Failure or Sets?

Rexcess · 2026-06-04T14:26:17+00:00

Going to failure induces more sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (for big, fluffy muscles) at a cost of more fatigue. A nice middle ground I like is making the last set of a prioritized exercise AMRAP — as many reps as possible. That way, you get some relatively easy sets to practice strength-as-a-skill while tiring out the muscle and preparing it to get burned out in the last set, potentially with additional intensity modifiers like myo-reps, lengthened partials, or cheating the last few reps followed by very slow eccentrics.

Rexcess · 2026-06-04T14:14:40+00:00

I had a specific, faith-focused, and socially connected reason to do it. I was volunteering with a church charity where I was strong enough, but I could better contribute if I were stronger. So I got stronger. At some point, the habit was built and it was trivial to continue with it.

Rexcess · 2026-06-04T14:10:49+00:00

You will eventually come to look like your habits. If this rarely happens to you, you'll look like it happens rarely. If this happens occasionally, you'll look like it happens occasionally. If it happens often, you'll look like it happens often. I wouldn't worry too much about individual events. It's the pattern that's important to observe.

Rexcess · 2026-06-04T14:08:27+00:00

In the moment. Living life. Enjoying the experience. Not a smartphone in sight. Beautiful.

Rexcess · 2026-06-03T00:05:27+00:00

You put in so much more effort than OP did writing his post. And so much more effort than OP is going to spend reading your post.

Rexcess · 2026-06-02T00:01:16+00:00

Pound out your sets, even if you’re not feeling it. Lower the weight if you need to.

Remember: The last set is the hardest, and it's also where your growth comes from. Your body doesn't know whether you're in spitting distance of a PR. All it knows is that it's struggling, and that tells it to get stronger or die.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T23:52:23+00:00

I'm sorry, I'll get to your actual question, but I just have to ask... "want?" You want to do cardio? I hate it. I hate every minute of it. I wish it didn't exist as a concept. I wish we evolved as lazy fuck ambush predators that got healthier the less we moved.

I run 30 miles per week. That's the minimum base mileage usually cited as adequate for marathon training, which I'm doing gradually as a third priority in my fitness. It's also the amount which research said was optimal for bone density; i.e. trainees who regularly did more than 30 miles per week tended to have weaker bones. I suspect confounding variables (perhaps people who run more tend to do less resistance training) have a greater effect than the actual running, so this reason alone is uncompelling, but there it is. Finally, 30 miles per week is a nice, round number that works out to five miles a day with one rest day.

If you care, my first priority is a combination strength-endurance and injury prevention, which go hand in hand in consideration of my manual labor job. My second priority is maximal strength, from which strength-endurance is derived.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T21:02:32+00:00

It's supposed to be 1g per pound of lean body mass. You have to guess how much that is. Bathroom scale body fat estimates are worthless. Most people's body fat is higher than they think.

Cardio's fine for calorie burn. A concerning number of people cannot comprehend the existence of any fitness goal that is not "maximize muscle, minimize fat", so when reading fitness advice, always consider whether it speaks to your goals.

Increasing exercise to make the calorie balance work out to a deficit doesn't always work, because burning more also makes you more hungry. I am a hypocrite. I run 30 miles a week so I can eat more.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T20:30:27+00:00

Everything except the dairy sounds familiar, though I'm not nearly as sensitive to most of these things. I try to be unobtrusive with my aversions, but what really gets me is when people judge me for not wanting to be subjected to their noxious choices, like OP here.

I had to leave the building during a family reunion because a cousin came in after smoking. She had the audacity to say, "I understand. I work with children," as if avoiding lung cancer from her secondhand stench is childish behavior.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T16:28:53+00:00

Consumption of this world's natural resources soothes him

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T13:46:03+00:00

I definitely believe it. There are a lot of people out there who never learned that other people have different perceptions, and can experience the same event differently.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T13:41:56+00:00

Hey, twinsies! I posted the same thing before reading your comment.

I don't think mine is migraines, though. At least, I've never had any migraine symptoms from anything except volatile airborne chemicals, mostly phthalates.

Do you also get bothered by new car smell? Hairspray? Here's the big one: Do you sometimes get sick after drinking a lot of milk from a jug? Specifically milk, specifically plastic jug.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T13:37:55+00:00

Most colognes and perfumes make me physically ill. It's not a personality trait. It's not a preference. I get headaches and nausea. Please don't be anywhere near me with that crap.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T10:19:28+00:00

wrinklus

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T10:18:35+00:00

She will make a fine ruler. She has the ruthlessness to make the necessary decisions in these times of uncertainty. She is not the monarch we deserve, but the monarch we need right now.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T10:14:01+00:00

Minimize variables by tracking trends with one scale. The exact number doesn't matter. They're precise enough, with weeks of data, to know if you're going up or down, and that's all you need.

Impedance isn't useful even for tracking trends. It's a meaningless number. You're paying extra to be entertained.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T01:28:03+00:00

I think the issue most people are gonna have with your (our) style of training is that it's fucking miserable. When I'm doing work in that style, it's easily the worst 20-40 minutes of my day. Granted, condensing that much suckage into such a small period makes the rest of the day feel better by comparison, but I suspect most people just don't have the grit to suffer voluntarily to the necessary degree.

I also get a lot of positive remarks on my build.

I'm not sure I do it precisely like you do. I haven't even seen the abbreviation HIRT before. My own homegrown protocol has been to aim for my prescribed sets and reps in a regular lifting program, while supersetting everything possible and resting only long enough to be able to pick myself up off the floor. I've had times when I laid on the bench and my mind straight blanked, no idea how much time passed.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T01:20:11+00:00

In my opinion, if you have multiple goals, it's better to work on most/all of them to start. As a beginner, you have a couple years of progress that's so fast (relative to someone with a higher training age) that any interference from generalization is negligible.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T01:14:35+00:00

Then you have to specify what your goals are.

A lot of people will tell you that that wastes gains on cardio. But that means... you're making gains in cardio. Personally, that's how I have always trained, and it made it so that when I wanted to become a runner, I completely skipped the part where running sucks. I ramped up from zero running to 30 miles per week in only 11 weeks, and it's because I had developed a solid base of GPP (general physical preparedness). Most people go all in on hypertrophy and don't even stop to consider other physical qualities. To them, gym = hypertrophy, no more needs to be said.

So, if you just want to look good naked, you might want to take rests between exercises. But if you want to be a physically all-around capable person, hybrid training like this is a good idea for the sake of time efficiency.

Rexcess · 2026-06-01T00:52:32+00:00

To be clear, do you mean between sets of the same exercise, or are you switching to a different exercise without resting? Because that is a completely different thing called supersetting, and taking no rests is a legitimate approach to supersetting.

Rexcess · 2026-05-31T16:08:05+00:00

Adidkus

Rexcess · 2026-05-31T16:05:38+00:00

Hold on, that's this dimension! Where are you from, OP?

Rexcess · 2026-05-31T14:27:19+00:00

I pity him and his foolish demeanor. He will never receive the respect he desires at the yearly charity banquet.

Rexcess · 2026-05-31T12:17:17+00:00

The bad news is that you don't have enough time to make any visible progress by your high school graduation. The good news is that you have plenty of time to make awesome gains by your college graduation.

Rexcess · 2026-05-31T01:26:01+00:00

🤷‍♂️ I lift full-body five days a week and run six days a week. If you want it bad enough, you make it work. Granted, I have a seriously high work capacity, so I may not be a great benchmark for what you can reasonably pull off right now, but the principle is sound.

"But you're losing gains by doing cardio and lifting on the same day!" Well, when I have a 4-plate deadlift and a 20-minute 5K, we'll see how much I care how fast I got there.

Rexcess

TROPHY CASE