LOL it's pretty amazing.

@@Kboges Where you at? Here in Sweden we just had lowest temperature recorded -43C (-45F)

I'm guessing Hawaii

🤣

L

Best summary I have ever heard

I agree, and I have personally experienced volume and progressive overload is the only stimulus muscles need to grow bigger. Towards the last reps when your form is crumbling and you are breathing heavy, take a clue and put the weight down! !

Thanks for the post Dan. Interesting to know that “just two more” came from the steroid generation. Your information makes perfect sense.

Really nice summary

Really interesting comment Dan food for thought. I noticed when I was training to fail plus with being a labourer I was becoming constantly exhausted and not gaining the strength I wanted, it was only after going on holidays or even taking time off being ill that my strength grew in that time period of big rest, so this makes perfect sense to not train to failure.

Dude that is exactly it! Thank you for summing that up so cleanly. That totally encompasses my view on the topic. I think a lot of people have misunderstood my view here because I’m certainly not anti failure but I also am honest about the potential trade offs depending on the person and the context. Thank you for the kind words, my friend! 🙏💪

Right on! I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I think your info and how you present it is golden. You truly are in it for the long haul. Happy training in the new year.@@Kboges

That is a great definition. Simple, yet it accomplishes everything we need it to.

It's a decent principle to abide althrough it's a technical failure rather than muscular one. Obviously both of them have their upsides and downsides.

Agreed bro there’s just something about pull. After your last one spent you’re completely shot. I always do pull first too cause if I hit push/legs/Abs first I feel like it affects my output

Awesome! Yeah there is definitely something to this style of training. I've done single set to training failure in the past and had great results. I've always generally responded better to more volume though.

I find this VERY hard to believe. How can you even do just one set to complete failure without massively increasing your risk of injury. I can't see how this is at all feasible.

@@thedon9670 not just 1 set but 3 😂

this is my problem as well. I fell like if there is no failure, you didn't do enough. and then I suffer from soreness the next 2 days...

Same for me and I'm just a beginner

Thanks, Matthias!

Thanks man! Yeah I used to be able to get to every single comment but it’s impossible now. I still try to spend a few hours a day interacting with subscribers in the comment section. Thanks for the kind words!

Thank you, Wotter!

Yeah that is a common experience. People vary a lot in their tolerance for sets to failure, but what you describe is what I typically see in most people. In your case, you would definitely benefit from leaving some reps in the tank.

@sean tellier nah man

@sean tellier if you finish your workout early you can miss out on exercises thet were meant for another body part you havent trained yet

Yes bodyweight exercises are different than weights exercises with bodyweight exercises if you do high reps you get fatigued fast and if you do low reps you can last longer doing your workout and getting more volume

@sean tellier agreed

I think this is a completely valid approach to training! Psychology needs to be taken into account for sure, and some people simply enjoy and prefer taking sets to failure. I think this is totally fine, and if this is the case, you simply adjust your program too reflect this. Many people have gotten excellent gains this way. Thank you so much for bringing this up!

Hey man i agree with the failure thing too. Im still getting stronger and improving even going to failure it just means i have to have longer days in between sessions.

@@chrisstanley9477 Yes Chris, this is more of a psychological thing imo. I feel much satisfied with my workout when i push myself the hardest, and i wear the soreness as a badge of honor the next day.

Failure in sets is great but I think that deload week is also important on this approach, am I right?

@@ft.the_equinox ye it should be, but I honestly lose my motivation before that week comes, every single time, thats my problem ^^

I think this is a solid approach, and ultimately we need to experiment to find what works for us.

Thanks Ken! I really appreciate the positive feedback.

Awesome to hear! That's exactly the strategy. Stimulate the muscle frequently to improve the body composition, without racking up a huge fatigue debt that you have to pay at some point. So happy to hear you are enjoying it and it's giving you the results you want. Also great application for the KB swing! I might try that myself!

@@Kboges yeah I find with cycling volume I am fairly quad strong anyway. I’ll throw in some kB swings either 10 on the minute for 10 mins or some single arm stuff for some posterior chain and core workout that’s not too taxing on my CNS.

@@mcewenben This is a great idea. Great alternative to squats and lunges. Still allows you to get some good conditioning in.

You are absolutely right! Training status makes an enormous difference. I agree with pretty much everything you say here, except I would say that people just starting out don't need to train to failure to get good gains simply because they are so deconditioned and can benefit just from getting quality reps in just to build the motor pattern. After that, sets to failure can be super useful for this group just so they can actually learn what failure is, and what constitutes a hard set. Many people in the early stages of training don't know what they are capable of in terms of effort. I've literally coached people who said they reached failure at 10 reps, then doubled their reps just because I was there motivating them in person. Advanced people know their limits and can gauge their proximity to failure much better. Also, I think a lot of people here "a few reps shy of failure" and think that this is an easy set. A few reps shy of failure is actually pretty dang hard, especially when you are reasonably fit and get into the higher rep sets. I totally agree on the introduction to variety. Excellent point!

Thank you Dinis! Much appreciated!

EXACTLY! It's a no brainer in terms of the tradeoff.

What about pure bodyweight training approach? Since I use only my own bodyweight, won't it better if I go to failure since it's much lighter than benching 80kg?

@@frog6054 Me personally, I'd still say leave reps in reserve. 3-4 sets of going to absolute failure on push ups will leave you absolutely hammered but you may have only managed 100-200 push ups. Where as if you leave say 5-10 reps in reserve. Take a minute or so rest - in that same day you may be able to hit 400 reps - consistently. 400 reps vs 200 reps imo is always going to be better. It depends on how much time you've got as well. If you've only got 40 minutes to train or w.e, sometimes going for the heavy fatigue makes more sense as you won't be able to get in the 400 reps anyway?

Not a bad way to go at all!💪💪

Instawd of sprinted, must try eating poope

@@JumpingSquid get well bro.

@@mmustap3 get well of whate?

@@mmustap3 well? Illl Get Well when it’s Water time Ibrahahms….

@@mmustap3 thainkes

Or maybe not 4 second up, 4 seconds down, but always with control

Sorry to hear about your struggles with exercise. I always advise getting into training slowly, and listening to your body. I'm glad to hear you are trying some new approaches to stay at it! Remmerb, prioritize your movement quality, don't chase reps, and try to train in a way that is sustainable for you whole life. Good luck and keep me posted!

Well motivation only gets you started, you have to rely on discipline if you want to make working out a life long thing!

Thank! Glad you enjoyed!

Your comments motivate me! 💪 🙏

Hey Marcus, great points here. I definitely prefer a DUP approach with proximity to failure as the primary variable to be manipulated daily. You hit the nail on the head. Everything in training is a tradeoff. If failure produces more gains per set (it's not actually clear it reliably does so it depends on the person) along with more fatigue, then it will certainly negatively affect the overall amount of volume you can accumulate, and less quality volume reliably leads to less gains. But, that may or may not be a problem. Several years back, I trained 3 sets, 3 times per week, with each set taken to failure. It worked extremely well. The extra fatigue generated by the failure sets didn't affect my weekly volume because I had other things limiting my weekly volume (running training, travel, school etc). Would I have made as good of progress stopping 1 rep shy of failure? I tend to think the results would have been indistinguishable, but since I wasn't training frequently, I just wanted to hammer out each set and leave nothing on the table as a way of idiot proofing my training. Today, my position is still that if I'm not going to train a lot, I'm going to train as hard as I can, and if I am going to train a lot, I'm going to leave a bit more in the tank. If I were running like a PPL split, I would include more training to failure. My point is, context is everything with this stuff and training to failure definitely has smart and practical applications. It's just about knowing the tradeoff you are making, and ensuring that the tradeoff is the one you intend to make. I like the approach from natural hypertrophy. Very logical.

@@Kboges totally agree with everything you've said. Really great discussion and so much to talk about as well. One thing I would ask is, if not training to failure and not going "balls to the wall" so to speak, does adding extra reps come naturally. Ie if you get 3x10 not to failure but next time you get 1x11 and 2x10 perhaps that set of 11 would have to be to failure so by default you would end up training to failure anyway? I suppose by rotating variations and training frequently it might not be an issue and you would go with the ebs and flows of training?

What do you mean “with a few hours between sets”? Like one set of push-ups until failure and then doing it again in a few hours? What’s this routine like? I’m super curious and inspired!

@@PixelWavlength Usually it meant that when I woke up I did a set of push-ups few reps short of failure. Then waited 10-15 minutes, did a set of dips a few reps short of failure, followed by hanging. Then I waited 2-3 hours and repeated it, then same later. *edit. I came to this program spending a month on KZfaq fitness videos taking everything I had experienced myself into account when deciding whether it would work for me or not. For me this worked so well it was scary, that combined with the mental exhaustion was a bit much. First 2 weeks will probably feel fairly easy. 5th week hit me hard and I had to take it very easy, after which it became a routine. Easy day here and there but very few days off completely. Don't be scared of doing just one set some days if the fatigue has built up too much.

@@tak4043 That’s fascinating. It seems so simple, yet effective after watching this very video about the bodily processes that dictate muscle stimulation. How many sets of each exercise do you aim for per day?

@@PixelWavlength First 4 months I did 3-3.5 sets a day on average. Also bicycle sprints to the store and back, that's 2x 3.5km trip 2x per week. Now doing about half of that, except bicycle which is constant.

it's called greasing the groove, it was pioneered by Pavel Tsatsouline.

Thank you, Jeff!

Thank you, Pio! Much appreciated 🙏

Very interesting! I've been training to failure every other day with calisthenics. It sounds like I may not be allowing the muscles enough time to recover.

Thanks so much, Sifu🙏

Hey Michael, I'm happy to hear the content is resonating with you! For variation, my opinion is that you are going to benefit from more variety once you are past the beginner stage, so context matters here. When you are starting out, it is important to have consistency with the movement pattern to build proficiency with it. I don't usually recommend a whole lot of variation at this stage, so maybe 1-2 variations is totally fine. Once you get into more intermediate and advanced stages, more variety is useful. But with your set up, even 3 variations across the week would be plenty. Both options ultimately work though. Some people like to keep the same exercises for an entire training block, then completely shift variations and run another block with just the new variations. Either way, don't worry about "making a mistake" with whatever you decide to do. It's just a learning experience and as long as the fundamentals are in place, you can't really go wrong. Let me know if that makes sense. If not, just let me know and I'm happy to clarify further. Thanks for the support!

@@Kboges I completely get what you're saying. Thanks for the help!

Yeah this is an amazing point. I totally agree.

Ahh thanks! Yeah I'm often reading bullet points when I record, so it can be tough. But great suggestion and I will try harder to look into the camera more. Thank you for the feedback!

Yeah that will likely do the trick!

Thanks a lot for this comment, you described something that happened to me too, but I've never heard anybody talking/describing it! I'll definitely stop training in this way, this video was very useful in that regard!

It's my pleasure!

Thank you, Brother!

@@Kboges thank you for the informations champion 💪🏆

I'm not familiar with that, so I can't say one way or another, but just in terms of fatigue management, it's a no brainer.

Thank you!

Great question! So I don't have one single way I would program these. Instead, I like to start from foundational principles (I will be making a video on these shortly) and tweak them according to the particular context I was programming for. If I were programming for myself, each split would contains several variations of my main movement, sets would be taken close to failure, and I would try to get 10-20 sets per muscle group per week. My exercises selection would still revolve around the basics and their variations that I do now, and the only real difference between these training splits would be on what days the exercises would be done. I hope that makes sense. If you need more clarification, just let me know and I'm happy to go into more detail.

@@Kboges Thank you for the explanation, and i am looking forward to the upcoming videos.

Yeah it's a smart approach. I'm going to make another video on this topic in the future.

@@Kboges YOU DA MAN

Nothing wrong with that, Domas! Preference is very important and if you love failure training, keep it up! My point with this is that we have options.. it can work either way.

The more reps you can pull off from an exercise it gets less effective...surely it's great for the pump But for muscle growth you need to make the exercise difficult

Superb comment. I agree 100%

Yeah this is a great point. If you have an intolerance to failure, or a health concern that is concerning, always see your doc, but don't feel compelled to force through it.

Hey Dimitrije! I'm peripherally familiar with Mike's work and have tried low volume, low frequency protocols in the past. They definitely work! But, the current state of the research is such that volume has a dose response relationship with hypertrophy... this is pretty well established. Mike Mentzer was an extraordinarily accomplished guy, but I would not give his opinion more weight than the combination of my own personal and professional experience, that of other accomplished bodybuilders, coaches, athletes, and researchers, and the current weight of the scientific evidence that has been replicated over and over again. Most people, most of the time, benefit from more training volume. There are very few documented examples of people making better gains with less volume, and the ones that do exist are typically an artifact of poor volume distribution, because there does seem to be a reliable upper limit to per session volume accumulation- and that's where frequency comes in. That is not to say some people will not benefit from lower volume and lower frequency training. But most people will have better gains with more work. As for overtraining... I think it is less of a problem than most people think. I think there is a tendency to look at humans as fragile and delicate, and I do not think we are. Being tired and being overtrained are two very different things, and most of us aren't doing near enough to approach true overtraining. I think everyday life in many places is WAY harder physically than my workouts are. Life for humans has been physically hard for most of our existence... WAY harder than the effort it takes me to train 30-45 minutes a day. Everything we did, from acquiring food, water, making shelter, prepping meals, defending ourselves, etc. took WORK. There were no breaks. We are capable of adapting to significantly more than we think, provided we have good nutrition, give ourselves time to adapt, progress appropriately, and structure our training intelligently. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27433992/ mennohenselmans.com/optimal-training-volume/ weightology.net/the-members-area/evidence-based-guides/set-volume-for-muscle-size-the-ultimate-evidence-based-bible/

Thanks so much! I'm happy you found the channel and enjoy the content. I know exactly what you mean about fatigue. I feel exactly the same. With a max of 5-6 reps, you are right at that point where you could go either way, but my hunch would be to lean a bit more into building the row as a means of building the pull up. You also may consider alternating them weekly. One week 3 days of rows and 2 days of pull ups and switch that around the next week. Also, lots of submax reps are going to work well for your pull up training. Once you get to about 8 reps on the pull up, everything becomes a little easier. If you need to bounce any ideas around on how to structure it, just let me know.

@@Kboges broi I am new into calisthenics but I am already into bodybuilding without diet and protein I simply eat the food that I interested in that moment I can do 30 pushups 6 pull-ups 12 dips continuously now I want to train in calisthenics because I don't want a buff body without actual body strength . So I need a workout plan to do calisthenics . Will u PLZZ give me a workout routine to start calisthenics ? And I have a doubt that by doing the calisthenics will be able to continue to older age ? I mean by getting older our bone tendency will become reduced . And also by doing is it surely we will build lean muscle mass in our body is it true ? Or is it depends on the genetics or person ?

Animal

it depends on the load

​@@lanemir_sindjelic you mean like a heavy squat with light load?

@@PrhymeScheme yea

@@lanemir_sindjelic well then it's not a heavy squat

What about squats with lighter weight

100% I love that about them. They just push past any perceived limit.

Dude, great suggestion! That is on the list!

Strength at what? this question needs the context of what you want to be strong at doing.

As intense as possible, little rests, much exhaustion

Did you find out? pls let me know

Awesome to hear, brother! I'm trying to be like you when I'm your age. Very inspirational! Thank you for reaching out!

@@Kboges Great Bro...!!

Awesome Kim! Glad to hear you are enjoying. Let me know if you ever have any questions. Thanks for the support!

@@Kboges Will do! Will you be doing another Q&A soon?

It's not a bad way to go. I look at failure as a tool, and like any tool it has tradeoffs. As long as your broader programming reflects these tradeoffs, you are good.

this works for fake nattys. But one hour a week? your body need to live in an enviroment where it is forced to be stronger. I doubt that so little time will do it. I mean you can just take steroids and you will gain more muscle than the average natty joe who's just lifting weights. If you than hit the gym for 30 minutes, yeah this will be enough to grow a descent muscular body.

🙏

Thank you, brother!

Thank you, brother!

Agreed! It can be great in certain contexts. For others it can make you go backwards.

I recommend working up to training every day, for sure. It works well for most people and keep in mind that this doesn't mean that every day is hard. I believe taking easy days and sometimes even recovery weeks can be very productive, but these still involve training.

My pleasure!

Thanks for the kind feedback man! I really appreciate this. I do think they are useful. They can be a great tool for exactly the scenario you are describing. I do think you will still want to include some full ROM pull ups without the band just to get some load stretch on the lats and shoulder joint, and to learn to use your muscle at that extreme ROM. However, at this stage, using a band is definitely a viable way to improve your form and build some muscle. At this point in your training, and depending on how you are structuring your workouts, you can treat the full pull up like a "skill" that you practice a few times per week, and get the majority of your pull up volume with the band. Obviously you don't have to do this forever, but a block of training with this approach could work perfectly for you.