[DORKtoDIVA]

What are the different kinds of failure, and what kind do you work to?

When I first started with weight training, I would stop when I felt like "oh, man, I'm DONE." But then I read about pushing yourself and I gave that a try. Working to failure sounded dangerous to me, but it was ok. Say I was bench pressing, I'd get to the point of "I'm done" and then my inner drill sargeant would come out and force a couple more reps out of me. When I hit failure, I can't lift the barbell all the way, but it doesn't mean I would suddenly drop the thing on my chest (that's what I was afraid of). I would just rack it and not count the failed rep in my chart.

After I tried that only once, I definitely saw results for both bench press and military press. The first time I worked to failure on the bench press, I did only 9 reps to failure, then 6 in my second set, and I didn't do a third set. The next time, I did 12 reps for the first set, and the 12th wasn't even failure for me! Then 9 and then 7. That was just really great to have observable progress. I bet next time I'll nail 12 for each set, then I can increase the weight!

So, how far do you push yourself, and do you see more results when you do?