| For today’s Sunday with Sisson, I’m clarifying something from last week’s newsletter that people found confusing. And rightfully so, because it was a typo. I wrote that for my elevator pitch health plan a person should exercise three movements to failure three times a day, but what I meant was three times a WEEK. So let’s explain how this would actually work: pushups, pull-ups, squats, and hip hinges to failure three times a week. Push-ups can be push-ups, or they can be weighted push-ups. Or push-ups with a weighted vest on, or a toddler on your back. They can even be “pushes” in another direction—up or down. The point is to press a weight away from you. How I’d structure this for most people is to do push-ups one day (horizontal pressing), dips one day (downward vertical pressing), and overhead presses one day (overhead vertical pressing) for full coverage of all angles. Pull-ups can be pull-ups, or they can be assisted pull-ups (with a machine, your foot on a chair, or a resistance band looped over the bar and under your foot). They can be lat pulldowns. Or, like with the pressing, they can be pulls in any direction. You can do horizontal rows, body weight rows, bent over barbell rows, or even resistance band rows. In fact, I'd recommend you do pull-ups for one or two days and some kind of horizontal row for the other day. Squats can be plain-old bodyweight squats. They can be weighted barbell squats. They can be front squats, or goblet squats with a kettlebell, or squats with your child on your shoulders. They needn't even be squats. Lunges and step-ups and split squats also work. The point is to train knee flexion or knee "bending". Hip hinge is a common movement that most people don't train enough. It's hinging at the hips with your back straight and the load placed on your hips, butt, and hamstrings (the posterior chain) to lift something from the ground. The most popular exercise to train the hip hinge is the deadlift, but you can also do trap bar deadlifts, Romanian deadlifts, Nordic curls, and kettlebell swings. Deadlifts don't have to be heavy movements. You can use light weights. They don't have to be scary. Before you deadlift though, read this post to make sure you aren't making any of the most common mistakes. Okay, but what about "going to failure"? What does failure mean and what does it entail? - It might mean one all-out set of true failure. You'd do as many push-ups as you can in a single set. Go to true failure. Don't stop until your limbs no longer cooperate.
- It might mean a superset. You do one set close to failure, rest for 30 seconds, and do another set close to failure, rest for 30 seconds, and do another to true failure. Then you stop.
- It might mean Myo-reps. You do one set close to failure, rest for 7 breaths, do 3-5 reps, and repeat until you can no longer hit the same number of reps.
You do one of those "training to failure" methods for each movement three times a week. That's a total of 12 "training to failure" sets each week. What might that look like? - Monday: push-up, pull-up, squat, hip hinge, all to failure
- Wednesday: repeat
- Friday: repeat
That's it. You're done. Or you could do it like this: - Monday: push-up, hip hinge to failure
- Tuesday: pull-up, squat to failure
- Wednesday: push-up, hip hinge
- Thursday: pull-up, squat
- Friday: push-up, hip hinge
- Saturday: pull-up, squat
The possible permutations are almost endless. Your choice. Whatever works. The point is to push your body hard in an efficient manner. I hope that cleared things up. Let me know what your weekly exercise looks like in the comment section of New and Noteworthy. | 
