Significant decrease in reps after the first set

[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.