# Training to Failure!!!



## Hayesy (Aug 15, 2011)

Hello,

Just trying to brush up on my weekly gym routines, I have started to do drop set with my last sets being to failure some of you may already do this but not me, i normaly start heavy aim for between 6 - 8 rep then drop the weight a few times and then bang out 15 on my last set,

My Question is what exactly would you call 'Training to failure' it may sound stupid but i have been doing it so when i feel the burn i stop, i seen a guy doing the same as me his arm give away and boom his faced looked like a pizza, plus i train alone most days so i wouldn't have a spotter.

Also i never really hurt the next day even on heavy does that mean i am doing somthing wrong? Maybe my form isn't right?


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## Beats (Jun 9, 2011)

My idea of to failure would be lift till I couldnt squeeze another rep out also just ask someone to spot you most people will help you out if not F*ck them lol


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## bdcc (Aug 15, 2011)

Training to failure is usually MCF (momentary concentric failure) which means you physically cannot lift another rep. An example would be you perform a rep where you need a spotter to lift it otherwise you would pin it to your chest.

Form failure is stopping once your technique becomes inadequate.

You do not need to feel sore to signify that you are growing. Although soreness is indicative of muscle fibre remodelling (growth phase) it isn't necessary. You will find that more advanced trainees get sore less and less as their training age increases.


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## Breda (May 2, 2011)

for me once your form goes and you start bringing other muscles into the movement in order for you to lift the weight then thats failure


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## BIG BUCK (Mar 26, 2010)

I'd say you're stopping a few reps to early, my last 2 sets on everything are to failure, no possible way of doing another rep even if my life depended on it!


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## richgearguy (Jun 23, 2011)

For me, training to failure is when I'm unable to control the negative part of the movement, despite all effort, and the weight falls to the floor.

Edit: I should add that, for me, loss of form usually precedes failure. For example, when doing bicep curls I'll need to lean back to complete the positive part of the movement (loss of form), but I'm usually able to control the negative movement for a couple of reps before I reach failure.


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## Breda (May 2, 2011)

richgearguy said:


> For me, training to failure is when I'm unable to control the negative part of the movement, despite all effort, and the weight falls to the floor.
> 
> Edit: I should add that, for me, loss of form usually precedes failure. For example, when doing bicep curls I'll need to lean back to complete the positive part of the movement (loss of form), but I'm usually able to control the negative movement for a couple of reps before I reach failure.


If form has been lost and you need to use your back to assist in the movement then is that not failure... the bicep can no longer move the weight with out help therefore the bicep (target muscle) has failed

Dont get me wrong i know what you are saying, you havent taken the bicep to complete and utter failure because you can still controlled the negative

I think bdcc has hit the nail on the head really


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## dtlv (Jul 24, 2009)

There are several different things which can cause momentary muscular failure in an individual muscle - in the case of a really heavy one rep max or something like that it's simply that your ATP stores can't provide the immediate energy to fuel your muscle fibres for more than one consecutive lift... in the case of failure at 15 reps its that lactic acid has dropped the pH in your muscle cells, and this is interfering with the ability of the nerves to conduct signal, and that its too acidic for many of the enzymes that help release energy to work properly.

When it comes to failure in a lift, some people call failure the point at which they can't repeat another rep without having to bring in other muscles/change form slightly, for some people its when no matter which other muscles they bring in they can't execute a full ROM rep, and for some its not until the point where the muscle can hardly move the load more than a few inches or even less.

Personally, am not sure that going to those extremes of failure actually achieves anything more to make the muscle grow... it certainly increases the amount of muscle damage, but more muscle damage is not the same as stimualting a greater adaptation. Whatever, the important thing is that you make the muscle work hard and feel extreme effort, as without always trying to push past difficulty there is no significant stimulation for adaptation.


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## Hayesy (Aug 15, 2011)

Dtlv74 said:


> There are several different things which can cause momentary muscular failure in an individual muscle - in the case of a really heavy one rep max or something like that it's simply that your ATP stores can't provide the immediate energy to fuel your muscle fibres for more than one consecutive lift... in the case of failure at 15 reps its that lactic acid has dropped the pH in your muscle cells, and this is interfering with the ability of the nerves to conduct signal, and that its too acidic for many of the enzymes that help release energy to work properly.
> 
> When it comes to failure in a lift, some people call failure the point at which they can't repeat another rep without having to bring in other muscles/change form slightly, for some people its when no matter which other muscles they bring in they can't execute a full ROM rep, and for some its not until the point where the muscle can hardly move the load more than a few inches or even less.
> 
> Personally, am not sure that going to those extremes of failure actually achieves anything more to make the muscle grow... it certainly increases the amount of muscle damage, but more muscle damage is not the same as stimualting a greater adaptation. Whatever, the important thing is that you make the muscle work hard and feel extreme effort, as without always trying to push past difficulty there is no significant stimulation for adaptation.


Nice read that!!


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## Driven Sports (Jul 15, 2011)

Dtlv74 said:


> There are several different things which can cause momentary muscular failure in an individual muscle - in the case of a really heavy one rep max or something like that it's simply that your ATP stores can't provide the immediate energy to fuel your muscle fibres for more than one consecutive lift... in the case of failure at 15 reps its that lactic acid has dropped the pH in your muscle cells, and this is interfering with the ability of the nerves to conduct signal, and that its too acidic for many of the enzymes that help release energy to work properly.
> 
> When it comes to failure in a lift, some people call failure the point at which they can't repeat another rep without having to bring in other muscles/change form slightly, for some people its when no matter which other muscles they bring in they can't execute a full ROM rep, and for some its not until the point where the muscle can hardly move the load more than a few inches or even less.
> 
> Personally, am not sure that going to those extremes of failure actually achieves anything more to make the muscle grow... it certainly increases the amount of muscle damage, but more muscle damage is not the same as stimualting a greater adaptation. Whatever, the important thing is that you make the muscle work hard and feel extreme effort, as without always trying to push past difficulty there is no significant stimulation for adaptation.


You seem like the person that will enjoy reading this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1664920/ Lactic acid is actually a buffer. The pH drop is caused by hydrogen ion build-up that oxygen would normally take care of if respiration was conducted aerobically.

As for failure training, you're right. There is very little evidence suggesting that training to failure is required or even helpful. Certainly not compared to progressive overload. In a lot of cases frequent failure training seems to contribute a lot towards burnout.


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## dtlv (Jul 24, 2009)

Am nerdy enough to have read that, lol... good post though.

Yep with acidosis its more the H+ ions than the lactate itself, allthough all part of the same system. Lactic acid itself though is a useful metabolite, and not a negative thing - lactic acid produced during anearobic respiration helps keep rates of ATP formation high for a short while even oxygen is in short supply, and also provides is recycled as a fuel for oxidative slower twitch fibres to take up some of the work in the same muscle... all good for helping a muscle to continue to function for a while longer whilst the mitochondria are scrambling about for fast energy.


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## Breda (May 2, 2011)

I don't know what you two nerds are talking about but its very interesting 

I've always been told to work up to the point where you start to lose form and no further so that is what I do, and as far as I know that point is called failure

Am I wrong?


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## bigpit (Dec 2, 2009)

watch some of dorian yates "blood and guts" training vids on youtube. i thought i trained hard and to failure til i watched those vids. they've definately helped me progress.


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## retro-mental (Dec 2, 2010)

there is different oppinions on this and mike mentzers HIT is the most extreme where he advocates that if you do not reach total faliure of the muscle on your last rep and fall short then the first however many reps before will be a complete waste of time as it was all building up to that last rep where you hit failure.

Failure is best seen when performing an isolation movment like preacher curls to the point where you cant move the weight. you can really bring supporting muscles into play then.

I like mentzers theory but i very rarely reach total failure due to training by myself and the muscles still grow. Theres a point where the acid is hurting but i could prob push one more but the fear of doing a greedyben and eating a barbell stops me.

I can do it on pull ups though !!!!!


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## Kiwi (Dec 24, 2008)

Stimulate don't annihilate


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## retro-mental (Dec 2, 2010)

good little video


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## Driven Sports (Jul 15, 2011)

wholemeal breda said:


> I don't know what you two nerds are talking about but its very interesting
> 
> I've always been told to work up to the point where you start to lose form and no further so that is what I do, and as far as I know that point is called failure
> 
> Am I wrong?


So long as you are pushing yourself progressively then you're doing it right. There are other variables that dictate whether training to or beyond failure can be beneficial and as a one-off I'm sure it can be. But the failure part is not the meat-and-potatoes of muscle remodelling. Nor would it make any (evolutionary) sense to be.


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## Driven Sports (Jul 15, 2011)

Kiwi said:


> Stimulate don't annihilate


Lee Haney knew it. And he still trained intensely.


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## Breda (May 2, 2011)

Driven [URL=Sports:2477426]Sports:2477426[/URL] said:


> So long as you are pushing yourself progressively then you're doing it right. There are other variables that dictate whether training to or beyond failure can be beneficial and as a one-off I'm sure it can be. But the failure part is not the meat-and-potatoes of muscle remodelling. Nor would it make any (evolutionary) sense to be.


This is how I train thanks for the confirmation driven sports

I know failure is not the be all and end all otherwise we'd just do static holds all day


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## richgearguy (Jun 23, 2011)

Ok, now I think I'm confused:confused1:

I always thought that the essence of intensity (the key factor leading to muscle growth, is it not?) was to work a muscle group to complete exhaustion (ala Mentzer's HIT)

But many of the posts in this thread seem to say that attacking a muscle that aggressively will certainly lead to greater muscle damage, but not necessarily greater growth.

Have I got this right? Can someone please clarify for this newbie?

Cheers


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## Breda (May 2, 2011)

richgearguy:2477884 said:


> Ok, now I think I'm confused:confused1:
> 
> I always thought that the essence of intensity (the key factor leading to muscle growth, is it not?) was to work a muscle group to complete exhaustion (ala Mentzer's HIT)
> 
> ...


Would you demolish your house for the sake of an extension.... No

Why?... Because you will need to rebuild your house before you get around to adding on the extension

That probably makes no sense lol

I'm sure somebody will explain it a lot better than that


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## dtlv (Jul 24, 2009)

That's not a bad anaolgy wholemeal!

Muscle damage is not the same as stimulation to grow... if it was then when healing from injury, people would recover with a bigger injured muscle than they had before getting injured.

Stimulation for a muscle to adapt and grow a bit stronger comes not specifically from exhausting the muscle, but from making it work hard and pushing it close to the edge of its capacity. This signals lots of little processes on a genetic level to increase the fibre size and strength capacity. It also promotes changes at the neuromuscular nerve junctions to make the signals a little bit more efficient, and it also stimulates the muscle cells to improve their energy generating capacity by increasing the mitochondria within the cell.

It's effort, not exhaustion that is what counts and stimulates this, and it appears in many studies that beyond a certain point of stimualtion there is no extra adaptation to grow no matter how much harder training gets. There are some studies showing this looking at the number of sets performed and comapring the response - at ten reps, two sets usually always provides more stimulus than one set, three sets only sometimes provides more again though, and sets four and five show no extra benfit at all despite ever increasing levels of muscle damage and fatigue. These extra sets do force adaptaions that improve muscular endurance, but not size or strength gains.

Similar principal in single all out sets - beyond the point at which you are stimualting and straining all the fibres that you possibly can, extra reps forced out achieve nothing extra other than more muscle damage and more soreness. This may be psychologically motivating, but it serves no real physiological benefit.

In many ways either form of going all out can be counter productive because it increases the muscle recovery time meaning more rest required between workouts... over a long period of time, had you held back a little, you could have trained a little more frequently and so achieved more little adaptations from having more total workouts.

Also, because of the higher levels of inflammation and resulting alterations in the immune response that come from increased muscle damage, training too hard too often also sets up the risk of overtraining syndrome where the body is basically inflammed and with lowered immunity permanently as it never gets a break.

You definitely do have to exhert effort - that is without question, but beyond the point of considerable effort to move a load for just a short time, there's no established scientific advantage of continually training the muscle even harder.


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## richgearguy (Jun 23, 2011)

^^ Very clear and informative - thanks


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## Guest (Sep 9, 2011)

wholemeal breda said:


> Would you demolish your house for the sake of an extension.... No
> 
> Why?... Because you will need to rebuild your house before you get around to adding on the extension
> 
> ...


Makes perfect sense buddy, very good way to describe it. Worth a rep too!


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## Breda (May 2, 2011)

Rob1184:2478209 said:


> Makes perfect sense buddy, very good way to describe it. Worth a rep too!


Thanks Rob I don't deserve a rep for that... Did you read Dtlv74's post... Now that deserves a rep... Feel free to rep me tho


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