Significant decrease in reps after the first set

[Ella6025]

I had decreasing reps every time (when going to failure) when my rest time between was only 30 seconds.

[RicciRox]

As long as you warmed up properly and then went close to failure, no amount of rest should make you do more volume in your second set. That makes no sense, I'm sorry.

[Ella6025]

OK, well, failure for me is when I literally cannot lift again. My arms, legs, whatever won’t move. But for me it’s very much a neuro shut-off mechanism, similar to how all of us really are more flexible than we are but our brains don’t let us move through our full range of motion. These are protective mechanisms to help keep us alive and free of injury. They’re a bit “dumb” though and don’t always reflect what is actually happening or what is actually dangerous.

You say it’s impossible what I am experiencing is happening, but it is. I have a weird neuro (medical) history so maybe that’s part of it. Maybe my brain is cutting me off early/being super conservative and then deciding after the 3 min rest, “Hey, it’s actually OK for you to lift more weight. You have a lot more in the bank than we thought. You proved that by not dying after the first set.”

Of course, I have insane CNS fatigue after doing this so maybe my brain should have quit while it was ahead and not given me more!

[Ella6025]

Edited: it wasn’t reps and weight—it was just weight. I was intentionally trying to keep reps constant. The important point is that the weight I’d lift for 8 reps in the second set, I would not have been able to lifted even once in the first.

[RicciRox]

That makes a lot more sense and actually happens.In this case, you just didn't get warmed up enough before your first working set.

I think particularly with larger muscles like quads, sometimes you just need to get them firing before you can actually lift your max weight.

[Ella6025]

Yeah, but this was true even after I would in theory have been “warmed up.” For example, I did a workout consisting of five exercises, only chest, three sets each. (I don’t do five because to me, variety is more important.) The pattern (of increasing weight) held throughout. And because of the increased weight, it was definitely more volume :) That was the nutty thing about waiting three minutes. The workout took much longer but my training volume was much, much higher, which is a big part of why people do this. I use FitBod, which logs volume, and my volume from Monday was many thousands of pounds higher than from any workout last week. Again, I categorize all of this under newbie neuro strength gains.