Hi All
Did my first full week of my program last week and it went went great.
Lifted today and really pushed myself. I am doing 4 sets of one exercise with 1 min between sets and then after the 4th set going immediately to one set of another exercise for the same muscles.

So today I did triceps pushdowns, sets of 12-10-10-8 and then immediately a set of 12 skullcrushers. However the weight on the final set was too heavy and after 6 reps I had to stop. Should I take a break and continue to hammer out the 12, or should I lower the weight, start from scratch and do 12 reps of the lower weight?

The same thing happened to me on the bench press: I planned a set of 8 and failed at 5. I did try to estimate weights I could handle and am very religious about keeping proper form. Not trying to push a lot of metal for my ego. In fact the weights are so light as to be embarrassing.

Thanks for any advice.

Hi All
Did my first full week of my program last week and it went went great.
Lifted today and really pushed myself. I am doing 4 sets of one exercise with 1 min between sets and then after the 4th set going immediately to one set of another exercise for the same muscles.

So today I did triceps pushdowns, sets of 12-10-10-8 and then immediately a set of 12 skullcrushers. However the weight on the final set was too heavy and after 6 reps I had to stop. Should I take a break and continue to hammer out the 12, or should I lower the weight, start from scratch and do 12 reps of the lower weight?

The same thing happened to me on the bench press: I planned a set of 8 and failed at 5. I did try to estimate weights I could handle and am very religious about keeping proper form. Not trying to push a lot of metal for my ego. In fact the weights are so light as to be embarrassing.

Thanks for any advice.

it sounds like you estimated a little high for that last set... I've done that type of training before where you don't get any rest between the last two sets and you do need to go lighter than you normally would when you do that... either drop the weight or add some rest before that set ;)

if you find yourself in the situation that you did today, do a drop set... once you've failed at the higher weight quickly grab the next lower weight and finish the set... don't start over, just finish... so if you were doing scullcrushers and started with a 40 lb bar (just an example weight) and could only do six reps, quickly grab the 30 lb bar and keep going until you hit 12 TOTAL, six with the 40 lb bar and six with the 30 lb bar... you could continue doing drop sets like this for your last set until you've worked up to doing 40 lbs for all 12, OR you could drop to 30 lbs for a week or two and then try to push for the 40 lbs ;) :gl: