on Kingbeef’s “Do This Routine” thread he talked about going to failure twice on some of his exercises . This left me sort of confused since i’ve always only done one all out set for every exercise and i wouldn’t know how to add weight to the bar any other way . Ill give you an example to show what i mean.
My workout- Squat . Rep range is 6-8 (warm ups are not included)
10 x 140
8 x 160
6 x 180
6-8 x 200-failure on this (increase weight when you get 8 reps on this)
Kingbeefs workout- Squat . Rep range is 6-10(warm ups not included)
10 x 140
10 x 160
9 x 180(failure)
6 x 200(failure)
now if i were to do my workouts that way how would i progress week to week? Increase my lifts only when they all reach 10? or increase one lift by 5 and then increase the other when it reaches 10.Example:
10 x 140
10 x 160
10 x 180(failure set. increase by 5lb)
8 x 200(failure set. dont increase this lift. wait till you reach 10)
Seems weird to me…
I think you’re overthinking it. That routine was a template. If one set to failure has been working for you, you are progressing, and gaining weight, just keep at it, and look to his thread as inspiration and food for thought if you ever stall along the way.
^^Exactly, that’s just what I like to do. If you decide to try it, though move up the second to last set when you hit the top of the rep range and move up the last set when you move up the previous set. Simple!
I do that because I feel like even though I get stronger doing 1 set to failure on all exercises, I seem to grow better when adding in a few extra sets to failure.
KingBeef was outlining the Max-OT workout, which I am quite familiar with. The rep range in the “official” program are 4-6, so I’ll use that as an example
Week 1: (no specific exercises as this progression applies to all of them)
Warm up
Working Set 1 300lbs x 6 reps
Working set 2 300lbs x 4 reps
Week 2
Warm up
Working Set 1 310x6
working set 2 310x4
Week 3
Warm Up
Working set 1 320x4 reps (Alright, at the bottom of the rep range here, and since we wont be able to get 4 reps with this weight again we lighten to weight for the second set)
Working set 2 310x6 (so we use the same WEIGHT as last week, but the REPS are higher, we progressed)
IDEALLY you would increase the weight and the reps would stay the same… But lifting isnt always perfect, and given that this is a life time endeavor, small steps will eventually add up to huge gains.