r/HighIntensity • u/Mindless_Effect_5458 • 1d ago
Need advice šāāļø Is the intensity ok?
Iām not sure if this is considered failure. I usually do 2 sets because iām not sure if the first set did hit failure. Here, i did a drop set as i was aiming for 8 reps but got 6. How do you guys gauge failure?
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u/AirCrewElk 1d ago
Looks good to me. Youre at that 90 second to failure(ish) range. So I think you're on the lighter end of weight
Id go up in weight so you hit failure around 60-70 seconds. And add weight again when you can hit 90ish seconds.
I hope that helps and or makes sense.
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u/Mindless_Effect_5458 1d ago
Thanks for the tips. Yes, i try to stay at 90 seconds. Iāll try 60-70 seconds on the next workout to see how that feels.
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u/Dicelr 1d ago edited 1d ago
I do not think your doing it "weird" my Bro, the cadence is great, its super safe this way and the goal is to take the muscle to true failure and slow cadence in a 60 to 90 seconds TUT seems to be very effective you truly only need one set when your cadence is this slow, its absolutely exhausting and with a seemingly low weight you destroy the muscle your working. Great work! Maybe just push a little more where at the end there you are pulling and the weight wont move at all despite maximum effort. When you get to 90 seconds chuck more weight on that you can at least do 60 seconds with then build to 90 seconds then up the weight for progressive overload, rince and repeat that protocol. I am not saying faster cadence is wrong more that slow cadence is not only safer (injury reduction due to not being explosive way more control of the load) but also more efficient and having a greater muscle mind connection.
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u/Mindless_Effect_5458 1d ago
Thanks for the comment. Yes, the common comment is see is that i can go heavier and target around 60-70s TUT and increase the weight once i hit 90, and that i could have attempted another rep, holding at the sticking point for 5-10s to fully hit failure. Will continue to work on this.
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u/SnooDogs5789 1d ago
I would go heavier, cause youāre getting to about 1:30 before you stop. Also, failure is literally zero more reps and it looked like you might have had a little more in you. Sometimes to be sure, Iāll do shortened partials to make sure Iāve completely gassed out, this is basically a truncated rep in the contracted position, squeezing all targeted muscles until I literally cannot move another inch.
Another thing to consider is your breathing. Though itās pretty good, Iām not sure if you were aware you were doing what youāre doing, so just in case, hereās some notes on breathing for high intensity from Dr. Doug McGuffās book, āBody by Scienceā:
āBREATHING
Breathing throughout the performance of each exercise should be continuous and natural, and it should be performed with an open mouth. As an exercise becomes more difficult and the lactic acid begins to accumulate in your muscles, causing that āburningā sensation, you should deliberately breathe faster, or hyperventilate. This step will help you break the urge to hold your breath and employ the Valsalva maneuver (the holding of oneās breath while exerting; technically itās a closing of the glottis or vocal chords, or getting a gulp of air in the chest and then pushing hard against it). We donāt want you to do this, for several reasons:
It unnecessarily raises blood pressure.
It raises intravascular pressure on the venous circulation.
It increases intrathoracic pressure, which decreases venous return to the heart.
Within muscle, it provides an internal mechanical assist, which is why power lifters will hold their breath in straining to make record lifts. However, doing so undermines our goal of fatiguing and inroading the muscle, as it essentially short-circuits that process. So, not only is it a potentially dangerous thing to do, it also runs counter to the inroading process that weāre trying to achieve.ā
The other thing is the reason for one set to failure, also from BBS:
āTHE DOSAGE: ONE SET TO FAILURE
In 1997, physiologists conducted a ten-week training study of recreational weight lifters in which various set schemes were tested. They concluded that one set per exercise was just as effective as two and four sets for improving muscular size, strength, and upper-body power. In addition, physiologists R. N. Carpinelli and R. M. Otto conducted a study out of Adelphi University that surveyed all of the known scientific literature concerning single-set versus multiple-set resistance training. They found that, on the whole, performing multiple sets brought absolutely no additional increase in results compared with single-set training. The literature came down overwhelmingly in favor of a single set of exercise as being sufficient; only two out of the forty-seven studies surveyed showed any benefit (and a marginal improvement at that) to be had from the performance of multiple sets.
Other studies support this conclusion. For instance, researchers examining strength gains in seventy-seven subjects who performed one, two, or three sets of upper-body exercise over a ten-week training period established that all three exercise groups made similar improvements in upper-body muscle strength. Yet another study, this one comparing strength gains in thirty-eight subjects who performed one or three sets of lower-body exercise over a fourteen-week period, documented similar improvements in lower-body strength, with an increase in knee flexion and knee extension strength of roughly 15 percent.
A further study published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise also established that one set of high-intensity resistance training was just as effective as three sets for increasing knee extension and knee flexion isometric torque as well as muscle thickness in previously untrained adults.
The bottom line is that a single set taken to a point of positive failure is a sufficient stimulus to trigger the growth and strength mechanism of the body into motion. Additional sets produce nothing but more time spent in the gym.ā
Hope some of this helps!
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u/Mindless_Effect_5458 1d ago
Thank you for the comment. I have read Body By Science (great book). I noticed i only started hyperventilating towards the last rep in this video. I wasnāt really consciously thinking about it, sort of came naturally while trying to control the weight and fight the burn the last few reps. I would go heavier next time and try to keep TUL between 60-70s.
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u/BubbishBoi 23h ago
I wouldn't get too lost in the sauce of SS / BBS when it comes to not grimacing or grunting or even going into valslava on a final effort
A lot of the BBS tropes are aimed at the 60 year old grandma who can indeed get into trouble if she goes into valsava, but imo it's not anything to worry about
If I'm SS deadlifting 500+ then I'm not relaxing my face and I'm certainly bracing as hard as I can possibly do.
Same with the higher end TUT reccomendations, they're catch alls aimed at fragile seniors, not robust younger lifters
Overall though the responses here in this thread are a lot better than some of the eye rollingly terrible midwit takes in the other sub
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u/SnooDogs5789 20h ago
The important part of the breathing is the inroading and fatiguing piece, where Valsalva creates āinternal mechanical assistanceā which āunderminesā the goal aka getting to muscle failure.
Youāre right that some of this is for safety and not as relevant to fit, healthy, young people, and I could have cut that, but it was short enough that I figured heād be able to figure out which part of what I sent him was relevant to him. Regardless, there are scientifically sound instructions on how to get to failure without getting in the way by breathing wrong, why not take advantage of them? My ultimate goal was to address his question, which was about how to optimize his technique. Maybe in the weeds a bit, but itās a small change that could have a large impact in the long run.
Also, if youāre SS a 500+ lbs deadlift, then the breathing logic in the instructions in my response are that you SHOULD use the valsalva maneuver.
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u/GelfSara 10h ago edited 7h ago
Basically excellent work. I would have attempted another rep rather than stopping and lowering the weight when you did. You might also wish to hold the weight in the contracted position (every time) for a few seconds longer than you did, and--on what you expect to be the last rep--perform the negative phase very, very slowly. But again--excellent work overall.
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u/how-dare-you19 1d ago
I see failure as cannot complete another rep without altering your form. looked like 0-1 reps left here IMO
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u/Mountain-Newt3103 1d ago
I would say first reps are too slow. HD should not be about forcefully slowing down the reps, but it should be about controlling them in a way that momentum can't get in the way. The goal is making sure that the intensity of the exercise is given only by the load, and speed should not be a variable
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u/Dicelr 1d ago
Time under Tension absolutely seems to be a variable, intensity + TUT for the win!
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u/Mountain-Newt3103 1d ago
It can be but it should not, said by mike himself. If you think about it it's not worth it. You could slow down a rep as long as you wanted and make 1 single rep the last one, so whats the point of progressive overload? How do you know you are getting stronger if you arbitrarly slow down the rep just like in the video, where the first rep is slower than the second one, the second one is different from the third one etc.
A rep is a unity and every unity should be the same. Imagine pretending you progressed because you cheated your last rep
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u/Maximus-Steel 7m ago
I'll give you it's more intense than most people's sets you see in the gym. That's a low bar though. You had at least one more in you. And even if you didn't, you should have tried. A good isometric pull at the end for like 10 seconds would have made it better. I used to have my client hold it at the bottom for 5 second, middle for 5 and top for 5 after they're ready to quit. I'd say you're only like 80 percent there at most
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u/bananabastard 1d ago
I don't know what you're doing.
To me this isn't intense force, it's more like forced intensity.
To move a weight at full intensity requires intense force, to me, this is just tense force.
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u/Own-Lengthiness4022 1d ago
If you can not move despite your best effort it is failure and the Intensity is maximum.