We all know that lifting weights will make your muscles become stronger but the question that often comes up is – do you need to take every set to complete failure to get the most out of your training? Just like most questions relating to health and fitness the answer is not that simple and to find what works best for you it requires a better understanding of how to use the appropriate amount of intensity with your training. For example, the difference between taking a set of squats with 1-3 reps to failure versus a set of 12-15 reps to failure is significant in many ways. In this article, I will look more closely at what it means to take a set to failure and provide you with my suggestion of how to get the most out of your workouts without posing risk of injury to your body.
What Happens To Your Muscles When You Lift Weights?
Lifting weights and performing other strenuous exercise causes microscopic tears and other damage in the tissue of your muscles. Though this sounds bad, this damage is actually a good thing and essential for muscle development. The damage that your muscles receive while completing strength work triggers the healing process and also prompts the body to try and adapt itself to prevent this type of damage in the future.
As your body heals the damage from your strength workout caused in your muscles, specialized cells known as satellite cells begin fusing together and attach themselves to the damaged tissue to promote the healing process. These satellite cells begin fusing with the muscle fibres themselves, increasing their cross-section thickness. Eventually, these fused cells transition into new protein strands within the fibres, and components of the cells are used by the muscles to create additional strands as well. These strands increase both the size and the strength of the muscle fibres, resulting in the increase in muscle mass and muscular strength that you experience when lifting weights regularly.
The only way this process can take place is if the muscle experiences resistance or tension placed upon it. If it is not hard enough or long enough no adaptation will occur.
How hard do you need to train the muscle in order to grow?
This is where people believe they must take every exercise to failure to force the muscle to adapt, and to some degree they are right, but this does come with some big risks. More on this shortly.
The main component of muscle growth is to maximize mechanical tension and be able to recruit as many muscle fibres as possible during a set. The more reps you use or the greater the load that pushes you closer to failure during a set, the more motor unit recruitment and overall muscle activation your muscles experiences. In simple language this means more muscle growth and is a big part of maximal strength training methods.
This is why people believe you must complete your training to failure to ensure you maximize your training efforts. Unfortunately, this approach comes with serious risks to your joints and overall health.
There have been tons of studies on this topic and one of the best ones I came across is here. Like most things with health and fitness there is no black and white answer so I will do my best to give you my best opinion based on 17 years of experience and knowledge.
The Dangers of Training to Complete Failure
Before we go any further, there is one big truth about working-out this way and that is, that training to failure is unenjoyable for most people. It requires a significant amount of motivation and mental toughness to push yourself to this extreme. For many beginners to strength training and to be honest, most people in general who want to lose weight or get a bit fitter, exercise is not fun to begin with so by making it even tougher may mean they stop training altogether.
Which brings me to my next important point which is training to failure can compromise your exercise technique. And I’d argue that this is particularly important to implement for your big, compound movements like squats, deadlifts, bench presses etc. You can likely get away with doing isolation exercises like bicep curls or calf raises closer to failure for they are involve only one joint, require little coordination and much less taxing on the body.
There are two types of exercise failures that you will come across. One is perfectly fine but the other is something to avoid and potentially damaging to your body.
This damaging version is called “complete failure”. That’s when you force out as many reps as possible until you physically can’t move the weight anymore and have used every type of compensatory method possible to complete the set.
If you’ve ever seen someone arch their back excessively on the bench or someone straining backwards on a deadlift to complete a rep you will have seen this type of failure. This does not require any qualifications or medical background to know that this is dangerous and something to avoid.
(Many powerlifters and body-builders will deliberately use this method with the bench press by retracting the scapula together to lock it into posterior tilt and feel much stronger in doing so. While this can assist in performing heavy bench presses it does come at a huge cost to good scapula stability and often leading to weakness of serratus anterior and winged scapula. This severely compromises the health of the shoulders and neck and for this reason is something to avoid. I cannot tell how many guys who have come to see me for help with shoulder problems causes by using this technique).
The better version of muscle failure is called “technical failure”, which is when you perform as many reps as you can but maintain perfect form to complete the set. When you reach the point where that’s no longer possible, your set is done. Any excessive compensation or movement is to be avoided at all costs.
The last thing to factor in is how fatiguing on the body it can be to consistently train your muscles to failure as it can cause considerable muscle damage. Most people will require roughly 24-48 hours longer for their body to fully recover when training to failure, as compared to stopping short of failure during each set. The excessive soreness and muscle damage can easily carry over into your next workouts for the week and prevent you from competing in sports or work activities.
If this type of training is consistently completed over long periods, it eventually can lead to a state of overtraining and eventually the onset of injury or illness.
With such a determined focus on progression and performance it is easy to begin to push too hard, train too long or simply do way too much. It is in our nature to strive for perfection and often we are led to set goals that may be out of reach. While we can work to achieve our potential, we must always consider our abilities and our limitations and avoid the danger of over-training.
The take home message here is the harder you train, the longer you must rest.
Don’t Train Too Lightly Either
Now so far it sounds like you should not train too hard and avoid pushing yourself. This is not what you want to do either, as you can go too far to the other extreme and achieve nothing.
There are many people that avoid working too hard and always stop well short of failure and make sure they get to 10 reps with every exercise they do. Stopping at 10 reps in a set when you could have done 15 or 16 reps to failure, is inferior for muscle growth and achieves very little from your time working out.
This is something you see many females do when it comes to strength training for the fear of getting big like a man, which by the way is near impossible for 99.9% of the female population.
For starters women only have 10% of the testosterone levels of a male, and this hormone is the single most important ingredient for “getting big”. Secondly you would need to devote a lot of time to strength training to eat a massive amount of food to do this. Something most women would never do. Even guys struggle to gain muscle size for they cannot eat the extra surplus of food and lift weights every day to turn it into muscle.
You can read more about this in the article – 7 health and fitness facts every female should know
In order to maximize your training efforts it’s crucial that you get close enough to failure during your sets to still maximize growth. Notice how I underlined the words close enough to failure for this is the secret to achieving great results without the risk of injury or overtraining. That said, most people underestimate the number of reps they can actually do to failure and end up training too easy as a result. Over time they wonder why they are not getting the results they desire.
Now that you understand the various benefits and the potential downsides of pushing yourself to the limit and training to failure every workout, how do you know just how hard should you train to maximize growth?
There is no definitive answer I can give for every person so you do need to experiment and find what works best for you. Having said that I will share with you what I have found to the best advice of how to find your sweet spot.
How to Find Your Sweet Spot Using the Rule of Thirds
In the book “Glute Lab” by Bret Contreras he discusses the topic of intensity and going to failure with strength training in great detail comparing several scientific studies to find what works best. What he found is that only the last five reps of any set contribute the most towards muscle building growth.
If you do a set of 3 reps, all 3 will contribute to muscle growth. However, if you do a set of 10 reps to failure it is only the last 5 that make the difference. Let’s say you do not take the set to failure and leave 2 reps in the bank, this would mean you would have 3 stimulating reps for muscle growth.
Stopping 1-2 reps short of the very last rep is still a very demanding and difficult to do and I would argue may be the best option for most people. You can still maximize muscle growth but without accumulating excessive fatigue and also losing form and risking injury to your joints.
Now just to confuse you even more, this strategy may not be perfect for every workout as there are times you feel great and other times you will feel like crap. Even certain parts of the body may be able to tolerate greater levels of intensity over others so you have to listen to your body to determine how far to go.
A great little tip Bret Contreras discusses is something he calls the rule of thirds.
This is where he varies his level of effort across his workouts for the week to ensure he maximizes his training effort but without the risk of over-training or excessive damage. He structures his program into three parts.
- One workout has sets carried out to failure or one rep short of failure.
- One workout has sets completed 2 to 3 reps short of failure.
- One workout has sets taken nowhere near to failure.
The exercises used in these workouts will vary considerably as well. The sets taken to failure will consist of the “big lifts” like deadlifts, squats, and hip thrusts. Whereas the lighter sets will consist more of the accessory exercises like clamshells, bridges, single leg exercises. Over the course of the week you will be able to mix up the combination of exercises but also the intensities and stress placed on the muscles and joints.
In my opinion this is a great way to get the most out of your body without overly taxing your joints and muscles. While the lighter workouts may appear to be too easy on paper they are deceptively hard as often you are using high repetitions and they are fantastic for improving techniques and skills to make the more difficult exercises safer later on.
Do You Need More Ideas or Help?
If you are looking for more ideas on how to use this to build muscle, athletic power or even specific methods for sports then you need our latest PDF report "101 Training Programs & The Little Black Book Of Training Secrets" as you will find this will have all the answers you are looking for. Click on the image below to find out more and get a copy.
Conclusion
While it is important to push your muscles and test your body it’s clear that constantly pushing for that extra rep or two isn’t always a good thing. The small pay-off this provides very little additional stimulation for the huge jump in fatigue and potential for injury that you get in return is not really worth it.
By taking your body close to the limit and leaving one to two reps in reserve may be the best approach and every now and then you can go full out failure if your body is feeling great. Using Bret Contreras’s rule of thirds could be a good way to go if you are well disciplined and planned.
In the end, the old saying train smarter, not harder is still the best approach for lasting long term health and fitness results.
For more ideas and information on specific topics I may not have covered in detail be sure to check out our INDEX PAGE on the website that has over 300 of our best articles. These are all sorted into categories for quick reference so you can find what you are after more easily. You can also subscribe to our FREE fortnightly newsletter by clicking here.
If you do need specific help with your exercise program please feel free to reach out to me for help and we can set you up with your individualised program.
About The Author
Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 17 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specialises in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.
References:
- Glute Lab - By Bret Contreras
- Built From Broken - Scott Hogan CPT, COES
- Movement - By Gray Cook
- Corrective Exercise Solutions - by Evan Osar
- Back Pain Mechanic - by Dr Stuart McGill
- Diagnosis & Treatment Of Movement Impairment Syndromes - By Shirley Sahrman
- Low Back Disorders - by Dr Stuart McGill
- Ultimate Back Fitness & Performance - by Dr Stuart McGill
- Core Stability - by Peak Performance
- Athletic Body in Balance - by Gray Cook
- Anatomy Trains - by Thomas Meyers
- Motor Learning and Performance - By Richard A Schmidt and Timothy D Lee
- Assessment & Treatment Of Muscle Imbalance - By Vladimir Janda
- How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek
- Scientific Core Conditioning Correspondence Course - By Paul Chek
- Advanced Program Design - By Paul Chek
- Twist Conditioning Sports Strength - By Peter Twist
- Twist Conditioning Sports Movement - By Peter Twist
- Functional Training For Sports - By Mike Boyle