Coach Mark Ottobre shows how to break training plateaus using mechanical drop sets, progressive bench angles, and push-up finishers. The key is pushing past traditional failure with intensifiers, not just performing them mechanically. He demonstrates adjusting loads, managing rest intervals, and reading when a trainee is ready to go harder.
I take Trainer K to failure and beyond. There's a lot of talk on the internet about what is failure. Hi, my name is Mark Ottobre, and I've worked with world champions, Commonwealth Games gold medalists, and everyone in between, creating thousands of head-turning results. This clip is taken from our Elite Results Bootcamp, which had trainers from all over the country fly in to learn our methods and techniques of how we get the results we do. Make sure you stay to the end for all the tips. Drop sets are simply— he's got 15s, and then we go from 15s to 12s to 10s, and he does as many reps as he can, and we get true proximity to failure. He's not really warm, so I'll keep that in consideration, but we're going to take him from a less advantageous position to the most advantageous position mechanically. So he's going to start in this position, I'm going to lower the bench as we go, and we're going to go into push-ups. So we've probably got 4 rounds of this, to be fair. Just control down. 4, 3, two, one. Yeah, it's good. I'm just checking his form. Form check. He's good. He knows how to train. Eight. Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. All right, bring it down. Go. I'm going to give you more because this was too light. That's all right. Go, go. I know how to speed it up. It's fine. 1. Hold there, hold there for a sec. 3, 2, 1, power! Hey, slow it down, slow it down, slow it down. Sit up. We're nowhere near failure, are we? Yeah, put those away, put this away, put those away. Grab the 20s, come on, grab the 20s quickly, quickly. Switch it over. Come on, you're warm now. 20s. 20s is like 10, it's fine. Go. 8 reps, 8 reps. 20s is like 10. Come on, bro. Al will do it. 1. There you go. 8. Slow, slow, slow. Sit them up. Grab the 22s. Sit up. Grab 22s. Come on, that's the first one was nothing, right? 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go! Come on, it's easy now. Stick line. Use your lats if you have them. Come on. One more. Control. Heels down, heels down, heels down. and power. Good. Okay, come on, you've got this. Don't let me touch it, don't let me touch it. Slow. 4, 3, 2, 1. Sit up. Right, Good. You can get lower than that. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Go Go, go. I'll help you get in position. Keep tension, keep tension, keep tension. Good. Abs on, abs on, abs on. Good. So we talk about proximity to failure. We're actually going to get failure. Yeah. Come on, go up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up. They're watching you. Come on. Someone filming. This is for the gram. Come on, come on. You're losing followers as we speak. Let's go, let's go beyond. Let's go beyond our 10 second egg. 10 second egg. We're going to 10 second eggs. Come on, come on, come on, come on. It's going to be three if you take this much rest. Push, push, push, push, and up with me. And last one. Don't break position, don't break position. Hold, hold. Push up, push up, push up, push up, push up, push up. Come on, come on. Again, again, again, again. Come on, try, try, try, try, try, try. Good, good, good, good, good, good. Failure. Let's give him a round of applause. And if we were in a session, it would be 2 minutes rest, and I wouldn't do the push-ups. I'd probably save the push-ups to the last set and go to real failure, those last couple sets, because he's not going to be able to repeat effort after that for a little while. Now, the thing where trainers go wrong using intensifiers is they don't understand the principles behind them. They go, okay, mechanical drop sets. I'm going to do a perfect mechanical drop set. I'm going to do it on this angle, this angle, then this angle, and I'm going to train like a Care Bear on Valium. Imagine a Care Bear taking Valium, right? It's not going to give you the results. There has to be understanding the principle. The principle is take them to failure or take them beyond failure. So I'm using the tools and the ways to get them beyond that. So I will change things. So like with Kay, for example, I'm reading his body as he did it. He picked up the 15s. And he's like, yeah, I'll do the 15s. He was nowhere near failure with the 15s. I was like, all right, we're going to be here all day. So we did 2 sets. It's like, all right, he's warm now, stop fucking around. Grab the 20s. And then I knew when we dropped on the decline, it was too light. We needed to go heavier. So that's why I said go 22s, because I knew that would get him for when we do the push-ups. And again, I'm not like, oh, we have to do the push-ups, has to be 10 reps. I don't care about how many reps he does. It's not about how many reps, it's about getting him to failure. You're getting into failure safely. Do you have questions about your workout? Leave it in the comments below and make sure you subscribe for more great tips on your fitness and training goals.
