[chaddukes]

Of course, once the book comes you'll want to follow its guidelines. In the mean time you might need to get used to the idea of not always going to failure.

When I was in the Army, which was my introduction to fitness, everything was done to failure. But, the army cared mostly about your endurance and your ability to push past pain. When I started lifting while in the service I did exactly what you're doing. Body part splits, pyramid sets and reps, and training everything to failure. I was 20-22 years old and I never got stronger....not much anyway. I could work for days. But, I was no bigger and no stronger.

Now, I'm 34 years old. I'm in a near constant calorie deficit. I don't have the energy or testosterone that I had when I was 20 years old. And despite this I've gained lots of strength and some size. Its because I've stopped going to failure all the time....sometimes....but not often. And I've done big lifts with lower volume in a particular workout, but training more frequently.

I'm not a trainer so I can't really throw out a routine for you to follow. But, you can check out the training logs section and you can see what a lot of folks are doing that is being successful. If your goal is to get bigger and strong you could learn a huge amount just by reading the logs inthe Oly/Strongman/PL Training Logs.

The link to LostDog's training log is right here!