I realized I've been training to failure essentially every time I lift and I think it's been affecting me negatively so I'm going to try switching to being more conservative.
Squat215 x 5
225 x 3
235 x 3
245 x 3(awful depth)
Never experienced depth problems until recently. Probably just have to readjust myself to feel where it is again.
Band Resisted Box Squat (purple)
135x4
155x4
165x4
175x4
and for shits
(green)
135 x 4
DB Walking Lunges
55 x 6
Abs
5 comments:
Looking at your log it does look like you go to failure a lot, but I doubt that it's a bad thing. It's not like you fail on every set, and it seems you've been setting plenty of PRs. You may just need a down week. You can only set records in every workout for so long...
Near Failure is a good place to be skirting around. I like leaving about 1 rep in the tank on the big lifts, and then taking the smaller assistance lifts to failure.
Of course recovery is not really an issue if you are eating enough food and getting enough sleep. Both of which finals compromise.
I wouldn't take assistance work all the way to failure. While you can occasionally, training this hard on all of your assistance work will generally lead to overtraining, in my experience. It's not that you don't want to push yourself, but assistance work is just that, work that not supposed to be the main part of your workout for that day.
Oddly I was reading Matt Kroczaleski's training log the other day and and he mentioned about this topic.
"Ed Coan (in my mind the greatest powerlifter of all time) was known to purposely 'leave a rep or two in the tank' during his training and as such rarely ever missed an attempt while training. He felt that this not only helped to avoid overtraining but was also conducive to developing a psychological expectation of success when in competition."
In the beginning, when you start training, you will be able to set a lot of max and rep PRs (i.e. Scott and Luke right now). Which is good and what you should strive for, but eventually you will get past that point and you need to know your body and have a certain gameplan of what numbers you will hit during a training session. Also, don't look past the psychological advantage that limiting failures in your training provides. While it may not be scientifically proven, empirically it has shown to be of great help in successful lifting during meets.
As for overtraining/recovery...Kyle is right that a proper diet and sleep cycle will allow for your muscle fibers to recover (repair microtears) on a day-to-day basis. But what is of greater concern (and what overtraining actually means) is the breakdown of your CNS. Lets say your muscle fibers are completely recovered and able to contract at 100% of their force. If your CNS is broken down from overtraining, not all of the nerve pulses from your CNS will reach your muscles so you won't get optimal muscle contraction - thus inability to lift a certain weight (despite the fact that your muscles have to force required to lift it). And actually for a expert lifter (someone who has conditioned there body for YEARS for one-rep max type work) will only be able to fire about 80% of their muscle fibers on any one rep. Whereas a beginner lifter will only be able to fire 40% of their muscle fibers on one rep - assuming recovered muscle fibers and a healthy CNS.
So limiting failures (at least on max or near max exercises) will go a long way to conditioning your CNS properly and allow for more of your muscle fibers to contract on any one rep.
Also as far as failure in accessory exercises of reps of 8-10+...thats completely fine - occassionally. Its fine because the failure mode is different. Failure during max or near max work is generally due to overload of the CNS, while failure during high rep accessory work is due to a build-up of lactic acid. This failure mode will not overtrain or breakdown your CNS. But if you train to failure on all accessory work all the time, you will have soo many microtears you won't be able to recover quickly enough and will be sore and lose strength.
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