FT Questions....

[Scott Stevenson]

Hey guys just a quick question about loading sets for day 1.

Started on tier 1 this week, day 1 was on Saturday. My rotation went:

Smith Bulgarian Splits Squats/ Close stance horizontal leg press/ DB stiff leg dead lift.

My question is, should I be hitting concentric failure on all 3 of those sets since I'm on doing 1 set of each? That's what I did, but not sure if that was correct. Since none of them are truly "isolation exercises" should I only be failing on the last exercise (DB SLDL)?

Thanks!

Dealer's choice to fail on isolation exercises.

Fail only on the last set of your compound exercise (which could be just 1 set if you're doing Tier I.

So, right out of the gait, you're not using isolation vs. compound exercises. That's an OK twist on the program to use those exercises, but if you CAN do other exercises, I would.

A main goal idea of FT is to limit CNS taxation. Taking all three of those to failure isn't serving that. (You might be able to recover, of course, as you could have 3 sets to failure doing Tier II or III.) However, failure on a knee extension is a world of difference from failure on a split squat.

You're also missing out on the pre-fatiguing quality that can be had with putting isolation exercises before compound exercises.

You'll have to commander two machines (or a rack) do do the split squats and the leg press, too, which can be tough on some days. (Isolation exercises sometimes need to be done on the fly if the gym is busy / someone snags your machine. It's much safer to do this if for instance you need to switch to a different ham curl - and use a higher rep range - than if you try to use a rack / machine like that.)

Anyhow... I could go on, but the real question I think is why you chose those exercises (right off the bat on your first run at the program).

-S