ExRx.net

An exercise like curls is something you can do to failure, as it's not very taxing. For a 60 year old beginner, I would say one set is all you need. Something like the squat is very taxing, should rarely be done to failure, and you should do multiple sets as it should be a focal point for a workout. The specifics of the work out will depend a lot on your goals.

You're right, I did miss your meaning. I understand now.

My main concern is to avoid injury as I have a very long healing time, and my experience with weights that are close to my 1RM is not good (maybe due to poor technique, but I have to live with my own clumsiness). However, I will carefully try to raise the resistance/weight and reduce # of repeats (My first change is going to be the chin-ups, which I do with assistance now, and I can lower the # of reps and get rid of the assistance). If all goes well I will later consult with the instructor in my gym about the # of exercises per muscle group.

You gave me a lot to think about, and I will probably continue the dialog at some later time. Maybe the most important tip was the comment about college vs. kindergarten, and I should spend less mental effort on these advanced issues.

Your advice is well appreciated. Thanks a lot.

The "positive failure" issue is another confusing matter for me. For example, should I do chin-ups to failure (right now I don't, but I see some sources who say that's the best way).

Haha! My comparison was between college and graduate school! Yeah, that may have been the most important thing I said. If you focus on body weight work for a while, then lifting a barbell to near a 1RM won't even be a question!

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Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.--Francis Chan

I don't think you should. The single joint isolation exercises should be done like that, just because it's not very taxing, and you really only need to do one set of each here and there. If you are doing general fitness, with general strength, being lean, and having good solid muscle tone as secondaries, you might do 3 full body workouts a week. Like maybe Monday Wednesday Friday. Maybe you do a squat the first day, a Romanian deadlift the second, a front squat the 3rd, and a conventional deadlift the 4th day. Then you repeat. So you have a lower body exercise each day, but it's at least 4 days before you hit the same muscles again, you can still deadlift without doing so often that it burns you it. Something like that should be good for someone with a slower recovery. Same thing with the other exercises. Maybe you do flat bench, incline bench, chest dip, overhead press, the same way as the lower body stuff. Then for back maybe bent over row (overhand), underhand chins, underhand T-bar row, neutral grip chins.

You can also pick a lift to focus on if you want to work on getting your poundages up on that lift.

A 5X5 where you ramp the weight up is good for strength. You might start with an easy warm up to get the blood flowing before moving into the actual 5 sets. The first one is still like a warm up set, the second is a more challenging warm up. The third one is kind of a borderline work set. The fourth is challenging, you can get 5, but you don't have more than 2 reps left in the tank. The last set is hard, you might only do 3 or 4 reps, stopping before failure. You might pick some lifts to do that with.

That should at least give you some ideas.

It surely does.

The thing is, 5X5 should be done at about 80-85% of 1RM, right? that's what I make of the "one rep max calculator" in this very site (sorry, I'm not allowed to include links) . There are two issues for me here, the first is wether the table holds for all ages - judging by my own experience I doubt that it does as my 5RM is lower than that, but maybe it's just me, not my age. That's an example of tha data I'm looking for as stated in my first post on this thread, and it's important as I try to avoid trial and error here, because an error might have undesired consequences (plus a long healing time...). The second issue is that whatever precent of my 1RM they are, the resistance I need for 5 reps, if I want to feel I am really working, are exerting too much strain on my joints (pushing only, there seems to be no such problem with pulling), so I tend to do 10-12 reps with lower weights, even at the price of not getting to the optimal training for strength or hypertrophy.

Having said that, I think I will stick to the advice I got some days ago, which will also make Nike happy, meaning stop blabbering and and just do it. Pull ups, here I come.

Let's see if we can tally this up.

Doc mentions and article by me and is a member of my site. So you, who obviously does not agree with the article, or me personally, or you don't like the site, whatever, figured you'd just blow his advise out of the water by calling my site a "cult" and a support group.

That's all you've got? You don't like something so it's a cult? I've only posted here a few times and I haven't read everything, but you can bet that this particular site has it's own "culture" and that there are a number of "veterans", that help define that culture. This makes it a 'community' not a cult.

I don't take kindly to your comments at all. Don't worry, I will not post here anymore so you do not have to feel threatened. Last thing I need is to deal with yet another blowhard. By the way, it's easier when people don't have to read between the lines. So the next time you want to insult someone or some group, why don't you say it outright like a man? Putting strike-throughs on words is just about the most passive aggressive, weakest stuff I can imagine.

I don't know how long you've bee saying this crap but it's pretty sad. Everything I do, in terms of the forum, is AGAINST a "follower" environment. If you had really read and payed attention, you'd know this. As far as a "support group", you bet it is. We support each other. That's the purpose of a forum. I'm not begging anyone to come to GUS but I for damned sure won't take that kind of "veiled" attack lightly. I'd of taken it better if you'd said it out in the open. Then at least I could approach you with mutual respect. As it is, I have to approach you like this (read between the lines).

My apologies to everyone for hijacking the thread. You will hear no more of it and I trust the admin would not expect me to let that slide without at least one comment. I would have tried to help in this thread but I see there is no point. Good luck, on your training, everyone.

This cracked me up. Who does that...strikethroughs lol...



Ofcourse. Why else do we have these social outlets?

Josh, 5x5 is usually done with about 80% of 1RM, where maybe you can do 1x5 at 85%. Jungledoc mentioned work capacity earlier. If your work capacity is low, then your 5x5 will be lower, maybe 75%. It doesn't really matter though. You do what you can do and make gradual improvements anyway.

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Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.~Hippocrates
Strength is the adaptation that leads to all other adaptations that you really care about - Charles Staley
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Thanks TimD

Boy Erik you really misread this. It was a jab at Doc, who by the way has a sense of humour and is a bit self effacing. It’s human tendency to be biased to most recently acquired knowledge. I would rather not go down a road of logical arguments with you as I’m certain you would clean my clock.
FWIW, I have nothing against your site or advice. Seriously, I know 1/10 of what you learned last week. I’m a babe in this and will likely learn much from reading more from you or your sidekick.

Doc has admitted to revamping his thoughts based on what he is learning. I think he’s too new in the process for him to actually anecdotally support it. But, I have no reason to think he won’t be on board. That does not take away from the idea (my opinion) that it may not be the best advice for everyone. I’m stating my opinion.

You are hyper sensitive or oblivious to sarcasm. Feel free to post here of course. Short of coming to my house, keyboard passion will never “threaten” me.

could you be a bigger kiss up?

Strike thrus are recently added here. They are a great tool for sarcasm.

Man, I have been nothing but supportive of you, simmer down.

I did not know about them being a new feature. The passive-aggressive comment cracked me up.

Oscar, I know you've been supportive of me, but you've made this GUS-cult reference in Doc's journal as well - and I didn't like it but I laughed it off and even tried to dissuade you from thinking along those lines.

I didn't even realize you had made that reference again in this thread till earlier today and for anyone else reading this, they wouldn't know you're being sarcastic in this context - and that is why I responded.

There are 3 places I like visiting and have journals on: GUS (naturally), here (ExRx) and SBD. I don't like GUS being mis-represented or spoken ill of and like I said: for anyone else reading this your sarcasm or context would not be picked up.

_Wolf_

I think pretty much everybody here knows that Oscar is the resident grouch, er, troll.

We keep him around for his enthusiasm and the way he scares other trolls (and spammers) away.

Now, now, no need to be like that. Not everyone agrees.


Quite so, indeed I would not.


That's no way to end a rant.

You can do straight sets like that, but I think you would be better off ramping up. Your 4th set might be 80 to 85%, while your last one might be as high as 90, in which case you might only do 3 reps. Set 3 would be like 70 to 75%. set 2 around 65%, set one probably50 to 60%. Then prior to that get loosened up with 10 or 12 reps at 45% or so. When you do straight sets, you have to have some light phases with submaximal weights. I like ramping for you because it's easy, you can progress in a linear fashion as beginners should, and it is easier to recover from.