Training to Failure...

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Unfortunately, you now have newbs afraid to “overwork their delicate CNS’s”. I think THAT is a larger problem than people falling out due to “CNS fatigue”.

It seems many actually believe they can not train to increase endurance or to “fortify their precious CNS”.

Bottom line, unless someone is training near the upper ranges of human ability or has some sort of chronic fatigue syndrome, I fail to see the relevance of even making this an issue.

Without specific context, people are lost enough as it is.
[/quote]

It doesn’t make sense to dummy down a concept or program out of fear that newbs will misunderstand. Most newbies will always be confused about something.

Besides, from what I understand, the program in question isn’t intended for beginners.

I obviously can only speak for myself when it comes to this, but I began to make some of my best early gains when i stopped trying to push each work set to failure. I learned this in the gym from guys who were far more advanced than me at the time, so I can’t thank Christian for it, but what more recent articles/programs have helped me.

I’ve never really understood why people worry about CNS fatigue unless they are pretty advanced. I just train hard at the gym, and if I do that for too long many of my lifts might start stalling, whether it be CNS fatigue or whatever, so I’ll have a back off week, then hit the weights hard again and it seems to do the trick for now

The problem I see with the fear of “CNS failure” is that most have no idea how far they must push for this to take place. Most aren’t working hard enough to begin with and the worry of getting in tune with thier CNS stops them from ever finding out how far they can go and how fast they can grow.

[quote]ChrisKing wrote:

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Unfortunately, you now have newbs afraid to “overwork their delicate CNS’s”. I think THAT is a larger problem than people falling out due to “CNS fatigue”.

It seems many actually believe they can not train to increase endurance or to “fortify their precious CNS”.

Bottom line, unless someone is training near the upper ranges of human ability or has some sort of chronic fatigue syndrome, I fail to see the relevance of even making this an issue.

Without specific context, people are lost enough as it is.
[/quote]

It doesn’t make sense to dummy down a concept or program out of fear that newbs will misunderstand. Most newbies will always be confused about something.

Besides, from what I understand, the program in question isn’t intended for beginners.

I obviously can only speak for myself when it comes to this, but I began to make some of my best early gains when i stopped trying to push each work set to failure. I learned this in the gym from guys who were far more advanced than me at the time, so I can’t thank Christian for it, but what more recent articles/programs have helped me.[/quote]

I don’t push each set to failure. I understand what you are saying though, but many of these people DO seem to be getting the wrong idea.

I do not know the solution to that either.

I think the problem is that it is continually rammed down everyones throats that they must train hard, push until their ears bleed or they wont get progress. I know from personal experience that thats how I used to interpret many of your posts ProfX, not saying that its your fault, just thats how I interpreted it. It took a while for it to finally sink in that my progress wasnt as fast as it could be because I was going to failure on everything, grinding out reps, rest pausing and that by backing off once in a while I could actually progress faster

I push every set (other than warm ups) to failure. Usually it amounts to 2 sets per exercise that I’m pushing to failure. I don’t even care what anyone else says, to me, that’s part of weightlifting.

[quote]Professor X wrote:

[quote]ChrisKing wrote:

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Unfortunately, you now have newbs afraid to “overwork their delicate CNS’s”. I think THAT is a larger problem than people falling out due to “CNS fatigue”.

It seems many actually believe they can not train to increase endurance or to “fortify their precious CNS”.

Bottom line, unless someone is training near the upper ranges of human ability or has some sort of chronic fatigue syndrome, I fail to see the relevance of even making this an issue.

Without specific context, people are lost enough as it is.
[/quote]

It doesn’t make sense to dummy down a concept or program out of fear that newbs will misunderstand. Most newbies will always be confused about something.

Besides, from what I understand, the program in question isn’t intended for beginners.

I obviously can only speak for myself when it comes to this, but I began to make some of my best early gains when i stopped trying to push each work set to failure. I learned this in the gym from guys who were far more advanced than me at the time, so I can’t thank Christian for it, but what more recent articles/programs have helped me.[/quote]

I don’t push each set to failure. I understand what you are saying though, but many of these people DO seem to be getting the wrong idea.

I do not know the solution to that either. [/quote]

It seems to me that it’s one of those things that is just going to have to be learned from experience to really know, OR one can in the meantime follow a good program the way the author says to do it.

For example, after going for another rep in the DL despite the previous rep having been extremely difficult and feeling as if it well could have been the last possible, and then on this one having to just go to the utter extreme to keep the bar moving and even then taking 10 full seconds to get from the knees to lockout, and feeling wiped out for several days afterwards, then you know that making your nervous system work THAT hard isn’t the way to go on a routine basis if ever.

Let alone doing the same thing but failing – having the bar stop somewhere and fighting it equally hard with absolutely everything, to no avail but with much smoke coming from the ears.

No need: that’s not how one should train the DL. Or any heavy compound movement.

But experiencing that sort of exhausted-nervous-system wipeout gives experience into what’s going on, and that probably really is the only way to know.

[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
I push every set (other than warm ups) to failure. Usually it amounts to 2 sets per exercise that I’m pushing to failure. I don’t even care what anyone else says, to me, that’s part of weightlifting. [/quote]

  • waits for Bill Roberts rant on meaning of “failure” *

Edit: Guess I didn’t need to wait.

No, I don’t respond to that individual’s posts, no matter how strikingly ignorant his manner of expression.

I feel it would be unfair to do so given his stated promise to never reply to any of my posts ever again.

Much to the benefit of everyone, he has kept his word to date on that point, and let us all hope he will continue to do so, as this saves much nonsense.

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
No, I don’t respond to that individual’s posts, no matter how strikingly ignorant his manner of expression.

And given his promise to not respond to my posts ever again, I trust he will continue benefitting everyone by continuing to not do so.[/quote]

Did I miss something?

Only a previous back-and-forth where he promised to never reply to any of my posts again. No big deal. That is certainly the prerogative of any person.

FTR, I don’t remember promising that (although it may be true, I’m not sure). Bill’s posts (to ME) simply complicate things too much. Obviously he is helpful to a number of members here, and for that I’m grateful he is around (although I also admit that I did NOT admit that during our previous…“altercation”).

For me, I guess his writing style is not my cup of tea. Like he stated above, it’s really no big deal.

Cueball - you’re looking pretty husky in the new avatar, man.

Edit - And I don’t even mind Bill’s left handed insults. It’s obvious his vagina still hurts from our last “altercation”. :wink:

[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
FTR, I don’t remember promising that (although it may be true, I’m not sure). Bill’s posts (to ME) simply complicate things too much. Obviously he is helpful to a number of members here, and for that I’m grateful he is around (although I also admit that I did NOT admit that during our previous…“altercation”).

For me, I guess his writing style is not my cup of tea. Like he stated above, it’s really no big deal.

Cueball - you’re looking pretty husky in the new avatar, man.

Edit - And I don’t even mind Bill’s left handed insults. It’s obvious his vagina still hurts from our last “altercation”. ;)[/quote]

I was pretty sure you two were having a man period at that point, and had kissed an made up by now.

Get to kissing you bastards…

Lanky, as you no longer remember your promise, I suppose you cannot still be counted on to not reply to my posts. In that case, it seems fair for me to reply.

It seems a little unfortunate if you plan to resume, as it’s just worthless to have complaints such as yours about, in a thread on the meaning of pyramids vs double pyramids, it supposedly being too “complicating” to post a link to what Hatfield had to say in his book that explains and clearly illustrates the matter.

It’s fine of course that it’s not “your cup of tea,” but:

  1. Many people do find value in seeing what men such as Hatfield have to say on a topic in question
  2. Most who don’t care for seeing an illustration, for example, aren’t going to waste everyone’s time with complaints about it.

It’s also worthless to have posts such as your above “vagina hurts” post.

Why not just resume the mutual ignore: it saved everyone a lot of time and considerable utterly wasted space. It’s not as if you are missing anything from not having the back-and-forths: you’re obviously doing quite well with what you are doing.

Lol, I honestly have nothing against the guy. If anything, describing his posts as “too complicated” is a slight at my intelligence. I’m actually surprised he even remembers our little tiff that day.

BUT, something tells me a make out session is NOT in the works, lol.

I remembered it because it’s pretty memorable when someone gets all huffy about the above supposedly being too complicated and wasting everyone’s time with objections about the link to it being posted.

By the way, the link is Serious Strength Training - Tudor O. Bompa, Mauro G. Di Pasquale, Lorenzo Cornacchia - Google Books and while the part on pyramids vs double pyramids is not so interesting (though it was absolutely relevant to the confusion and dispute that existed in the thread in question) the brief discussion on the following page of skewed and flat pyramids is interesting.

Forgot to post the image of the item that received such objection.

[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
It’s also worthless to have posts such as your above “vagina hurts” post.
[/quote]
Dude, the vagina comment was made in jest after you made a comment about how “strikingly ignorant” my posts are. Obviously you missed the smiley face.

[quote}Why not just resume the mutual ignore: it saved everyone a lot of time and considerable utterly wasted space. It’s not as if you are missing anything from not having the back-and-forths: you’re obviously doing quite well with what you are doing.[/quote]

Yeah, which is why I was surprised you even brought it up.

Someone’s vagina still hurts. :wink:


Talk about a thread getting off-topic in a hurry, what with all the vaginas and pyramids and such!

You’re proven my point thoroughly.

In this case, the best solution for everyone is for me to put you on Ignore, because clearly any back-and-forth between you and me is a complete waste of time for everyone. That has always been the case in the past and you’ve proven again now that it remains the case.