How to know when to stop a set.

Reading this post from Coach, I decided that it might be helpful to clarify some points on how hard to push while working, when to terminate your set, and how to know if you're over-training. 

"No brain, no gain" does not mean you can expect to make gains without pain or discomfort. Pushing yourself requires that you fight through discomfort. The key here is that while making gains usually entails some amount of pain or discomfort, you are not guaranteed to make gains simply because you're experiencing pain or discomfort from training. You need some way to tell whether your discomfort is productive. This is where Foundation comes in. Foundation provides programming so that you can be certain that the discomfort you feel while working out is productive. If you're following the programming correctly, the chances that you're over-training are very low. 

This does not mean you should ignore pain. It's important to learn to distinguish between the discomfort of hard work, and the pain of a developing injury. When you work hard, your muscles become fatigued. Most people will experience this as a dull 'burning' sensation in the muscle belly. This is the kind of pain that you need to fight through. If you feel pain that is sharp and localized, especially if it's in the tendons or near the joints, that's a sign that something is wrong, and you need to look into it carefully to determine if it's safe to proceed. When stretching, similar advice applies. Heavy stretching should feel similar to light stretching, only more intense. Sharp, localized pain is a sign that something is not right. 

So, addressing the topic at hand: how do you know when to stop? The simple answer is that you should only stop when your body fails - not your mind. "No grinding reps" doesn't mean you shouldn't fight. If you're doing ABH and you notice that your arch is dropping and you're getting tired: you don't stop, you fix your form and keep going. If you're almost done with pushups and you're starting to slow down: you grit your teeth, pick up the pace, and press on. If you're doing HBR, and you're sweating like crazy and your abs feel like they're on fire and it feels like every nerve in your body is telling you to stop and rest: you keep pushing. If you're in a bent-arm chin-hang, holding nothing back, fighting with every ounce of strength you have to keep your chin above the bar, and yet your arms refuse to listen to your mental commands; you gaze on in abject horror as the bar slowly rises above your chin: then you can honestly say that you've failed the set. If you stop before the point where you're no longer physically capable of performing the exercise correctly, you've missed out on an opportunity to get stronger.

Ultimately, fighting through discomfort is a skill you learn by doing, not from an essay. So while hopefully this essay will help to clarify what you're going for, the best thing you can do is practice. Keep trying to fight harder. Find or recruit people in your area to work out with, so they can keep you honest. Attend a seminar. Most importantly, keep pushing yourself to do more. 

Spot on!

The Foundation series - Just add suffering.

The doctor prescribes less forum posting and more sets and reps.

Hmm, I remember coach saying that the second your tempo becomes really slow/form breaks you should stop the set so you don't overload the CNS.

And while on the subject...I think that I may have regressed a bit with my progress (or alternatively haven't progressed as expected) , perhaps because I worked 5 times a week 

if I press with my finger on my inner elbow I can feel it more than if I press on other areas. 

Do you think it might be pushing too much??

Also each time I do a 'seal' stretch I can feel the abs kinda sore, how does 'overpushing' work? 

Does it affect the body as a whole or each muscle group separately ?

Any advice?

Joshua Slocum said:

Reading this post from Coach, I decided that it might be helpful to clarify some points on how hard to push while working, when to terminate your set, and how to know if you're over-training. 

 

"No brain, no gain" does not mean you can expect to make gains without pain or discomfort. Pushing yourself requires that you fight through discomfort. The key here is that while making gains usually entails some amount of pain or discomfort, you are not guaranteed to make gains simply because you're experiencing pain or discomfort from training. You need some way to tell whether your discomfort is productive. This is where Foundation comes in. Foundation provides programming so that you can be certain that the discomfort you feel while working out is productive. If you're following the programming correctly, the chances that you're over-training are very low. 

 

This does not mean you should ignore pain. It's important to learn to distinguish between the discomfort of hard work, and the pain of a developing injury. When you work hard, your muscles become fatigued. Most people will experience this as a dull 'burning' sensation in the muscle belly. This is the kind of pain that you need to fight through. If you feel pain that is sharp and localized, especially if it's in the tendons or near the joints, that's a sign that something is wrong, and you need to look into it carefully to determine if it's safe to proceed. When stretching, similar advice applies. Heavy stretching should feel similar to light stretching, only more intense. Sharp, localized pain is a sign that something is not right. 

 

So, addressing the topic at hand: how do you know when to stop? The simple answer is that you should only stop when your body fails - not your mind. "No grinding reps" doesn't mean you shouldn't fight. If you're doing ABH and you notice that your arch is dropping and you're getting tired: you don't stop, you fix your form and keep going. If you're almost done with pushups and you're starting to slow down: you grit your teeth, pick up the pace, and press on. If you're doing HBR, and you're sweating like crazy and your abs feel like they're on fire and it feels like every nerve in your body is telling you to stop and rest: you keep pushing. If you're in a bent-arm chin-hang, holding nothing back, fighting with every ounce of strength you have to keep your chin above the bar, and yet your arms refuse to listen to your mental commands; you gaze on in abject horror as the bar slowly rises above your chin: then you can honestly say that you've failed the set. If you stop before the point where you're no longer physically capable of performing the exercise correctly, you've missed out on an opportunity to get stronger.

 

 

Ultimately, fighting through discomfort is a skill you learn by doing, not from an essay. So while hopefully this essay will help to clarify what you're going for, the best thing you can do is practice. Keep trying to fight harder. Find or recruit people in your area to work out with, so they can keep you honest. Attend a seminar. Most importantly, keep pushing yourself to do more. 

SO SUBJECTIVE ! I Personally have walked on broken bone, don't be a pussy a bit of paiin builds character if nothing else Recognising th pain, then experiment. Try stretching probably dynamci then static(still experimenting)

Interesting fact I heard about fatigue:  apparently the signal that you have reached your limit comes from your brain, rather than your muscles.  They did some tests with lab rats and no matter how hard they exercised, they always had spare energy in their muscles.  It's some kind of built in failsafe mechanism.  So chances are yes, you can always push yourself a little bit harder than you think you can.

Just watch out for rhabdo.

EDit ain't finished. Then decide on what to do. This is TRAINING! not life or death! View it as such you can play. Don't shortchange youself though if there's a serious doubt you could have toughed with almost correct form you shuld have! Maybe works,not quantifiable.

If I push myself so hard today that I have a hard time recovering before next session should I go back from 4 days to 3 days

So where is the boundary between pushing past the mental stop and going to failure (that we we're told here number of times that we should avoid).

In your example with chin-up, when we get to the point when bar rises despite every effort put into holding position (already past the point of mind signalling to stop it) - isn't' that training to failure?

So many questions on what to do and how to train. 

The core of training athletically safe and strong is intuitive. If you cannot tell what is too much and what is too little, than you have to stop and take a look at yourself, not your training. You must know yourself before being able to push and become an athlete, you have to understand what your all about, then nothing can stop you and no questions or doubts arise after that, you just know. 

RJS said:

So many questions on what to do and how to train. 

 

The core of training athletically safe and strong is intuitive. If you cannot tell what is too much and what is too little, than you have to stop and take a look at yourself, not your training. You must know yourself before being able to push and become an athlete, you have to understand what your all about, then nothing can stop you and no questions or doubts arise after that, you just know. 

i have no like ammo but this. this and this. 

if you're weak under the hood, the rest of the car will follow suit. 

even switching from saying "oh God, this is so hard" to "endure, keep going, hold it" 

or whatever puts you in that place where even though you're body is starting to crumple, you're mind is not the one to give up first

VegVeg said:

Hmm, I remember coach saying that the second your tempo becomes really slow/form breaks you should stop the set so you don't overload the CNS.

 

 

 

 

And while on the subject...I think that I may have regressed a bit with my progress (or alternatively haven't progressed as expected) , perhaps because I worked 5 times a week 

 

if I press with my finger on my inner elbow I can feel it more than if I press on other areas. 

Do you think it might be pushing too much??

 

Also each time I do a 'seal' stretch I can feel the abs kinda sore, how does 'overpushing' work? 

Does it affect the body as a whole or each muscle group separately ?

 

 

Any advice?

Yes you are pushing too hard. If you push the elbow less you will have less pain

On a serious note most of us have tender spots all over the body. It is just part of being alive. The body generally heals the damage unless we do way too much...then you will get pain.

Great essay!

I think this is something that should be added to every GB GST course and stickied in the forums.

Mark Collins said:

Yes you are pushing too hard. If you push the elbow less you will have less pain

Ahh I see what you did there!

This is very encouraging to hear. Often when I finish a 4th/5th set, I don't have another good repetition in the tank. It's good to know I'm probably not pushing myself too hard.

agreed.

VegVeg said:

Hmm, I remember coach saying that the second your tempo becomes really slow/form breaks you should stop the set so you don't overload the CNS.

 

This is incorrect. You should stop when you're no longer capable of performing at the correct form/tempo. If you simply mess up and break form/tempo, you don't count the rep on which you made a mistake, but you should fix your form and keep going. 

Joshua Slocum said:

 

 

 

 

It is training to failure. There are a couple of key points I should expand on here: 

1. Training to failure can be a good method for busting through plateaus, but it's not something to do every set every day. 

2. If you're training to failure on every set, you've chosen a target volume for the exercise that's too high. 

3. You should be able to progress on most exercises without having to train to failure. On some sticking points (e.g. ABH, BACH), you may find that it's necessary, however. 

 

 

If by the time of the next session you feel you haven't fully recovered, then you need more rest. That might mean dropping down to 3 days, or dropping down a microcycle, or anything else you can think of to help your recovery. 

 

This is incorrect. You should stop when you're no longer capable of performing at the correct form/tempo. If you simply mess up and break form/tempo, you don't count the rep on which you made a mistake, but you should fix your form and keep going. 

 

Josh, thanks for making this grey area more clear for a noob like me. I am approaching the mastery stage of SLS/PE1 and in the latter sets, especially when the fatigue starts setting in, I don't always manage to stand up properly i.e. breaking form. Like VegVeg, I saw what Coach had said about stopping if form/tempo breaks to avoid CNS overload so I started ending the set once I broke form. 

Then I did wonder because I was thinking it was going to take me a lot longer to get mastery this way if I never pushed myself to failure.

Now I know what to do for tomorrow's training session! 

What if, instead of going to failure now and then, you take a quick breather in the middle of your set (a few seconds rest) and then finish your last reps/seconds with good form. Which way would be more beneficial?

At the seminar we worked hard and not once did I hear Coach tell some one to rest as it looked too hard. Try doing ABR and talking to Coach at the same time!

I am now at a point with Foundation that the workout is harder than any other strength program I have done with weights. That includes years of training to failure with HIT. I push as hard as possible trying to keep good form. I defintely started to push harder after the seminar and have progressed quicker as a result. By the time I warm up with previous exercises and do all my current F1 and H1 exercises a workout can take around an hour. I expect by the end of F4 the workouts will be really intense. Then rings and movement to add in. It will be an awesome workout.

I'm almost Afraid of the workout once rings and movement are released I'm working pretty dam hard as it is just on foundation and h1

Well I think that still there should be a little side note about working hard, I was working hard ( cranking out all the reps/sets I was supposed to even if I fall, I'd take 5 sec rest and go on ) 5 times a week, and instead of getting super strong super fast I was kinda progressing slowly at the beginning and later on felt even like regressing .

So this whole "you think that you are working hard right now? No! Work harder!" might be too much for some people, I think that I have learned the slow way ( at least I didn't get injured ) that less is more with this much volume.

It kinda surprised me because I had great linear progression with weight lifting, and I never really felt any DOMS after my workouts on foundation, but it is time to try lowering the total volume.

Just a personal experience to even things out her

**(some may say I wasn't eating enough/sleeping enough, well I ate enough to gain a little bit of fat on my belly, had at least 2x gr proteins per kg of body weight and slept at least 8 hours a day)

You are confusing two distinct training variables.

Overall weekly exercise volume (which is highly dependent upon individual recovery) is a completely separate issue from how to maintain the correct intensity within a single set.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Really starting to encounter this with HBR. I hit a wall where I tell myself it's OK to stop even though I've not met the reps for that set. New year, new attitude. Going to work harder from now on.

Murray Truelove said:

Really starting to encounter this with HBR. I hit a wall where I tell myself it's OK to stop even though I've not met the reps for that set. New year, new attitude. Going to work harder from now on.

Yes,HBR are gruesome, I always just sit around and collect my thoughts for a couple of minutes before beginning the sets, in anticipation of the pain. When I master these, I'll pop a bottle of champagne...