I've been doing BFL about a week now, but I can't seem to find the right starting weight so that I hit my 10 on time. If I start with a low, low weight...well, it feels TOO low, but if I start above that, I end up hitting that high point a set or two early. So, having said that, I need to ask this.....

That first set....I know Bill P. says that it should be the intensity of carrying a bag of groceries, right?? So it's a "warm-up" set, meant to just gently warm the muscles?? It always feels so easy when I do that... but some of the weights at my gym go up in 5lb increments, and for some exercises that's almost too much for me (for upper body). My lower body is strong, but the upper isn't near as tough. I sometimes find myself getting to that 9 to 9.5 before I'm ready, so I end up doing another set with the same weight because I know I'll hit my 10 too early with the next weight up.

Any way to know for sure? Is that first set or two just "getting things warmed up and going" or what?

Also... and this is weird: I wasn't sweating much today. The exercises were hard, REAL hard during the high points, but I wasn't really sweating. What's up with that? I drink tons of water, so I'm not dehydrated. On leg day I do sweat more.

Thanks in advance for the help.

I had the same problem today when I tried it. I know for instance with my shoulder muscles, I just don't have all that much strength yet. So I started at 10 pounds. At first it seemed like a 3, but by the time the set was over it felt more like a 7 rather than a 5. My weight machine will only increase by 10 pounds at a time so by the time I got to the third set I was doing 30 pounds and that felt like a 9 fourth set was a 10 (still at 30 pounds) and fifth set lowered to 20 was nearly impossible to do, the sixth set lowered to 8 and doing bent over raises felt like an 11, I couldn't even do it with proper form.

My shoulders are still really weak.

Some of my other excercises I felt like I started way too low like my back part. I started with a wide grip pulldown. I haven't done a lot of these, so I thought I would be weak on them and started at only 10 pounds. (it was only a 3) increased to 20 that was a 4, increased to 30 that was a 5, increased to 40 that was about a 7. At this point you are supposed to lower the weight, but I didn't, instead I took it to 50 pounds and hit about an 8. The reverse grip pulldown I can do at higher weight so it was at 80, but even that was only about a 9.

So I guess we just have to work at it until we find what level to start and finish at. The idea is that we should be almost unable to do some of them, (and that happened on my chest excercise, had to quit early).

I guess it just requires fine tuning. I wouldn't worry about keeping it at the same weight for some reps, it is still more intense because your muscles are more tired.

My shoulders are practically non-existant! So I understand. Shoot, I used only 6lbs to start with! I think with most gyms the weights go up by 5lb increments, and women usually can't make that big of a jump on upper body exercises. Would be nice if the gym owners would also order dumbells that go up by 2.5lbs instead of the usual 5.

I also find that on some things I have a hard time hitting a 10 with good form. In other words, I have to keep it pretty easy (military presses, for example) to actually hit the 10... but I'm finding that even though the weight feels DOGGONE heavy (heavy enough to hurt my wrists---CTS sufferer), I don't sweat!! At least not much. Though i do get a good sweat on leg day but my lower body is much stronger than my upper body.

The wide grip pull-downs you mentioned...the machine I use goes up by 10lbs as well, so it gets tough pretty quick. And EVEN worse is the calf raise machine! That one goes up in 75lb increments!! It's rediculous! I'm starting to feel that, while the ladies locker area is nice, they REALLY don't cater much to women judging by the machines! They do have a women's gym...and I could use that, but it's a LOT farther away from me, and time right now is precious.

Thanks for sharing with me. I know you're right, too.. it's going to take a couple of weeks or so to actually get it down-pat to where I can go in there and get with the program full-force (no guesswork).

Thank you.

Standing calf raises you can do with no weights or just holding dumbbells. I normally just do mine on the edge of my ab machine. It has a "leg" of the machine that is about 3 inches or so off the floor, and I just use that to put my toes on, hanging my heels off on the floor.

I haven't started to do them with weights yet, but I haven't yet done a lower body workout his way yet. I guess I will figure it out.

I sweated like crazy this morning. That was NOT an easy workout, but it felt like it was doing me some good.

I hear ya! I guess I'll start doing calf raises like that myself, because those 75lb jumps are ROUGH.

I wonder also if I'm doing the movements TOO slow? I used the cadence he suggests in the book, but only to find the correct speed. I think I'm on target, though, because I get done almost right on the money. But it was weird to me.... I was lifting pretty heavily, but not really sweating. TOO weird.

Again, I think the first month may just be discovering HOW to do the program right, so I guess I can live with that. I just want results----like yesterday! I also think that by the time I figure it out, I'll have to up my weights.

One day I'll actually get it right, I think.