You will get the best results if you lift to failure every time on every single exercise.

Hi Gatsby
I have to agree with Nelie. Lifting to failure is what taxes the muscle and stimulates growth. If the muscle isn't working to failure , it has no reason to 'adapt' and can just stay where it is (ie: no growth). Constantly challenging the muscle with differant excesises,adding more weight and training each set to failure gives it a reason to change/grow.

Good luck!!
L2L

I'm with Nelie -- I lift to failure on every exercise. But for me that doesn't necessarily mean on every set of every exercise. For example, let's say I start out with 15# DBs for curls and do 15 to warm up. I'm not at failure, but I stop, rest and grab the 20s. I'll do 12-15 of those, maybe failure, maybe not. Then grab 25s and go to to failure. Drop back to 20s, go to failure. And then maybe burn out with the 15s. So I'm going to failure on DB curls, but not on every set. If that makes any sense.

I think (and others may disagree) that it's a good stategy to lift to failure on every exercise, every time. If you're doing high reps, low weight, you can still go to failure -- it just takes longer. High weight, low reps -- well, you fail fast!

lurker here... and relative newbie to lifting..

feel silly asking, but what does this term mean? Does it entail doing reps until you just can't do one more?

Hiya Dana -- you're exactly right -- lifting to muscle failure means lifting the weight until it's physically impossible to do one more rep. It seemed so paradoxical to me when I first heard the term: we were striving for "failure"? But yeah, with weights, failure means success. (it ranks up there with the second great paradox: you have to eat to lose weight).

Dana, basically yes. What I do is have a number of reps I am aiming for and use a weight that I think will give me failure on the last rep. I usually aim for somewhere between 8 and 12 reps. If I can't do 8, then I use a lighter weight and if I can do 15 (which is where I stop) then I use a heavier weight on the next set.

Thank you Nelie and Meg, for clearing that up. Makes much more sense now!

Personally, I'd change it more often. Every 4-6 weeks is what I usually tell people. Otherwise your muscles adapt and it gets boring. Even making small changes will affect HOW the muscles are forced to work, so change is good. For example, switch between straight hammer curls and curls with a twist on the way up, and you hit your biceps from a slightly different angle as well as your forearms.

Plenty of people on my gym walk around with notepads, even long-time lifters. If you are dedicated to increasing the weights in your workouts, it's real hard to remember everything.

Mel

There are quite a few people at my gym that walk around with a notebook, don't feel self concious about it. I personally don't because in general I'm not good at writing things down so I try to remember how much weight I used and such.

I guess I'll chime in on the variety thing.
I do keep a notebook and write down everything. Lately I have also been logging it on here as well.
I work out 5 days a week and work differant body parts each day. I also do differant excersises each tme I do each bodypart and I am constantly trying to make gains and adjusting my wieghts so there is no way I could possibly remember all that.
When I plan my workout for the day I look to see what I did last time I trained that body part and try to 'mix it up' to make sure that I am hitting the muscle from every angle possible. It also helps me see my progress (or lack of progress....) as far as how much I am lifting on that particular excersise.
For example:
Last night I did back. I looked in my notebook over my last couple back workouts and see I'm 'due' to hit the Hammer Strength machines, since I haven't done those excersises for a few back workouts. I also took note that the last time I did the Hammer Strength Lowe Rowe (for one example) I did 140# for my heaviest set and that I did 13 reps on my own. I decided (based on my written record) that it was time to attempt to step up the weight. I ultimatley did 160# on my heavy sets and got out 10+ solid reps on my own and had 'help' in the way of light assistance from my training partner to crank out 3 or so more. I have logged all this so when I go to do my back again next week, I will probably do BB's, DB's, T-Bar's, cable rowes, nautilus or whatever since I did Hammer Strength yesterday. I will thumb through my book to see when was the last time I did this excersise and how much weight I did. For me it is valuable information. It also, as has been stated by others, keeps my workouts fresh and exciting.
Tonight I, or my training partner, will say "Ok, it's 'Arm Night' what er we doin'?" and we will plan our arm workout with a variety of excersises (that we haven't done recently) to target the biceps and triceps. Probably 3 excersises for each and 4 sets of each excersises. A lot to remember.

Anyway, I won't belabor it anymore, but I find it to be quite a valuable tool and when I stop planning and logging, that seems (at least for me) to be when I fall into "maintainence mode" where I am just showing up and doin' the same stuff and not really progressing forward anymore...

OK 2 lil' cents. Take it or leave it
XOXO
L2L

Lots of people walk around my gym with notebooks, clipboards or cards. Like it has been said, the only real thing to pay attention to is the form and doing it.

Wrestled a dishwasher out of the apartment today and I can tell the gym is paying off, no huffing, puffing or groaning. I am in much better shape.

Off to catch some more Olympics, volleyball, my sport is on.

Liza

I WANT to do this, but what do you do if you don't have a spotter handy? I can't use the "trainers" at the gym. They're good for helping you do an exercise properly, but not much else. You see, the gym hired nothing but tiiiiiiny little teenage girls for the summer. Seriously tiny. Most weigh LESS than 110lbs. I saw several of them cleaning up an area and they were struggling vigorously with the 25lbs dumbbells. I lift much more than that on some exercises. I don't have a friend to go with me and I'm not comfortable approaching any of the other women at the gym as most there touch ONLY the machines and won't come near a free weight unless it's to use it as a paper weight. Lifting to failure is great until you get stuck under a 45lb barbell!

If you can't get a spotter to help you with barbell exercises, i'd suggest using dumbbells. I use dumbbells because I figure that I can at least drop them to the side if something "bad" happens rather than it landing on me.