Barbell My thoughts

[Boris Bachmann]

Is there a particular book of his for suggested reading?

This 70-Year-Old Workout Works As Well As Ever

It may look simple on paper, but do it right, and it will give you just enough to get seriously big and strong. Plus, it works well with just about any equipment you have. Get to know the DeLorme protocol and put it into action!

www.bodybuilding.com

 

[Hung]

If we talk about pure hypertrophy, then exercise selection is important.
We know that training close to failure is important, but things get blur when using complex compound movement.

Squat, for instance. If doing sets close to failure in squat is enough for quads gain, then this popular schedule like this would be enough:
- Squat: 1x1 RPE 8, 5%-8% drop RPE 8-9
This would be okay for lifter build for squats ( short legs and drive the knees forward ). For lifter with longer legs/lean forward form, probably the lower back would be fatigue first (the back will hit the rpe 9 before the quads). And the adductors and glutes would be more developed but the quads are not to its full potential.

Some lifts share the load to multi part of the body, which makes those effective in terms of moving the maximum weight, but it is limited to use for pure hypertrophy training. This week I pull 220 kg for 3 reps. Probably I can do only 1, maybe 2 more. After finish the set I don't even know which muscles are the main driver. Quads, adductors, upper back, lats...all under great tension, yet, nothing is close to failure. But if I do another rep or two, I would just gased out and leaking tension.

 

[North Coast Miller]

Is there a particular book of his for suggested reading?

This is an overview with reference links.

Thomas L. DeLorme and the Science of Progressive Resistance ... : The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research

military hospitals. The backlog of patients was partly because of the sheer number of soldiers involved in the war effort, but it was exacerbated by rehabilitation protocols that required lengthy recovery times. In 1945, an army physician, Dr. Thomas L. DeLorme experimented with a new...

journals.lww.com

He (co) published a lot of pretty dry reading:

Progressive Resistance Exercise: Technic and Medical Application

Interest in progressive resistance exercise has developed rapidly since Dr. Thomas DeLorme initiated studies concerning this type of exercise at the Gardiner Army General Hospital in Chicago during World War II. Drs. DeLorme and Watkins have now prepared an excellent general textbook describing...

jamanetwork.com

 

[Adachi]

The first topic I want to discuss is the obsession of the last years: training to absolute failure with low weekly volume.

Training to failure and beyond, gotcha.

Is this training style nonsense?

Maybe.

it works for me.

I believe that if you sat down with mentzer himself and explained that you were satisfied with your training, then he wouldn't have much more to say than congratulations.

what is all this hype with training to absolute failure

I believe it to be a paradigm puzzle, or a reality riddle.

I believe that the hype wouldn't exist if there weren't so many kitchen sink program recommendations out there to contrast against.

Stated differently: if you were dissatisfied with your training results wouldn't you be open to alternatives?

Is it just some nonsense of young fitness influencers who worship Mentzer as their god, or it actually works for some people?

It apparently works for some.

Or it actually works for everyone and I just did it wrong?

I have been interested in this information and after looking into it I found large gaps between the way mentzer presented his own arguments and the way posterity has presented his arguments since his passing.

I take away from all this that there are several immortal virtues that he advocated for.

Train hard​

Write it down​

Quality reps​

Respect recovery​

Watch what you eat​

More is not better it's just more.​

Contrary to some representations made after the fact, mentzer had a very narrow window of recommendation, even if he was wrong he attempted to qualify his advice a great deal.

• You're not obligated to train this way year round much less for more than any one cycle.
• This is only advice for the neurotic few that want to gain as much muscle as possible.
• And the big one(I paraphrase):"I don't know what's best for you. That's why you should write everything down. My recommendations are by definition not optimized for anyone, it is merely a good place to start."

After listening to and reading his own words,( and understanding that mentzer, in his own training and coaching career, found limitations and caveats and presented them, himself), I understand much more what he was getting at. It's actually a very narrowly defined scenario. His recommendations were never the globally perfect cure-all, but rather, a starting point from which it was incumbent on the trainee and trainer to experiment with and explore away from.

 

[TimothyGander]

So, what is all this hype with training to absolute failure until you puke, or until your head explodes? Is it just some nonsense of young fitness influencers who worship Mentzer as their god, or it actually works for some people? Or it actually works for everyone and I just did it wrong?

These things come and go in cycles. The fact is that building muscle depends as much if not more on endocrine status (which in turn depends on genetics, diet and other environmental factors) as on training. Thus, any training modality attempted by young men with hormonal profiles and general health of elderly cancer patients will eventually be discovered to "not work", making a way for a next generation of fitness influencers (or even the very same people who have also pushed the previous "only true way") to promote the next big thing. Influencers who, due to any combination of nature, nurture and trenbolone can get muscular by doing any kind of training.

The "one set to failure" style has also an advantage of requiring much less in terms of time and mental effort while still making people feel they are working very hard. "How can I progress if I don't constantly push my limits?" is a common reasoning failure that carries many different fitness concepts (not only HIT, but also HIIT, Crossfit and Starting Strength, to name a few).

Then there's Mike Mentzer's iconic status. He's one of the best known bodybuilders of all time, and he had some peculiar political and philosophical views. Coupled with his notorious feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the fact that young people tend to remember the latter more as the Mouth of Sauron rather than a bodybuilder, it's easy to portray Mentzer as an embattled dissident repressed by the establishment for his great discoveries.

And for the benefits of training one set to failure, well, Pavel has exhaustively debunked that over twenty years ago.

 

[Spartan Agoge]

These things come and go in cycles. The fact is that building muscle depends as much if not more on endocrine status (which in turn depends on genetics, diet and other environmental factors) as on training. Thus, any training modality attempted by young men with hormonal profiles and general health of elderly cancer patients will eventually be discovered to "not work", making a way for a next generation of fitness influencers (or even the very same people who have also pushed the previous "only true way") to promote the next big thing. Influencers who, due to any combination of nature, nurture and trenbolone can get muscular by doing any kind of training.

The "one set to failure" style has also an advantage of requiring much less in terms of time and mental effort while still making people feel they are working very hard. "How can I progress if I don't constantly push my limits?" is a common reasoning failure that carries many different fitness concepts (not only HIT, but also HIIT, Crossfit and Starting Strength, to name a few).

Then there's Mike Mentzer's iconic status. He's one of the best known bodybuilders of all time, and he had some peculiar political and philosophical views. Coupled with his notorious feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the fact that young people tend to remember the latter more as the Mouth of Sauron rather than a bodybuilder, it's easy to portray Mentzer as an embattled dissident repressed by the establishment for his great discoveries.

And for the benefits of training one set to failure, well, Pavel has exhaustively debunked that over twenty years ago.

Really great post!

 

[North Coast Miller]

I could say bodybuilders, but is someone who doesn't compete a bodybuilder?
Nevertheless, they are people who influence many young people. This is what i consider to be the issue.

Think of the 16 years old teenager who has no knowledge on training and just started going to the gym. He sees a 20 years old "bodybuilder" on youtube, telling him to train beyond failure in every single training session.
This is a great way to destroy the potential of many young lifters.

From my own experience, some people have to make a few mistakes along the way. I was lucky to have older brothers who had a clue, and some good friends who also had a clue.

In those days (1980s) virtually every rec lifter used some form of Arnold esque pyramid. Some didn't use drop or burnout sets, and nobody went to failure on every set. In all honesty this is still a perfectly valid way to train esp for mass, it worked then and still does.

The cyclical resurgence of dogmatic HIT is similar to cyclical resurgence of isometrics. They get rediscovered every so often...because they actually work. Are they as simple, effective, and superior as their proponents claim? No. Which is why interest dries up from time to time, kept alive by a relatively small number of adherents who are getting good results. 5-7 years later a next gen rediscovers it and here we go again.

 

[Spartan Agoge]

. 5-7 years later a next gen rediscovers it and here we go again.

I totally agree about this cyclical "rediscovery" of training methods, but we should have in mind that 20 years ago (even 10 years ago) the social media were not as big as today.

So, this cyclical use of older methods like hit, was only available to more advanced lifters who already had experience and (at least some) muscle and strength.

The only programs that were available to the novice lifters were the typical 3x10 routines of commercial gyms. Not ideal, but certainly much much better for novices than 1 set beyond failure.

Now, a novice lifter in his first day in the gym, can watch his favourite youtuber suggesting training to failure with forced reps. And he starts doing this from day 1.

This was never before the case. Will this have consequences, or I just give too much attention to something unimportant?
I guess we will see in some years.

 

[North Coast Miller]

I totally agree about this cyclical "rediscovery" of training methods, but we should have in mind that 20 years ago (even 10 years ago) the social media were not as big as today.

So, this cyclical use of older methods like hit, was only available to more advanced lifters who already had experience and (at least some) muscle and strength.

The only programs that were available to the novice lifters were the typical 3x10 routines of commercial gyms. Not ideal, but certainly much much better for novices than 1 set beyond failure.

Now, a novice lifter in his first day in the gym, can watch his favourite youtuber suggesting training to failure with forced reps. And he starts doing this from day 1.

This was never before the case. Will this have consequences, or I just give too much attention to something unimportant?
I guess we will see in some years.

I'd have to say that pop culture knowledge of 'single set to failure' goes back to Arthur Jones Colorado Experiment. It's been around a looong time.

Even then it was understood that he used some pretty uncommon hardware to set up for the lifts. Which launched commercial fitness evolution right into Nautilus circuit training.

 

[LukeV]

You don’t need to train to failure to build mass (or get stronger) so why would you? There’s no theory of hypertrophy that requires it, Schoenfeld & others have found it doesn’t optimise gains (that getting close to failure is good enough) and it’s uncomfortable/painful, increases safety risk and negatively impacts recovery

 

[Boris Bachmann]

Now, a novice lifter in his first day in the gym, can watch his favourite youtuber suggesting training to failure with forced reps. And he starts doing this from day 1.

This was never before the case. Will this have consequences, or I just give too much attention to something unimportant?
I guess we will see in some years.

Well, information overload and charlatans trying to profit off of the naivete of gen pop who are always looking for the newest thing is always a concern.

...Which, imho, always kinda circles back to this quote from Fred Hatfield (from his forum probably 25 years ago now) that I post here from time to time:

"Look, 'routines' are just that! I have written much on the subject. I have probably given the subject more careful thought than most. Here is yet another thought that I should've written at some time... maybe I did... can't remember.

In order to achieve ANYTHING in life to the pinnacle of your capabilities, you must 'marry' the thing! Become a 'priest' to it. Live, eat, sleep and breathe it! You MUST NOT succumb to whoredom and meander from one routine to another in the false hope that one of them is gonna 'work'. It will not! You may get a quick fix from it, but it'll only be because you re-injected some adaptive stress into your routine.

Do this instead. THINK IT OUT!

Now, most lifters cannot do this because they are not educated in the discipline, and because they have never been taught to REALLY think things through! So, the alternative is to find yourself a bonafide guru who HAS, and hang your hat on what that person has to say! So, find one! ONE!"

 

[Spartan Agoge]

You don’t need to train to failure to build mass (or get stronger) so why would you? There’s no theory of hypertrophy that requires it, Schoenfeld & others have found it doesn’t optimise gains (that getting close to failure is good enough) and it’s uncomfortable/painful, increases safety risk and negatively impacts recovery

Exactly. Plus, if you train to failure, you have no choice but to limit the number of sets. And imo, more volume(from which you can recover), more gains.

4 sets at rir 3 will be more beneficial than 2 sets at rir 0. And easier to recover.

 

[Spartan Agoge]

Well, information overload and charlatans trying to profit off of the naivete of gen pop who are always looking for the newest thing is always a concern.

...Which, imho, always kinda circles back to this quote from Fred Hatfield (from his forum probably 25 years ago now) that I post here from time to time:

Great quote!
He is absolutely right! Pick a well designed program and just do it. Stop caring if there is a more optimal routine.

Probably the best advice a lifter could have.

 

[North Coast Miller]

Exactly. Plus, if you train to failure, you have no choice but to limit the number of sets. And imo, more volume(from which you can recover), more gains.

4 sets at rir 3 will be more beneficial than 2 sets at rir 0. And easier to recover.

As used, only the last set is done to failure. 2 or 3 sets at (3, 5, 10, ? rir) followed by one taken to 0. I got my absolute best result using one long set about 15of 20, a second set at 1of2 or 2of4, done very quickly. Both of these sets were low fatigue, low RPE, potentiating. This goes back to DeLorme again, who stipulated that the lead-in sets should not detract from a genuine max effort on the last set.

The third set was 6 or 8 to tech failure using two Rest/Pause extenders (at 30 seconds each) or a Drop Set starting with the load from the middle set and finishing with the load from the first set, both taken to technical failure = 90% sure you can't get another clean rep. I was also using these in upper/lower pairings, so 2x the rest for the working muscle for the same amount of total training time.

I don't know about the research, but there was absolutely a more potent hypertrophic response to training this way compared to every set maintaining a reserve. I further guarantee I'm not some sort of outlier in my response.

Heck, this whole thread has me wanting to scrap my isometrics, dig out my notebook from 4 years ago, tie on a dew rag and get at it!

One of the interesting aspects of this topic, what is failure? Straightforward if you simply run a set to a stall. If you do a couple of forced reps with a partner and complete every rep, was that "to failure"? What of rest/pause, dropsets, clusters?

I'll say this, the whole concept of multiple sets to failure is somewhat sideways IMHO. If you truly take a set to failure, you shouldn't feel like there's much point in doing another.

 

[Joel the Savage]

Hello everyone. I wanted for some time to start a thread with my thoughts on training. Not to teach anyone, but mostly to learn from everyone. So feel free to disagree and put forward your objections, as this is the purpose of this thread. Of course, feel also free to agree, or to ignore.

The first topic I want to discuss is the obsession of the last years: training to absolute failure with low weekly volume. At least in my country, the last years, all the fitness influencers and all the fitness youtubers preach this training style as the absolute truth and the Holy Grail of fitness. If you don't train to absolute failure, you are wasting your time. If you do more than 8 sets per muscle group per week, you are overtraining and you are gonna die a horrific death

Yesterday, I saw a young youtuber, with not really much muscle(skinny but ripped I would call him), doing 1 set of overhead press on smith machine, to absolute failure and then some forced reps with the help of his friends. And, as he said, that was it. Just this 1 set for shoulders for this week.

Is this training style nonsense?

Well, it depends.
From 0 sets per muscle group you get really low results in the short term (if you continue with 0 for longer period you will go minus in the gain department).

The leap between 0sets and 1set is humongous. It's so gigantic theres not even any point in comparing them.

The jump from 1 set to 2 is a lot smaller.
Then its baby steps from 2 to 3 sets.
Then the gains from each set get smaller and smaller.
8 is better than 1, but not 8 times as good. 8 sets is very barely better than 7.

People get hung up on the wrong things. Is one set each week enough? Yes, but enough for what? For maximizing absolute muscle mass, lol no.
For the little lady in a apartment in the city, perhaps.

In my opinion, yes, absolutely nonsense. I have some people I know telling me that when they reduced the weekly volume and reached failure with every set they saw better results, but this was never the case for me.

When I tried to train to absolute failure, even with low volume, I always ended up with symptoms of overtraining and too much fatigue. I also didn't have any progress at all. If anything, I lost some strength and became unmotivated to train.

Do it every now and then, but don't live there.
Vary intensity/density/volume over time.

On the contrary, when I follow Pavel's recommendation of 1/3 - 2/3 of max reps in every set, it always works great. I increased my muscle mass by doing many sets of 3 reps with my 6rm. For me it is fixed: sets of 6 with 70% 1rm, sets of 5 with 75%, sets of 4 with 80%. If I want to increase the volume I do more sets. All reps are smooth and (somewhat) explosive. No grinding, no screaming, no failing. And it works for me. I think the Soviets produced some amazing athletes by training like this.

If you count stimulating reps, a 3 rep with 6RM is 2 stimulating reps. Thats more than 0 stimulating reps. If you do 5 sets thats 15 stimulating reps in one session, that's way more than 0, but not as many as 25.

So, what is all this hype with training to absolute failure until you puke, or until your head explodes? Is it just some nonsense of young fitness influencers who worship Mentzer as their god, or it actually works for some people? Or it actually works for everyone and I just did it wrong?

And... More people than one might think is on some pretty effective "supplements".

 

[silveraw]

Is this training style nonsense?

It works for some people.

Is it optimal? probably not. There is a reason there are no top tier bodybuilders/ powerlifters that still train with the one hard set a week. Mike Metzer wasn't even that great in his prime compared to his peers... And the Colorado "experiment" was rife with issues. It is very obviously a marketing stunt to anyone that reads the paper. Gaining 30lbs in 6 weeks? Natty? Even Enhanced? Nah. The math ain't mathin.

That said, if people train like that, make gains, and enjoy it? Go for it. Not everything in life needs to be optimized.

 

[Hung]

There is a reason there are no top tier bodybuilders/ powerlifters that still train with the one hard set a week.

So...I'm not a top tier lifter s.a.d

 

[silveraw]

So...I'm not a top tier lifter s.a.d

Yeah, but you also do those high volume 3x3 sets.

 

[Spartan Agoge]

It works for some people.

Is it optimal? probably not. There is a reason there are no top tier bodybuilders/ powerlifters that still train with the one hard set a week. Mike Metzer wasn't even that great in his prime compared to his peers... And the Colorado "experiment" was rife with issues. It is very obviously a marketing stunt to anyone that reads the paper. Gaining 30lbs in 6 weeks? Natty? Even Enhanced? Nah. The math ain't mathin.

That said, if people train like that, make gains, and enjoy it? Go for it. Not everything in life needs to be optimized.

If it works for some people, good for them, they don't need to change it.

As for me, every time I tried to do something like this, it really made me miserable. I was exhausted and at the same time I was feeling like I am not doing enough work, if it makes any sense.

I need sub maximal volume in order to progress. I need to train for work capacity along with strength. Sets of 6 @70%, sets of 5 @75% sets of 4 @80% etc.

Some people believe that reaching absolute failure results in some kind of biological processes that accelerate hypertrophy, regardless of other aspects, like volume.

For me, it is the opposite. I need to stop the set in the point that I know that will allow me to do several such sets, and achieve the weekly volume I want.

1 set to absolute failure at 80% never got me anywhere. 8 sets of 4 @ 80%, make me stronger and bigger.

I guess Mentzer 's protocol works for some people, but definitely not for me.

 

[jozko]

I used to train to failure quite often during my bro days. I was able to gain some cheap muscle mass, but I was a teenager and ate like a pig (like 6 raw eggs in 1 liter of whole fat milk after every session).

Then I "discovered" Bill Starr, later Strongfirst, and never looked back. I realized athleticism and longevity is more important to me.

I also got 12 years older during last 12 years, which is another reason to avoid this train-until-you-puke-daily mentality.