This is one of the most common questions I’m asked as a strength and functional fitness coach. The short answer is yes, at some point you will need to train to failure. However, that doesn’t help you, as there are dozens of more important questions you should ask yourself. How often should you train to failure? Do you need to train to failure to gain strength, and many more. This article will look at the results from 28 studies that will answer these exact questions. Keep reading for more.
For the purposes of this article we will be reviewing two meta-analyses. If you aren’t familiar with research, a meta-analysis is an amalgamation of all relevant research on a topic. The researchers comb through databases for specific papers on the topic and then perform statistical analysis on them to see what the general trend seems to be . In fact, meta-analyses or systematic reviews, are the best form of research because they take the full body of research into account.
Alright, enough nerd talk. Let’s dive into the research to answer whether or not we need to train to failure for strength or to build muscle.
Do You Need to Train to Failure to Get Stronger?
Both of the our meta-analyses (Research Paper 1, Research Paper 2) are pretty clear on this point. You do not have to train to failure to achieve strength gains. However, this is not the complete picture as there certainly are times where you need to train to failure. The real questions are who needs to train to failure, and how often should you train to failure? Before we dive into those questions take a look at this graphic to get a general idea for the data.
This graphic tends to indicate that training to failure is not beneficial for strength gains. However, there certainly are some studies that show there are benefits to training to failure. Let’s dive into the details.
Who Should Train to Failure for Strength?
It’s important to note the limitations of most research. Often times researchers use untrained lifters, with little or no experience in the gym. Obviously, what had an effect on a brand new lifter may not work on those with years of experience.
In this case, the authors of this study conducted sub-analyses to determine if experience lifters were able to gain strength when training to failure. The answer is no, they didn’t detect any benefit for experienced lifters training to failure. Nor did it help new lifters.
So that answers the question, never train to failure to gain strength right? Not so fast. The researchers also indicated that training to failure did not have a detrimental effect on strength gains. This brings us to some practical recommendations for those looking for strength gains.
Practical Considerations for Strength Training
As a coach and programer there are some non tangible benefits to training to failure. First, I can tell you that training to failure, with heavy loads, is important as it shows an athlete where their true limits currently are. In fact, that is one of the key differences between an intermediate lifter, and an advanced lifter. An intermediate athlete will hold themselves back, thinking they don’t have an extra rep in the tank when a more experienced lifter, with the same strength, will understand that they might be able to eke out one or two more reps.
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This doesn’t mean that I recommend going to failure all the time, as I do not. I think going to failure is an intensity technique that needs to be used occasionally to teach an athlete how hard they can push themselves. Obviously, it needs to be done safely, with appropriate technique. At most an athlete should train to true failure on a few sets per month.
Now that we know that training to failure isn’t necessary to gain strength, let’s take a look at training to failure for building muscle. Hint, hint, you’re going to get a different answer.
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Do You Need to Train to Failure to Gain Muscle?
Yes you do, and much more often than those looking for strength gains. Both research papers found that the body of research indicates greater muscular growth when athletes trained to failure. Take a look at the forest plot below.
These studies are either on the line or to the right of the line, indicating that there were significant benefits of training to failure to build muscle. However, this doesn’t give us a blank check to go crazy in the gym, taking all sets to failure.
The researchers in this paper, indicated that when you equalized the amount of lifting volume between groups the benefit of training to failure disappeared. This might be surprising, but there is a very obvious reason for this.
Training to failure allows you accumulate more training volume. It is well known that overall training volume is one of the key drivers of hypertrophy (increasing muscle size). This leads us to some practical consideration for training to failure when trying to gain muscle.
Practical Considerations for Training to Failure When Building Muscle
For athletes that want to build muscle, I recommend training to failure more often. I recommend training like John Meadows from Mountain Dog Training. He generally recommends that athletes take no more than one set per exercise to failure for building muscle. Moreover, I a few more guidelines that I use when thinking about training to failure.
It’s much easier to train to failure on smaller muscle groups. You can pretty much go hog wild on your biceps but training to failure on a deadlift or squat can be dangerous. I generally stay away from failure training on large muscle group exercises. Notice I’m not saying never do this, but you should only do so if you have excellent technique and safe equipment to do so (i.e spotter arms).
For a muscle building program, I would generally program large compound movements first in the workout, and take them near failure. I then like to program smaller movements, or isolation exercises later on in the workout, allowing the athlete to go to failure on the last sets of those movements. If you want even more info on programming then check out my ebook, “Programming Your Fitness.”
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Why Are These Training Methods So Different?
Why does training to failure work for gaining muscle, but not gaining strength? The short answer is that building strength is more of a skill than athletes think. With repeated practice, at heavy weights, your body becomes more efficient with the same muscle mass. The more you lift the better your body becomes at recruiting large muscle fibers quickly, and synchronizing them so they contract at the same time. In fact, this increase in efficiency is what accounts for a large part of beginner gains in strength. This is much different than building muscle.
When we talk about hypertrophy, there are three mechanisms that promote muscle growth. First, is mechanical tension from the weight lifted. Next is metabolic stress or the build up of the by-products of muscle cell contraction. Lastly, increases in muscle damage cause you to build muscle as well.
Experienced athletes know that simply lifting more weight (increasing total lifting volume) is an easy way to increase all three mechanisms. When building muscle, lifting volume is king. In fact, the best hypertrophy program is the program that allows you to complete as many decently hard sets as you can recover from.
Final Thoughts
While the answers to these questions are pretty clear, we can’t ignore individual athlete recovery which is the biggest driving factor for any type of increase in strength, or muscle. You need to work hard, but only as hard as you can recover from.
It doesn’t make any sense to create an awesome program, only to realize that you are way over trained a few weeks in. Things like overall age, athlete experience, and genetic differences will impact how much work anyone can recover from.
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Hi Jake, it seems to me you didn’t report the fact that it is much better to train to failure on high reps / low weight exercise than the opposite. It gives more advantages to go to failure on 15+ reps and, as you wrote, it is more efficient on small muscle group that big ones; finally as you wrote it is better on isolated exercises than compound lifts.
Makes sense to me.