Back in the 70's Mike Mentzer was THE High Intensity King. He would train, doing mostly isolation exercises via Nautilus, one...possibly two sets to FAILURE. Then, the owner of Nautilus, Arthur Jones would plot Mike's and another 70's bodybuilder, Casey Viator's progress, using 15 as a max rep number and 5 as the minimum.
This week, outside the Main Lift, or as I call them the Entree lift of the session, I would apply this old method to my accessory and supplemental exercises.
Trying to establish the weight has caused us to use TWO sets to failure that are way too rep high. This indicates that I've been sandbagging on these exercises.
Since there is little isolation possible with free weights, I've been using two sets to "completion" not necessarily failure.
For a reference, "Completion" is ONE rep past pain.
The serendipity of training this way is what it does to one's mind set. Pain is NOT failure. Pain is subjective. Your pain is NOT my pain. Where we find our breaking points are different and belong to only US.
I'm still messing around with stuff. Let's see how this works out.