Strength training to failure

Beginners should not mess with it blindly. Advanced players can arrange it according to their needs. It can be used in a targeted manner during the preparation period. There is no absolute right or wrong, only whether it is suitable or not.

I’m not just saying this, I went through a big pit of exhaustion during leg training last year. At that time, I had just unlocked the 100kg Smith Squat, and I wanted to sprint 12 times to failure. When I got up on the 10th, my legs were as soft as overcooked noodles. On the 11th, my eyes turned black halfway through the squat and I sat on the ground. My knee pads were worn out.

If you put this in the traditional bodybuilding circle, old-school athletes would be the first to disagree. I used to work with a bodybuilding coach who had been practicing for 12 years. He would reach the edge of failure every time he practiced isolation movements. He couldn't swing the dumbbell fly in the last two swings, and he had to rely on his chest muscles to lift the two half-strokes. In his words, "The first 10 complete movements are all warm-ups, and the last two half-strokes that shake like chaff are the key to building muscle." Indeed, for bodybuilders who pursue muscle hypertrophy, the effect of maximizing metabolic stress and muscle fiber tearing caused by exhaustion is difficult to achieve with regular sets. Last time I practiced shoulder training and followed his example, I added 2.5kg to the last set of lateral raises to reach failure. For the next three days, I was sore when I raised my arms and put on clothes. The dimension of my shoulders actually increased by 0.3cm that week.

But if you turn around and ask a powerlifting veteran, nine out of ten will advise you not to worry about it and push to exhaustion. I met a powerlifting guy at dinner a while ago who has been training for 8 years. He can bench press 180kg. He said that the total number of times he has failed in the main event in his life is less than 10 times. What they calculated was another calculation: Compound movements such as squats, deadlifts, and bench presses use many muscle groups, and the consumption of nerves is much greater than that of muscles. Once exhausted, nerve fatigue may take three or four days to recover, which will lower the upper limit of weight for subsequent training. If the movement is deformed, hurting the waist or shoulders, you will not be able to practice for several months, and the gain outweighs the loss. Nowadays, mainstream powerlifting plans such as 5/3/1 require you to leave 1-2 reps for the main event, which will not allow you to push to failure.

As for novices, I really advise you not to rush to exhaustion. Last month, a kid who had just been practicing for three months came to me to complain. He said that he had read on the Internet that "if you don't do it to failure, it means practicing in vain." His waist flashed when he reached failure in the deadlift. He didn't practice anything for a month, and he lost two kilograms of muscle. Novices have not even solidified their movement patterns. When reaching exhaustion, they are prone to bending their backs and buckling their knees in to compensate. Not only can they fail to train the target muscles, but the probability of injury can increase several times. It is really not a mistake.

Of course, this does not mean that exhaustion is a scourge. Used correctly, it is indeed a powerful tool to break through bottlenecks. If you have been practicing for a year or two, your movements are completely standard, and you have reached a muscle-building plateau, you can completely arrange a failure in the last group of isolation movements or auxiliary groups, such as leg extensions, rope clamping and other movements that do not require core stability. Even if you are exhausted, you will not be easily injured, and the stimulation effect is enough. But don’t get carried away. Arranging 3-4 sets of failure sets a week is overwhelming. If you push every movement to failure, you will have overtraining symptoms such as insomnia, loss of strength, and decreased immunity in less than two weeks. I have stepped on this trap before. I pushed to failure in every movement during chest training for two consecutive weeks. Instead, I lost 5kg in bench press PR. It took a week of rest to recover.

There is also a misunderstanding that many people confuse: You don't have to lift until you can't move at all to be called failure. "Technical failure" is the point where you should stop - that is, you can still do another one, but the movement has begun to deform and you have to rely on other muscles to compensate. At this time, holding on harder will not help at all except increasing the risk of injury. Those bloggers on the Internet who shout "Practice without exhaustion are in vain" may have more energy left when practicing than anyone else, so there is really no need to follow them blindly.

In fact, in the end of fitness training, the battle is never whether a single training is hard enough, but whether you can stick to it regularly all year round. Exhaustion is like adding chili peppers to cooking. If you like spicy food, add two more spoons to appetize. If you can't eat it, the spicy food will make your stomach hurt. Feel the feedback from your body when practicing. I'm in good condition today and it's great to do a set. I'm tired at work today and stop practicing when I'm almost there. I can keep practicing until I'm fifty or sixty years old. It's better than anything else.