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Originally Posted by melibsmile
I think on some machines, I underestimated my abilities significantly and so started at a weight that was way too low. Every week I would be at 6 reps and increase the weight the next time, only to hit 6 reps again. I think I am only now, after almost 3 months, finding the correct weights on a couple of those leg machines.
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This is so typical of the way most of us start out, me included. I started off by picking a weight, finding out I could do it, and subconsciously thinking "whew, I'll make it to the end." Failure sure didn't come easy then, if at all. These days I do it in reverse. If I'm going to up a weight, I up it a LOT. If I can still move it while keeping my form right - no cheats or leaning - I continue on until I can't. If I can't even make it through one rep, I lower the weight a little, and try again.
I recently did the same thing with a friend of mine. Seventy now, she began LC at my urging nearly a year go, as a diabetic. She lost weight, her diabetes began to ebb, and then she stalled. I suggested that in order to get her tissue more insulin sensitive, she needed to build muscle - so that the insulin, low though it was on LC, would have someplace to go. With two artificial hips, she felt she couldn't do it. I brought her to her gym, and showed her that she could. There she ran into a misogynist male trainer who put her on Little Old Lady 2-pound barbells, etc. so nothing much happened after several months. No surprise since she was still using the same weights.
I told her about SB, but she was afraid to try it - "Oh, all that heavy weight; I can't do it." I promised her my secret LC cheesecake recipe if she came to my gym and let me show her SB, so she agreed.
Long story short/er: she discovered she COULD do it (not for 10 reps of course, but definitely for 3), could embrace failure and handle
much heavier weights, could build real muscle (at 70!), could lose more inches -- and now her diabetes is all but gone. I'm so proud of her, and think of her as
my inspiration.
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My natural tendency is to want to skip true failure, but that seems to be the key to progress. So I have to really make it my mission for each and every machine. In some cases that has involved boosting a weight by 20 pounds from one week to the next, because I notice that I am not exerting myself much at the current weight.
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Absolutely!
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I think the key for me seems to be not always waiting until I can do a perfect 6 reps before upping the weight. Sometimes I am surprised that I can do 4 reps after increasing the weight by 5 or 10 pounds, even if I was only doing 5 reps at the previous weight. I think that may be better--continually raising the bar so your body has to keep up, and not waiting for max reps before progressing.
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This is exactly the process of my own thinking about it, and yep, it works. Mind you, the looks I get from the typical male gym rat is hilarious -- what is this crazy old lady doing, staying on a machine for only 3 minutes before moving on? -- but before I quit for the winter I
also caught the sideline looks at the weights I was moving (oh so slowly) and the size and hardness of my biceps, triceps, etc.
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How long did it take you before you went to 1x per week?
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About six months from when I began - but only a month after I realized I needed to embrace failure and up my weights. Don't know if it would have happened at that time anyway, even if I hadn't changed my attitude, but I like to think it might have sped the timeframe up a little.
Lisa