Right on, I'm a high weight, low rep lifter myself. My reps look about like this 1x15 warm up, 1x10, 1x7, 3x3, max lift. Since I work out at home and don't have a partner I am unwilling to do a 1 rep max lift do to safety reasons. Spyro, heres my problem, on abs I was doing a decline bench situp routine with a 50 lb plate on my chest, I got to 80 situps and thats just getting redundant, so I switched to crunches and same thing, it require too many to be effective, do you have a solid ab workout routine that doesn't take so long and so many reps? After awhile I start to question the effectiveness of doing 80 reps. Thanks.

I do cardio at home but my lifting at the gym... Much easier to do failure sets that way

As far as ABs go, the ones that I have always concentrated on were...

Weighted Crunches
Weighted Sit-ups
Weighted incline Sit-ups

Just like every other part... ABs are done once a week...

Your problem is that you are using a plate on your chest... to avoid the very problem that you are having, IMO, the low pulley is the best aparatus to use since you can add enough weight to keep the reps under 12 per set. Every week, increase the weight from 5% to 15%.

Otherwise, you are going to have to increase the weight, in plates, on your chest... holding a stack of plates becomes pretty tough...

Mushroomhunting.net, right? Oh, sorry, my bad. Thought we were getting in shape for morrells. They're out now that we've had big rains in MT.

One more no-weight workout idea - a Navy seal video you can get on an Army surplus site like US Cavalry. This workout is tough but the video is kinda corny, so I watched it enough to learn and write down the workout. It is hard to believe calisthenics can work you so well.

For those of you who do not have access to a gym, try this: http://www.performbetter.com/SearchR...tegoryID_E_258

look for books and videos on body weight training. I have attended and presented at several strenght and conditioning conferences over the past 15 years. While I don't know this guy personally, he is one of the best, and most accurate, speakers on becoming stronger and more fit without the use of a gym.

For those of you who can get to a gym, ask the trainers if they are certified by either ACSM or NSCA. If they are, you will be in good hands If not, look further.
http://www.acsm.org/
http://www.nsca-lift.org/