I’ll bet you’ve heard of training to failure. The always do more attitude is very popular in the strength and fitness communities. This style of training typically conjures images of Arnold Schwarzenegger and other classic bodybuilders. After doing a lot of repetitions, they fall on the floor with a loud grunt in dusty gyms. Nearly everyone associates this with good blue-collar work. This is how many people try to approach working out, but according to a new study published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, it's not the most effective method. Adding more weight, working harder, and supposedly exhausting the muscle to build it up is how many people try to approach working out, but according to a new study published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, it's not the most effective method.
Carelessly completing a series of repetitions in an unplanned exercise will not lead to the desired results. One set to failure is a good way to become stronger and increase muscle size, according to exercise science and sports science references.
What is Training to Failure?
When you are training to failure, you are lifting a weight until you can no longer produce enough force to move it. This means that you can no longer lift the weight using only your muscles, and you have to rely on momentum or a shorter range of motion to continue. Remember this as we continue because it will affect everything else we discuss today. Also, a lot of people misunderstand what it means to train until you fail.
The amount of muscle failure you experience is relative to the specific weight you are lifting. You cannot continue to lift this weight without taking a break, but you can remove some of the weight and continue. This is a common technique called drop sets.
For example, say you’re bench pressing 275 pounds. If you fail to lift the weight on the 8th rep, get up, take off a few 15-pound plates, lie back down, and continue trying.
This means that your muscles are not completely tired, but their ability to work is reduced for a period of time.
Training to Failure: The Newest Study (and What Older Studies Suggest)
More and more attention has been focused on training to failure over the last few years. Many studies have been performed in an attempt to discover a definite answer to the issue.
It's worth noting that studies on training to failure are difficult to conduct because they rely mostly on subjects reporting their training accurately. A paper published in 2017 showed that people tend to inaccurate judge how hard they are working during a workout.
In the study, the subjects were asked to choose a weight they believed to be close to the amount they could lift 10 times. Out of all 160 subjects, only 35 of them were able to reach failure at the 10-12 repetitions range. Everyone else did 13+ repetitions before reaching failure.
The Australian Institute of Sport's first paper on failure training discusses how frequently athletes fail in training and how to improve upon this. The study involved 26 male soccer and basketball players between the ages of 16 and 18. All of the participants had at least six months of strength training experience. They were split between two groups for the bench press test:
- Group 1 did four sets of 6 reps to failure.
- Group 2 did eight sets of 3 reps, but not to failure.
Both groups trained the bench press three times per week for six weeks. After the initial test, researchers found that the group that had failed the initial test had managed to gain up to 5% more power and strength than the group that had not failed.
A study from the University of Tsukuba in Japan has found that (3). The study found that metabolic stress had an effect on our hormones and muscle adaptations. They also showed how training in how to deal with failure can be beneficial. The subjects were asked to perform three exercises – lat pulldown, shoulder press, and bilateral knee extension. They split the twenty-six men into two groups:
- Group 1 performed 3 to 5 sets of 10 repetitions (to failure) on each exercise with a minute of rest between sets. Standard training protocol.
- Group 2 did the same amount of volume; only they took 30-second breaks in the middle of each set to dissipate some of the metabolic fatigue. Thanks to these brief rests, they didn’t reach failure.
The two groups completed the same number of repetitions and sets, but group 1 saw more significant gains in muscle, isometric strength, and 1-repetition maxes, as well as improved muscular endurance.
A paper from 2016 gave a definitive answer about failure training. The researchers suggested that failure training may not be necessary for beginners, but it may be beneficial for more advanced learners.
Use Feel and Judgement Wisely
If you're a lifter, you shouldn't just load a barbell haphazardly and do one set until you fall into exhaustion. There's no productive outcome to working yourself to the point of exhaustion, and it can be dangerous. Some methods of self-regulation still cause the same physiological changes. We’ll go through a few.
- Technical Max Sets Based Off Main Sets: Getting the weight correct will be by trial and error, but it is a more accurate method than using something on a rated scale. For this, you would do one set of max reps based on the weight that you used for your top set after your planned work sets are complete. Whether the day called for you to work up to a heavy set of 5 for the day, or you did straight sets of 5 reps at 80% of an actual 1 rep max makes little difference. With either, you are basing your set to failure off your level of readiness for that day.
- Rest-Pause Sets: This training approach was taken from bodybuilding first. I learned how it could also be modified and used for strength development from top powerlifting coach, Josh Bryant. If your goal is to use training to failure for muscle growth or increased strength capacity, it is a wiser, strategic method than doing reps until you crap out.
For this, you’d pick a lift and:
- Do one set 2-3 reps short of failure, using your judgment to determine when you feel as if you could only do 2-3 reps more if you tried.
- Stop and rest for 20 seconds
- Then do a set with the same weight 1-2 reps short of failure.
- Rest twenty seconds.
- Do one last set to failure.
This method is based on feeling and judging how hard something is, which can be inaccurate and arbitrary. In my experience, people are more likely to underestimate the first two sets of guidelines than to overestimate them. This will usually stop them from overdoing it too soon and help avoid any injuries that can come from training until you can't do any more.
If you get close to your point of failure with little rest in between, your body will respond in similar ways to if you had failed completely. After the final set where they work until they can't continue, the lifter will be both mentally and physically exhausted. They won’t be likely to push themselves to a point where they may injure themselves.
Build Muscle or Strength?
If you want to build muscle or strength, the methods I’ve described will work. The method you use to lift (either compound barbell or isolated dumbbell) is not as important as how effectively you use that method. It’s your choice based on your focus on training. We should discuss what movements should be ruled out.
We’ll look at a few different lifts and exercises, some of which are good for increasing strength, and others which are not so good for that but are still good for increasing muscle size. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it will give you some ideas of what to think about.
Strength
- A back squat would be at the top of my list for lifts to push to failure. With the risks of pushing a back squat to the max, the breakdown of technique is still easier to notice and feel. Because of this, you will end your set sooner than other lifts where the line between good and bad technique is harder to gauge. You will be less likely to move dangerously through the movement with too much fatigue when doing high rep sets. Most people with sense will stop squatting if they feel so bent over they can kiss their feet.
- The front squat is a better self-regulating option. The moment the primary postural muscles fatigue, mainly the thoracic extensors or mid-back, it becomes almost impossible to continue to do more repetitions. The bar would fall off the front of the shoulders before you would reach a point where you could get injured from doing too many reps.
- The bench press can also be used provided you have a spotter. After lifters are taught and become competent in a safe and reliable technique, they can detect any deviation from that technique and know it’s time to stop. As long as the shoulders stay locked in a safe position, though, with the support of the bench, you can continue to push until actual muscular failure.
Other exercises such as the deadlift and overhead press are not as good to train to failure. The main muscles in the back will become quickly fatigued when doing deadlifts, compared to the legs.
If you do your most tired reps while in this position, you will be more likely to get injured. Deadlifting to failure is not a good idea because it requires a lot of strength and positioning, and recruits a lot of muscles.
The overhead press has somewhat similar problems. If there is no bench to support the shoulder girdle and reduce the demands on the spine and trunk, the muscles supporting and aiding posture will tire too quickly. This could cause problems if the person pushing to failure.
Bodybuilding
It is just as important to figure out which exercises are most beneficial for bodybuilding when training to failure as it is for developing strength. The risk of doing sets to failure too often for bodybuilding training is overuse injuries.
Injuries sustained from bodybuilding are usually not very severe. You would probably develop annoying injuries due to the repeated damage from doing the same work over and over. Bodybuilding exercises that focus on specific areas or body parts are most effective for building muscle.
Bodybuilding training that involves doing more sets to failure may make joint or muscle problems worse. I avoid exercises that lead to overuse injuries, and focus on exercises that have proven to be beneficial, even if they don't always lead to overuse injuries.
Lower Body
I find hip thrusts to be the best lower-body exercises. The glutes and other muscles in the hips get stronger in a way that helps the spine stay healthy. By doing controlled flexion and extension of the hips while supported by the bench and ground, you can work hard without aggravating any one area or body part.
Other great exercises to try are Bulgarian split squats and belt squats. These exercises are great for working the legs while minimizing stress on the lower back.
Exercises that can cause joint pain when done too intensely include walking lunges, RDLs, and back extensions. If you're already doing a lot of leg exercises, adding walking lunges or RDLs to your routine could be too much strain on your knees or lower back.
Upper Body
You can use the bench press or overhead dumbbell pressing exercises to train with either of these methods. Dumbbells offer a greater range of motion than barbells, allowing for more natural movement of the shoulder muscles.
Very high rep-sets can be therapeutic for the shoulders. There are two low risk exercises, dumbell rows and lat pull-downs, that can be used to train methods that involve setting a goal and failing to achieve it.
Exercises like dips and skull crushers should be avoided because they can make the elbows worse.
Preconditions
Who this would and wouldn't be appropriate for in regards to choosing exercises for training to failure.
A beginner should not perform repetitions until failure. How to look at the development of training and long-term progression is confusing to many.
This assumption is incorrect because it does not take into account the fact that beginners should be using lower weights. You should practice the movement a lot, but you don't necessarily need to do more reps per set. You could instead:
- Keep the rep count moderate and increase the number or set each time you practice or the frequency you practice each week.
- With moderate rep sets, you can focus on the quality of movement for each rep rather than practicing poor patterns with high rep sets. The postural and assisting muscle groups lack the endurance to support technique.
- This plan also allows you to increase weight steadily, consistently, and progressively over time and for a much longer while putting off plateaus in progress.
If you keep pushing your volume, it will eventually set a higher ceiling for you to reach as you mature. An early intermediate lifter who consistently trains to failure and constantly tests their boundaries is setting themselves up for future injury.
