Am I the only person who never barbell benches?
Not that I have anything against bench or doubt its greatness, but I have always avoided it because of the need for a spotter when going to failure. Only exercise that I will do that requires a spotter at failure is squats, but those have an easier bail out option.
Thinking to start a thread on this.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GO TO FAILURE TO MAKE GAINS.
In my experience, you actually make better gains when you don't. You leave more gas in your CNS meaning you can lift more weight for more reps across sets.
As soon as you push to failure (as in you give everything for that extra rep win or lose) you lose A LOT of strength for the next set. Where as if you stop 1 or 2 reps before that you'll retain most of your strength. Which means you'll be able to do more reps across your sets.
That's why I like to use the same weight across sets, with the aim of achieving a defined number of reps on the last set. So whether that's a 5x5, 8x8, 3x8 whatever... while your working hard on that first set it's only really the last few sets you might approach failure.
However that means working in 70-90% of your 1 rep max and a lot of people don't like that.
If you lift weights more than x3 I would suggest you don't train to failure often. As soon as I stopped going to failure so often, I stopped picking up injuries and actually made faster gains.
so much unsubstantiated shyt out there
