van nothing special happens at failure you know this, youve said it before. but in reality, somethign does happen at failure, and its the opposite of special, its muscle damage and a buildup of lactic acid/other bad shit that interferes with muscle growth, decreases strength, etc.
whats the most important factor for hypertrophy? me and you both know its loa.d going to failure does nothing. higher reps,pumping the muscle can increase glycogen, etc.
dont get into great bodybuilders who trained pump style. those guys were on boat loads of drugs had great genetics and even still they may not have lifted heavy, but they had the ability to lift heavy when they wanted to. strong muscle=big muscle.
load=#1 importanmt factor.
2 important factor= frequency, diet,
and ofc ourse results are always much better on hormones
Yes load is the main factor. But like I said in another thread, whether going to failure is good or bad depends on the exercise. Today I did some triceps and was thinking of this. I know from experience that I get no training effect from pushdowns if I stop 2-3 reps from failure. It's just not taxing enough, muscularly or neurally. I don't get stronger. Stopping 2-3 reps shy of failure would be enough if de-trained but after 2-3 workouts I have to push harder. On the other hand, going to absolute failure on squats for example may kill all strength progression for weeks.
After a long training career you learn how hard you need to push to get to a certain level. One exercise harder, another not so hard. Going to failure is not
the trigger like Mentzer claimed, nothing special happens, but sometimes going to failure is advantageous, and sometimes going beyond that is as well.
Progressively increasing loads is important. Lots of people will argue this but no one
really believes it. Everyone keeps at least a little track of their training loads, even if they are "pumpers". You ask a pumper how their workout went and they may say, "great workout, today I squatted 350 for 30", for example. If load had no bearing why mention it?
Yes you can be a great bb training with relatively small loads. Drugs, drug response and muscle shape is all more important than training but we're talking training and the effect from training only, not whether drugs or training is more important. In this context load progression matters.
