I can’t argue with you or with anyone really because how much my bench has suffered, but i have never read anything like that. I’ve read westside stuff, stuff on here, joe defranco, BFS, kelly baggetts stuff, critical bench.com, I can’t recall ever reading anything that suggested putting less than a full effort into a strength workout. In fact, I feel like I put less effort in sometimes than what some of those guys do.
Heck, westside maxes out in some variation every week. I do a 1 set to failure, sometimes not even doing more than 1 or 2 upper body lifts.
I think with all this workout advice and set and rep schemes and loading and deloading and what to do and what not to do… It all comes down to me having a poor diet. Im not gaining weight and not putting on any muscle. I get the feeling that I could go train with louie simmons or Joe Defranco themselves, and not get any stronger so long as I eat my 2000 calorie diet.
I need to make more of a commitment to my diet and I really believe there are a lot of workout programs out there that will work. Theres lots of strong people in this world, and even more workouts… but none of them will work if you aren’t doing the things necessary outside of the gym… ie: diet, sleep, gain weight, recovery, massage, whatever you gotta do.