FT Questions....

[Scott Stevenson]

I'm in my 4 week of FT and i still don't 100% get the pumping sets very well.

MR's and loading i have no doubts anymore. First and second week were a learning phase with MR's, frequency, etc, but now everything is working fine. Problem is, i still feel i'm not doing the pump sets right.

I'm not really sure what weight to pick. I have tried with a weight that i can do 20-25 reps and i do 25, but in the end it didn't felt hard enough, the first 15 reps are very very easy. I have tried with a weight that i can do 15-20 and then i push to do 22-25, and that was much better, better pump and all, but on the other end i get more tired and i don't think that's the purpose of the pump sets.

So, yeh, that's it. Basically i'm not sure if i'm supposed to go balls out and give a very hard 25 reps or just lighter/softer 25. This happen specially on bis and tris, because the direct work is so little that i kind feel the need to go harder.

On that subject, my right forearm is telling me to not go hard on pump sets. I'm getting some pain from all the rows i do.

I have read, probably in this thread, by Dr. Scott, that pump sets are not widow makers so... probably i should go easier?

Liftweights has given you a very good answer.

Couple thoughts:

-Get the forearm checked out. Don't train injured and don't train if you're creating an injury.

-For your pump sets, You could try slowing your reps down to about ½ or ⅔ of your normal tempo, but keep the reps the same. Find a weight so that you end up doing something like this:

-1st 10 reps - pretty easy, finding the groove of the exercises, spreading the load throughout the targeted muscle.

-Next 5 reps - becoming pretty difficult....

Next 3-5 reps - you're struggling to keep the rep tempo and and are tempted to ttake a break between reps, but don't do that. Keep going with that smooth, mechanical perfect tempo until you hit that rep simply isn't going to go without engaging some other muscles, adding some extra body English, etc.

At that point, try to get ~5 partial or ½ reps at one end of the range of motion (whatever feels right for the exercise and is safe, and continue until you're losing connection with the muscle group (as described above).

If possible, do a slow controlled negative to put to weight down.

Go here to about 1:35 and you'll see me doing something similar to this with a preacher biceps curl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl...P0JvQ#t=95



-S