I talked to a guywho use to lift in the 80's( Nice guy) he said to try this...

No matter what your doing, find out what you can lift ..

20 times/reps
then 4 times/reps (most you can lift 4 times)
then 4 times/reps (like above)
then 10 times/reps (of something you can only do ten times)
then 10 times/reps (of something you can only do ten times)

This works very well...As used something similar when he was BB

:gay:

seems like a waste of time.

call Arnold Schwartzenager...he came up with it i beleive

Regardless of who came up with it...its rediculous advice to give to the OP.

:wtf: This is a waste of time and energy better used doing something productive.

What is it, exactly, about all that that sets you guys off so much?

Is it low reps followed by high reps? Or is the sense that it is all done to failure, basically two heavy max sets followed by two lighter max sets? Is it that it was advised to a beginner? Is it because you feel it would be better to use all the same rep ranges? Or that a person would burn out doing 4 rep maxes all the time (true)? Any other reasons?

I'd really like to know :)

For me, there are 2 things mainly that I do not like. One, doing 4 rep maxes all the time will eventually lead to burnout and two, recommending this to a beginner because often (not all the time) a beginner does not have enough knowledge about what their body can handle in order to grow or respond. I think a beginner following this advice could more rapidly burn themselves out and be totally discouraged with lifting in general.

Gotcha. I agree. That's what I thought you'd say.

I personally wouldn't find the exact setup very useful but for the right person similar things can be very useful. Especially for the more advanced given some change in parameters. A piece of advise, though, is only as good as it's relevance to the person you're giving it too.

agreed with widdoes...just seems really advanced to have a newb doing it.

plus a lot of work switching plates that many times for one exercise...for me...loading the bar...pushing/pulling it has worked really good...and i'll stick with that till it doesn't.