When Do YOU Terminate your sets?

@Joel Marion – Sometimes I do but when I start to use other parts of my body to compensate or help me complete the set, then I know I am not doing this well and yes my form has broken down and it is time to quit this set.

Originally Posted By Joel Marion

Originally Posted By PeterI terminate my sets when I get muscle fatigue and I struggle to continue.

What if your form begins to break down? Do you “cheat” to complete another rep or two?

Sometimes I do but when I start to use other parts of my body to compensate or help me complete the set, then I know I am not doing this well and yes my form has broken down and it is time to quit this set.

I terminate my sets when my rep speed slows down. This is based on Chad Waterbury’s programs and neuro-science approach to weight training. Weight progression is made when I’m able to achieve the desired RM on a set. IOW, if I’m working 5RM and I’m able to do 5 pull-up with BW+90lbs, then I’ll add 5% weight the next time I do that workout.

I like Charles Staley’s approach to it. Stop when your form breaks at all. What most people don’t realize is that this means even just a change in tempo. Though there are some exceptions to this (competition, breaking prs, etc.), training to failure is pretty stupid. If you train past failure, your joints will hate you and your spotter will love you, especially if you are benching (he will get a great biceps workout in).
I think the reason that most people train chests on Mondays is because for some reason the bench press has become the standard for lifting. If you workout, someone will ask you “How much do you bench?”. Whatever happened to squatting, deadlifting, or military pressing. Bench pressing is probably the most overused real lifts there are, even by respectable athletes. I say real lifts because I don’t consider curls and other isolation exercises real lifts. If you can substitute push ups for benching, do it. There are many ways to add resistance to push ups that people don’t realize, and the vast majority of people would do well to switch.
Sorry it wasn’t supposed to be that long but I think you should read it anyway.

I try to do all my exercises to the limit of my ability to lift with good form. So, I don’t typically go to failure, and NEVER with squats or deadlifts. I’ve got some warning pains in my knees and my back is pretty tricky, so though i love squats most of all, I don’t usually do fewer than six reps. Thanks for asking…

ah, another thing, I used to compete in powerlifting, and i agree, powerlifters don’t typically train to failure. I don’t think it’s a good idea in general. I wish i knew that when i was in my twenties. I might still be competing now in my late forties. oh well. I still heave around a fair amount of black iron.

I stop when I cannot do further, and I have just joined today, I am 55 yrs old.
Now I have adopted to do free-hand, body weight exercises at home or in park
during my morning walk. Thanks for allowing such wonderful stuff free.

very informative post, Joel. I am looking forward to part 2.

Those are my burning questions: “Train To Failure or Not” and “Pre-Exhaust or Not”. There seems to be million different opinions flying around. I would like to hear from you.

For me, I have prescribed reps for whatever program i am in that time. Sometimes, i did a “money rep” ( extra rep ) if I can. Or drop-sets or partial at the end of my set sometimes.

Since I do not use spotter, I don’t really train to failure like the “kid” you mentioned. Honestly, I don’t know it is a good thing or bad thing. But I am still seeing my gains ( however small ), so I’m sticking with what I’m doing for now.

From my experience ( that is not much), if you go all-out or train to failure in one exercise, the rest of the exercises after that will suffer. Even they are in different muscle group. If you train chest and shoulders or chest and triceps together and if you train to failure or near failure on chest, your shoulders or triceps will suffer. So, I always try to strike a balance on all exercises.

I was just reading what Bill Pearl – bodybuilding legend – had to say on this very issue. He directs his trainees NOT to go to failure! Yes, the last rep should be hard, but, he says, training to failure on every set – one trains themselves to FAIL over and over again! Thus – for longevity and enjoyability – I am now finding myself agreeing with him. One should want to look forward to workouts without setting themselves up to ‘FAIL’.

Reading more on Bill he is actually a vegetarian and only did a small course of steroids to never again use them! I think we can learn much from this man.

Depending on the weight I try to get to 12 or 10 reps or if it´s too heavy 6 reps.
I like to get the pump feeling going on, thats when I know I am actually working out, but never sacrifice good form.

when my strict form begins to fail so bad that I’m torquing my body to finish the rep, that’s my last rep

I do 3 warm-up sets stopping 2-3 reps short of failure
Then I do 3 work sets
On the work sets I always try to add an additional rep from the previous workout, unless I have increased the weight. I do not add a rep if my form breaks down.
I judge form breakdown mainly noting when on the eccentric protion of the lift the speed has slowed from 1 sec. to 2 sec.
On the last set I may add 1-2 reps at the most and only allowing slight cheating.
On any rep if I feel that I cannot complete it without more than slight cheating I do not start it.
Also on the last rep of the last workset I will do an extra slow concentric.
If I am unable to increase the reps for 2 workouts in a row I will change to a new program.
I will also take a week off every 12 weeks.

my guess is u failed because u did not rest the muscle group enough so take another day or so to recover properly

Exactly Joel, both you, Chad Waterbury, Charles Staley, Christian Thibaudeau all agree on this area I believe. We need to find elements of commonality versus fighting over what is “better”. I spoke with Charles Staley one time and he made a comment that really stuck with me. He said, “Jamie, as soon as a movement slows down, we start to recruit slow twitch Type I fibers, and Im really not interested in those. Many people need to train like athletes versus bodybuilders. Athletes have great physiques as a side effect of training.”@Joel Marion –

@Edric – Probably not related to how many reps you’re doing. more likely to be sleep/stress/bad diet or some combination of the three. Check your sleep, if I’m weak it’s usually because of lack of sleep (good motto there..)

Jack

I can’t work my legs to failure (partly because I only have dumbbells at home and they aren’t near heavy enough) but I guess I do with my arms. And it wasn’t until training consistantly that way that I really noticed some gains there. However, my legs are not progressing and I assume that is due to the fact that I can’t reach failure??

That sounds like me, I normally do at least 5 sets on the bench press, either doing a pyramid, where i start at a weight where i can do 10 reps, then increase weight and hit 8, and continue until i get to 2. Then i go back down, but along the way, lets say at the set i did 4 reps, i will do 3 by myself, and have my spotter do 2 more and so on. Other days i may do 5 sets of the same weight where i hit 8 reps, and if on the last few i begin to barely lift it up, my spotter helps and lets me get to 8. After that, I do other chests and tricep excerices doing everything for 10 reps with 3-5 sets. On days in between benching days, I workout biceps and back, Pullups being the main one. With pullups i do a pyramid where i start at 10 reps and drop to 9, then 8, all the way to 1, then i go back up to 10, and if i cant complete it, i will switch to chin ups first, then my spotter will help me on the last few reps after those are too hard. After these i continue doing bicep and back excercises with 10 reps and 3-5 sets. I also have light weight days where i go for about 15-20 reps. I alternate between them like this: 2 heavy weight days to 1 lightweight. Just recently i began a routine for pushups to train for bootcamp where i do 300 pushups everyday in as few sets as possible, each of these sets i get to probably 30 pushups, then stick my butt up for rest, then do 2, rest, then 2, until i cant do 1 and thats 1 set. Right now im shooting for 100 consecutive pushups to get a very good score on my army PT test.

Great example – I think all of have had such an experience with a younger lifter using sloppy (to say the least) form.

For me failure training has its place, but using bad form, wiggling, twisting, etc represent a point where the set should have ended already.

So push and train with intensity, but stop once the form is OFF. It is not the same exercise anymore.

Yavor

when i complete or at least reach near to my goal reps. eg. During pullups i usually aim for 15 reps of 3 sets but i can only reach 10-12…So i try to do these 10-12 with the best form i can. If i cant then i do negative pull ups at the end to complete my reps…..

I terminate my sets at muscle fatigue or when my form starts to deteriorate. Its not the same amount eac time. For example, yesterday I was doing the clean and press – 1st set I did 15 before I reached muscle fatigue. The next set I did 11, then 9 then 3.

I don’t use a gym, training at home with a simple set of DBs. I have a specific number of reps (min-max) in the sets. Once I’m hitting the max number of reps and feel there’s more left I up the weight for the next set. I always try to hit the min number of reps for the set.

As a relative beginner For me the trick is not to let my ego get the better of my body. Just because 20kg for 15 left me with the feeling there was more in the tank, doesn’t mean that I’ll be able to do 30kg for 10. And I’m old and wise enough to listen to my body, I know the difference between when it’s ‘moaning’ and when it’s ‘hurting’.;-)

Chris

I do 1 set of about 8-10 reps with the weight so that by the time I get to the last one my muscles ‘fail’ aka I can’t do even a single more rep.