It seems every day someone comes along with a new and improved system of weight training scientifically designed to stimulate the muscle fibres unlike any other program ever could.
Don't give up!
First and foremost, it is imperative to understand that the body is capable of a lot more than we tend to give it credit for. Somewhere along the line in the past few years’ people have been screaming OVERTRAINING to the point of making me want to vomit. The body is capable of handling huge amounts of stress and it is true that it needs adequate time to recover. Past failure training is very simple and very self-explanatory and few people will ever do it because it hurts just too damn much. Sooner or later one of the four demons comes along and claims another victim who attempts to travel down the path of past failure training. It is not fun, it is uncomfortable, it causes pre-workout anxiety and fear, and it produces massive results.
The number one element that must be present in past failure training is 1000% maximal effort. No laughing and conversing during or between the sets. The other thing that is necessary is a training partner and a one that knows how to spot correctly! Sometimes I think I should offer a seminar on how to be a good spotter because every time I ask for one at the gym I invariably get a moron.
Taking over it
Past failure training demands that when you are doing a set, as you begin to go to failure, where you cannot complete a full range of motion on your own and you are at momentary failure, you training partner assists you in completing an additional number of repetitions with the same weight, say 6-8 before you are allowed to stop. At this point you are in total agony and are pumped beyond belief and whimpering like a little girl who lost her dolly, yet it is not over yet! Your partner immediately drops the weight down around 40% and you continue with the set until cannot get any more reps.
Your partner again assists you to get additional number of reps until you are fried. Then once again your partner drops the weight so you can continue your journey into no-mans land and once you begin to fail ha again assists you in getting additional reps. Then and only then is your set complete. You are in tremendous pain, you are nauseous and dizzy and you want to go home. You feel like you cannot go on, and this is only after 60 seconds of work, yet the workout has just begun.
Remember this is a rather different way of training and even for people that are used to training in an intense manner, it will be a shock to the system as there is intensity and then there is INTENSITY.
The basic principles of Beyond Failure training
- You will tend to need an hour or so to recover from the workout so that you can perform daily functions.
- You cannot train in this manner for more than 6 weeks if you are doing it properly.
- You can only train once a day for a maximum of 4 times per week.
- You can only spend a maximum of 60 minutes in the gym per session.
- It is extremely painful and you will tend to have anxiety before your workouts.
- You must keep all other physical activities to a bare minimum during your 6-week training cycle to ensure maximum recovery and energy available for the workouts.
I can guarantee after following these principles your muscles will jump to new levels of growth. Remember if you are going to be in Poland and need clarification on these training principles I am occasionally available to put people through my style of training so they can go home with the proper intensity and techniques.
