5 ms·

What about the old gym adage "training to failure is failing to train" - is there any physiological basis for this, or is it mental, or just a myth?

by elevaet 9mo ago

torben-friis 9mo ago
I’ve never heard that, it’s usually the opposite- people do strip sets and the like to reach failure
wswope 9mo ago
That’s a Pl/Oly mindset rather than a BB/hypertrophy mindset. Totally valid advice in the right context. Long story short, failed reps get much more risky and problematic as the weight you’re lifting approaches your 1RM.
- Moto7451 9mo ago
  Exactly this. When I was in my best shape my deadlift and squat were in/on the way to 2.5-3x my body weight. You don’t want to fail that without a lot of help and safeties. Note for the uninitiated: That figure is not even impressive or competitive with competition lifters. This is just “guy who put in the time and work” numbers.
  - matwood 9mo ago
    Don’t sell yourself short though. Those are very respectable numbers ahead of the vast majority of the population.
    - Moto7451 8mo ago
      Yeah, for sure. It is in line with someone who went to the gym 4-5 times per week and had a coach/trainer. Just hard work and help from an expert.
  - sethammons 9mo ago
    Look up lifts and weight multiples and a 3x weight deadlift is advanced to elite. https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/deadlift/lb https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/deadlift/lb
    - bschwarz 9mo ago
      Be sure to not take strengthlevel.com too seriously.
    - Moto7451 8mo ago
      Yeah I was doing fine for the usual people going to the gym. I’d be last in a competition. I’m neither on steroids or an elite natural athlete. My point isn’t to say I’m weak, only that I’m not unusual for someone who went to the gym 5x per week and had a personal trainer/coach.
teecha 9mo ago
not an expert, 2 years of serious lifting, but this is probably a good adage for the average person from my current understanding training to failure puts you at higher risk of injury and there are diminishing returns as you approach your 1 rep max and/or failure hypertrophy can happen with more reps or more weight strength gains are usually just focused on progressive overload though, of course, hypertrophy will happen either way and contributes to increased strength, but this seems to be further confirmation that you can gain muscle size either way
nzeid 9mo ago
It's definitely way more nuanced than that. You have to approach exhaustion to get the body to eventually build strength. But you need to carefully time your rests/deloads and handle plateaus with more volume.
- thatcat 9mo ago
  Where could I find more information on proper set timing?
  - Moto7451 9mo ago
    Honestly from a personal training/lifting coach. When I could spend serious time in the gym there’s a lot to just having someone with expertise for 30 minutes to give perspective. You can do a lot of it over video today as well. In general YouTube is a good resource. There are a lot of respected coaches that also produce content.
  - matwood 9mo ago
    It ends up being personal, but you want enough time to catch your breath and be “ready” to go again, but no more.
  - aeonik 9mo ago
    This guy has a PhD in exercise science and is a very evidence based dude and breaks things down very nicely. https://youtu.be/DupQfkoI-Sc?si=QK_w2d99TcvNcQsD https://youtu.be/DupQfkoI-Sc?si=QK_w2d99TcvNcQsD
  - teecha 9mo ago
    I like Mehdi's description over here as a good starting point: https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/intermediate/#rest-periods https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/intermediate/#rest-p... Has a paper from 1976 but this seems in line with what I've read elsewhere basically, 2-3 minutes is probably good for most of your lifting, you could go to 5 minutes if you are doing your heaviest lift of the day this is also a reasonable way to make sure your workouts aren't going to take 3 hours at a time some people really mix max this though if they're focusing on super heavy lifts. i remember being at the gym and watching people take 8-10 minutes between sets when they were putting up 400-500lbs on a squat. they also arrived before me and weren't done when i was leaving and, i'm assuming, they were interested in powerlifting competitions i've actually started looking at reactive training system with mike tuchscherer who has a lot of interesting things to say about training, rest times, etc. been startin to build his stuff on RPE and fatigue percentages in to my training and it has already been super insightful and helpful https://store.reactivetrainingsystems.com/blogs/default-blog-1/how-to-use-rpe-in-your-training-correctly https://store.reactivetrainingsystems.com/blogs/default-blog...
NoLinkToMe 9mo ago
It holds true, but with some caveats. Generally training to failure is completely fine for say a set of tricep extensions. Generally safe. However, training to failure on compound lifts like a deadlift or benchpress, or involving sensitive muscles like a shoulder press, isn't. Technique generally suffers at the point of failure. Making a habit of doing thousands of repetitions in the next decade at the point where technique fails, on an exercise that can mess up your back permanently, or your shoulders, is bad advice. For these exercises it's better to stop 2 reps short of failure. This is more safe. Also it requires moderate recovery getting you back in the gym quicker, meaning you can compound more incremental improvements in a given training period (say 5 years). Even then, some still cautiously go to failure to keep an understanding of what their failure point really is. You could go for a PR once or twice a month for example and go to failure, with a proper warmup, spotter etc. But purely for hypertrophy there's not really a point, this is more for strength training. Generally people that say they train to failure mean 2 reps in reserve. Training to absolute failure on all muscles is very rare and generally advised against.
- calmbonsai 9mo ago
  True. Generally, the more isolated the exercise and the smaller the muscle the "safer" it is to train-to-failure at a higher duty-cycle. Put another way, you can do crunches to failure every single day, but you'll want to keep some reps in the tank for squats and you'll want to plan on at least 12-24 hours of recovery between squat sessions.
coffeebeqn 9mo ago
Failure also taxes your nervous system and joints which don’t take as kindly to stimulus as muscles do and take longer to recover (or accumulate damage in case of joints)

What about the old gym adage "training to failure is failing to train" - is there any physiological basis for this, or is it mental, or just a myth?

by elevaet 9mo ago

What about the old gym adage "training to failure is failing to train" - is there any physiological basis for this, or is it mental, or just a myth?

torben-friis 9mo ago

I’ve never heard that, it’s usually the opposite- people do strip sets and the like to reach failure

wswope 9mo ago

That’s a Pl/Oly mindset rather than a BB/hypertrophy mindset. Totally valid advice in the right context. Long story short, failed reps get much more risky and problematic as the weight you’re lifting approaches your 1RM.

Moto7451 9mo ago
Exactly this. When I was in my best shape my deadlift and squat were in/on the way to 2.5-3x my body weight. You don’t want to fail that without a lot of help and safeties. Note for the uninitiated: That figure is not even impressive or competitive with competition lifters. This is just “guy who put in the time and work” numbers.
- matwood 9mo ago
  Don’t sell yourself short though. Those are very respectable numbers ahead of the vast majority of the population.
  - Moto7451 8mo ago
    Yeah, for sure. It is in line with someone who went to the gym 4-5 times per week and had a coach/trainer. Just hard work and help from an expert.
- sethammons 9mo ago
  Look up lifts and weight multiples and a 3x weight deadlift is advanced to elite. https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/deadlift/lb https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/deadlift/lb
  - bschwarz 9mo ago
    Be sure to not take strengthlevel.com too seriously.
  - Moto7451 8mo ago
    Yeah I was doing fine for the usual people going to the gym. I’d be last in a competition. I’m neither on steroids or an elite natural athlete. My point isn’t to say I’m weak, only that I’m not unusual for someone who went to the gym 5x per week and had a personal trainer/coach.

teecha 9mo ago

not an expert, 2 years of serious lifting, but this is probably a good adage for the average person from my current understanding training to failure puts you at higher risk of injury and there are diminishing returns as you approach your 1 rep max and/or failure hypertrophy can happen with more reps or more weight strength gains are usually just focused on progressive overload though, of course, hypertrophy will happen either way and contributes to increased strength, but this seems to be further confirmation that you can gain muscle size either way

nzeid 9mo ago

It's definitely way more nuanced than that. You have to approach exhaustion to get the body to eventually build strength. But you need to carefully time your rests/deloads and handle plateaus with more volume.

thatcat 9mo ago
Where could I find more information on proper set timing?
- Moto7451 9mo ago
  Honestly from a personal training/lifting coach. When I could spend serious time in the gym there’s a lot to just having someone with expertise for 30 minutes to give perspective. You can do a lot of it over video today as well. In general YouTube is a good resource. There are a lot of respected coaches that also produce content.
- matwood 9mo ago
  It ends up being personal, but you want enough time to catch your breath and be “ready” to go again, but no more.
- aeonik 9mo ago
  This guy has a PhD in exercise science and is a very evidence based dude and breaks things down very nicely. https://youtu.be/DupQfkoI-Sc?si=QK_w2d99TcvNcQsD https://youtu.be/DupQfkoI-Sc?si=QK_w2d99TcvNcQsD
- teecha 9mo ago
  I like Mehdi's description over here as a good starting point: https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/intermediate/#rest-periods https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/intermediate/#rest-p... Has a paper from 1976 but this seems in line with what I've read elsewhere basically, 2-3 minutes is probably good for most of your lifting, you could go to 5 minutes if you are doing your heaviest lift of the day this is also a reasonable way to make sure your workouts aren't going to take 3 hours at a time some people really mix max this though if they're focusing on super heavy lifts. i remember being at the gym and watching people take 8-10 minutes between sets when they were putting up 400-500lbs on a squat. they also arrived before me and weren't done when i was leaving and, i'm assuming, they were interested in powerlifting competitions i've actually started looking at reactive training system with mike tuchscherer who has a lot of interesting things to say about training, rest times, etc. been startin to build his stuff on RPE and fatigue percentages in to my training and it has already been super insightful and helpful https://store.reactivetrainingsystems.com/blogs/default-blog-1/how-to-use-rpe-in-your-training-correctly https://store.reactivetrainingsystems.com/blogs/default-blog...

NoLinkToMe 9mo ago

It holds true, but with some caveats. Generally training to failure is completely fine for say a set of tricep extensions. Generally safe. However, training to failure on compound lifts like a deadlift or benchpress, or involving sensitive muscles like a shoulder press, isn't. Technique generally suffers at the point of failure. Making a habit of doing thousands of repetitions in the next decade at the point where technique fails, on an exercise that can mess up your back permanently, or your shoulders, is bad advice. For these exercises it's better to stop 2 reps short of failure. This is more safe. Also it requires moderate recovery getting you back in the gym quicker, meaning you can compound more incremental improvements in a given training period (say 5 years). Even then, some still cautiously go to failure to keep an understanding of what their failure point really is. You could go for a PR once or twice a month for example and go to failure, with a proper warmup, spotter etc. But purely for hypertrophy there's not really a point, this is more for strength training. Generally people that say they train to failure mean 2 reps in reserve. Training to absolute failure on all muscles is very rare and generally advised against.

calmbonsai 9mo ago
True. Generally, the more isolated the exercise and the smaller the muscle the "safer" it is to train-to-failure at a higher duty-cycle. Put another way, you can do crunches to failure every single day, but you'll want to keep some reps in the tank for squats and you'll want to plan on at least 12-24 hours of recovery between squat sessions.

coffeebeqn 9mo ago

Failure also taxes your nervous system and joints which don’t take as kindly to stimulus as muscles do and take longer to recover (or accumulate damage in case of joints)