I’m just starting hormone depravation therapy for prostate cancer. There may be many side effects including weight gain, muscle loss and loss of bone density. The best way to prevent these things is through exercise in general and weight lifting in particular. One internet MD (expert in PCa) suggests lifting to failure. I already lift at the gym 2-3 times a week and ride a road bike 17-20 miles on the other days with one day of rest My weight routine is 4 sets of 12 with the same weight (for that particular exercise) for several different exercises (all machine), at which point I’m not maxed but maybe 85% there. This has been my routine for years and it keeps me in fair shape for age 67. I have always been more into cardio than weights.
My question is this. Does lifting to failure mean the last rep of the last set should be a max effort or is it the last rep in every set? If its the latter, should weight the be the same for each set? Is “failure lifting” an every-time thing or once a week or something? I’m not trying to build mass but just prevent loss as much as possible, Thanks in advance .
My “lift to failure” is my best-weight max effort, and its usually a grip failure, wrist lockup, or maybe muscle fatigue that does it.
FWIW, I only lift to failure to gauge my strength, about once per quarter to set my “1RM” (“one-rep max”, or whatever my best lift is prior to failure) From there, I have a training routine that keeps me with one or two reps max at 90-95% of that 1RM on a cycle, before I add additional weight the next cycle (~month). I don’t lift to failure (to 1RM) during these cycles. I don’t want to risk injury.
There are as many ways to interpret this as there are gym-goers.
For me, this would mean starting out with a weight that I could do say, 8 reps on the first set, and try to get 9 (you need a spotter, or a machine to do this safely). Keep lifting until the spotter has to help you complete the set. Then rest, and increase the weight by 5% or so, and go to failure again. You should be stronger on the 2nd set. Then, increase another 5% and do it again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This is a pretty aggressive routine, and I’m not sure that it’s possible to do this every session.
And - you will be sore the day after you do this for the first time.
I’ve done this, but the other direction - start heavy, lift until it’s literally impossible to do, then drop weight five or ten pounds, repeat until you can’t lift your arms.
It’s a shocking feeling to know you could generally, say, curl 35 pounds in each arm, but you currently can’t even scratch your nose without standing on your head. It’s brutal, and again, you WILL hurt the next day.
And yes, spotters or machines are critical to lifting to failure, in either direction. The injury risk is far too high.
Yeah, when I would do “drop sets” I would use all the 10’s in the gym, and take one off each time, until it was just the bar. If you did it right, the bar would feel like a million pounds…
I use an iterative cycle of taking my predicted 1rm, choosing a 6-12 rep set based on that prediction, perform my last set to failure l, and use the total rep count of that last set to calculate my expected 1rm for the next workout. Since it’s just the last set, I expect that’s lowering my projection to a bit less than I could truly do but it’s probably not good to work out at your true max, constantly.
In general, my understanding is that going to the max doesn’t help growth at all, it just ensures that you’re not accidentally limiting yourself or shying away from hard enough work to actually accomplish something. But, actually working out to the limit on every set will probably cause more damage and stress than you actually get a benefit from, so it’s a matter of finding a way to find a harmony between those two things.
Only doing it once per set ensures that you’re always testing your limits. Regularly adjusting ensures that you’re keeping the rest of the workout at the right level.
I don’t personally believe there is much benefit to lifting until one cannot do a single additional rep, which is what failure means, and so can only be done once (and not on the last rep of several sets unless the weight is decreased each set).
Better to lift more in the 80-95% range unless testing maxima. The majority of my work is at 70-90%. Less risk of injury, quicker recovery, no real difference in strength or growth. A good measure of hypertrophy is the total volume of weight times set times reps. High weights at low volume are better for strength, but likely anything over 85% counts.
To expand a bit. The sort of research they are likely referencing is this stuff.
That lifting to the point that the next rep would no longer be perfect form is going be in that 0 to 5 rep in reserve space, likely 0 to 3. The idea is that hitting there, within a fairly broad range whatever the weight or number or reps, whatever the exact percentage of 1 rep max (which many of us less serious lifters have no idea of), is the marker best associated with stimulating hypertrophy (even if your goal is to just avoid loss).
If that means that the last set is fewer reps or a lighter weight then from that school of thought fine.
"Training to failure and multiple training sessions throughout the week mix about as well as Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush. You can’t train to failure on every set and expect to recover within 48-72 hours. Minimize any failure training to the last rep of the last set of each exercise (not each set). Even then, it should only be performed for maximal and hypertrophy strength parameters [and possibly only for highly split routines so involved muscles are not trained again soon]”
(Good advice from a weightlifting forum.)
For really big muscles, better to do a lot of short sets every minute on the minute (EMOM) for 30 sets or more, resting as needed, with the same weight - gradually working up over the weeks from 60% to 75%. This advanced technique should only be used for one exercise on a muscle group you wish to emphasize, and probably not for more than four weeks. Pushing muscles so you cannot do further exercise since all the fibres are strained just delays recovery, and if recovery is too delayed and you cannot work it as planned next session you have gained little compared to doing 90% of that.