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I'm looking ahead tot he fall and bulking again. I seemd to have plateaued at training to failure. My volume is low and I use a slower negative an my reps, as I've found this has worked well. It seems changing exercises in the past has not done too much overall, only for traps really. I'm thinking of doin a 5x5 routine. Any comments on a strength training routine to gain more this fall and winter?
Thats very abnormal that changing your exercises did nothing or very little. Thats all I will say for now.
that is funny that changing exercises had no effect on you,i've heard many people say the 5x5 worked really well for them. one thing to try also is shortening your rest intervals between sets.
you could also try pumping out top range partials once you fail with full reps
Personally I think this...
1) You dont need to change exercises IF you change rep ranges, number of sets, rep tempo, amount of rest between sets, and the amount of weight used.
2) I think if you are going to stick to a certain rep range or constantly "go heavy" or "go light" then you need to change your exercises.
I dont think its always at an advantage to change your exercises. For me personally I try to change all my exercises every 2-3 weeks UNLESS I am making spectacular gains in strength OR if I decide to change up tempo, reps, amount of sets, etc... Its all in how you feel and what you find works, I have had long periods of times(12+ months) that I continued to do the same exercises with continuous gains in the amount of weight and or reps I could do. But then on the flip side there have been times that I have changed every exercise every week. You can make gains off of both it just depends on how you go about it. What I am getting at is EXPERIMENT. I never go into the gym with a set plan of weight/reps/exercises. I know that on Monday I will do a compound push movement as my first exercise and a compound pull movement as my second exercise, then finish up my workout with some lower-back and abdominal work. I do the same thing on Thursdays but the exercises will be completely different. Then on my third lifting day of the week I will hit a compound movement for legs and throw in some calves and extra hamstring work. But that is just mainly a skeleton plan of the type of movement but not the specific movement or rep/weight scheme. I can give some past examples of my routines if you would like.