Well there are many many different theories of workout. 1 guy says workout to negative failure once every 7 days. Another guy says do massive sets 5 days a week. And of course everything in between. Guess what. Everyone is right. You should be varrying up your routine to trick your muscles. Personally I used a three routing split

1 - power lifting routing. 5sets - 5 reps to possitive failure and only doing power exercises. This builds raw power (compound exercises only please). No limb or minor area workouts. In reality you should be hurting after this small and short routine. I would do this for 6 weeks as it stresses the body heavily. (Ironic thing is I hate squats and barely ever do them. Being 6'5 puts tonnes of strain on my lower back so I never enjoyed them). I used different exercises to represent different days (light, medium and heavy)

monday - Legs to failure, chest medium workout, back light workout
wednesday - legs light, chest heavy, back medium
Friday - legs medium, chest light, back heavy

2 - Bodybuilding routing - 1 bodypart 1 day a week 5 days. This worked best for ME in building muscle size and strenght. I would do this routine 8 weeks since it give bodypart lots of rest and isn't a whole lot of stress. I would perfom this group of exercises to possitive failure.

3 - cross training - whole body routine 3 or 4 days a week to physical exhuastion - no failure. I would try to do this 8 weeks but generally did it for 6 weeks because it is so damn boring and I barely see any results in muscle...fat loss yes but no muscle.

I would place 1 week off in between each. This uses three different threories of muscle growth very well...Another one I tried is similar to number one. 1 workout every 5 days. to absolute an utter failure. This one did hurt but put too much strain on my body. I didn't see much for results and just didn't enjoy the workout.

As for my 1rm...it is around 800 now...I used to do slightly over 1000pnds on a 45degree leg press but have lost some size due to cycling...

Cheers...just remember there is no one great routine and if anyone ever says so they don't understand human physiology...the body is far more complex than that. I also found 1rm to be a very important measuring stick. But I was also a power freak and the weight lifted meant as much to me as the workout itself...(graphs, charts that kind of thing). There 'used' to be a chart around that you could look up you workout by reps. For example if you benched 170 12 times to failure you could reference this and it would tell you your approx 1rm...I will have to see if I can find it.