To Fail or Not To Fail, That Is The Question

[Skinnyarms]

Where is the jury on this one? many people train to failure all of the time make great gains, some say only take the weight to 1-2 reps before failure why would this be? A difference between fast and slow twitch muscles?

 

[Sculelos]

I rarely train to failure, I pretty much have a set weight and reps and I do my best to get them in, although sometimes I can't so you could say I was doing till failure on those, but not by choice.

 

[Hybridtheory2o]

Nah only train to failure sometimes not everytime. Always switch things up. Some weeks ill get my sets and reps in and then ill grab a heavy ass weight i know i can almost do alont but not quite. And i get a personal trainer to spot me and i do like 2-4 forced reps. Then i will take an entire week off and come back way stronger.

But dont train to failure everday.

 

[Tweakle]

Nowadays I only fail when I miss a ME

or on a high rep burnout set, which is punishment on days when I'm a big vagine in the gym.

neither happens very often. There's absolutely no reason to train to failure imo

 

[StuWard]

Training to failure taxes the central nervous system which limits your recovery and can lead to overtraining. If you avoid going to failure you can train harder without that happening. Here's a good article on it.

http://www.muscletalk.co.uk/article-central nervous system-overtraining.asp

Here's another great article with some other reasons not to train to failure: http://www.bartwolbers.com/?p=6

 

[Hybridtheory2o]

Yep exactly what these bros said. Training to failure nope nope nope although sometimes if you get ur target reps in with ur target weight and u wanna rest for a few secs and get a spotter and try some forced reps i have found that to be a very nice plateu buster/preventer even though sooner or later you will hit another one or come close i found this to help the gains to keep coming nice and steady.

Remember its a marathon not a sprint those who last long and train hard and smart are the ones that grow and look hella bomb

 

[coreyb]

why would you train to failure when you can make amazing progress not doing it?

 

[layinback]

i train to temporary muscle failure. i am a flexible open minded guy but i cant understand doing anything else. mike mentzer had a great analogy about gettin a tan by running out from the shade into the sun for a few minutes then runnin back to the shade. wtf!!! if you are doing 8 reps and you will fail on the 8th rep which rep do you reach hypertrophy? the 6th the 5th?

 

[Pat_McCrotch]

arent forced reps the same as training to failure or is that training past failure because you cant do reps yourself.

 

[Papa Lion]

don't think of it so negatively.... think of it more like you have "peaked your performance level today!!"


seriously though... some things I do in the gym I go to failure.... because I LOVE THEM!! others I do set numbers and sets because I fuckin hate 'em!! but I love most everything I do in the gym so more times than not I overtax specific BP's but I've found that when I used to hit more muscle groups per workout... like doing upper body one day and legs another... that recovery was harder and motivation began to sink also... there were times when I didn't even wanna go because I knew I wouldn't be able to give it my all on all those exercises!! I've since wised up and train a smaller groups and feel better in the gym recover nicely and and I look forward to my workouts more!!
and training to failure isn't so taxing on my body!!

 

[BigboyAl]

i train to failure often, but theres different types of failure... thered fatigue failure (muscle endurance) and cns failure..
i do alot of triple drop sets so sometimes i go to failure on the last few reps, but the weight at that point is very light and its more fatigue or muscle endurance than anything...
on heavy lifts(3rm) i go to failure about 2-3 times out of a 7 week cycle.

 

[Tweakle]

Mentzer's analogies are annoying and make no sense. How about - you only need 2 minutes to boil an egg, so 2 minutes in the gym is more than enough.

If you go to failure you greatly stress your nervous system and release a lot of stress hormones, at the same time preventing you from doing much in the way of total workload with heavy weight. The CNS takes longer to recover than the muscles (unless you do negatives and other post failure work which can take weeks to recover from, which is also counterproductive) so you can't maximise the amount of productive workouts.

 

[Skinnyarms]

Thats interesting, because I have only been able to make progress from training to positive failure on all my sets, i have heard before of how training to failure puts stress on the central nervous system, but where is the proof? and how can your nervous system distinguish between failing on the twelfth rep or on a one rep max, I believe these to be two different things, I have trained with one rep maxes without any success, but I will always train to failure on all of my sets.

 

[Nathan]

I usually train to failure, and when I'm training with a partner I do forced reps on pretty much every set.

 

[Hybridtheory2o]

You can do what you want but ive noticed the best gains when i do a rep range of 6-10 for 3 weeks then a rep range of 3-5 for 1-2 weeks depening on how my joints feel from all the ball busting weight. Training to failure only burned me out.