Should you be training to failure? What does that even mean?
- The last few reps are more important than all the previous reps.
See, for strength and muscle growth, frequency trumps volume, but intensity trumps both volume and frequency. And so the absolute most important thing you can do with lifting is to do so intensely. This is true pretty much no matter what your lifting goals are. This chart shows you why [explained below].
There are a ton of ways to increase the intensity of your lifting (see here and here) but almost all of them involve dancing around with “failure” on your set. There are two basic forms of failure I’ll talk about today: form failure and muscular failure.
Form Failure
Think of form failure as the point where you are no longer able to do the movement with good form. Good form means proper alignment, proper tempo, using the muscle rather than momentum (unless it is a power movement).
This is also very mental – when you “think” you can’t do another one properly, you are probably right. In my experience though, most people fail mentally before they should (but I won’t describe mental failure here).
Here’s an example. Let’s say you are lifting alone. Your target rep count would be 8 for this exercise. You just finished your 7th rep and you are feeling a little shaky but confident you can get one more done safely. So you start the movement. But at the bottom of the move you realize you can’t finish it without sacrificing form. At that point, you’ve reached form failure.
Muscular Failure
Muscular failure is when you (more…)
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Editor’s note – There is so much monthly science news when it comes to muscle fitness, that it’s probably hard for you to keep up. In these occasional posts, I’ll summarize various items of research in the past 90 days or so. I’ll cite the official reports so that the (more…)
Continue reading about Science News For Building Lean Muscle – Jan 25 2009
