[b]Failure:[/b] such a negative word, but in the world of the bodybuilder it's a term that has another meaning when in the context of training intensity.
In the training cycle of any athlete one will always encounter the "plateau". Much like an interval-training program on a stationary bike or treadmill, you will have hills and valleys and plateaus in your training progress. Of course the ultimate goal is to minimize the valleys, increase the gains (hills) and try not to be stuck on the plateaus (stagnation) too long.
One of the ways many bodybuilders will break free of those plateaus is by changing up the training intensity with shock methods. Going to Failure is one of those shock methods.
Over the years there has been a great deal of confusion over the use of the failure technique. Fully understanding the failure principle will spare you a lot of wasted effort and helping you discern between what is mere postulation and hard proven scientific fact.
The principle of going to failure during resistance training is one that has fallen prey to misunderstanding, misuse and flawed logic. The simple fact of life, training and the universe is that going to failure has never been a requirement for muscle growth.
Lets look to life outside the gym as an example. How many labor-intensive jobs require a person to go to failure in repetitions? For instance a person tossing bales of hay onto a truck would never go until he could not lift that last bale onto the truck, yet remarkably such manual labor can develop above average muscularity by performing normal repetitions, without ever going to failure.
There are number of other comparisons that can be made to prove the point that failure is not required in order to stimulate muscular growth. There are many bodybuilders who have never applied the principle of going to failure in their workouts, and have achieved incredible gains in muscle. You probably even know one.
So how is it all of these people managed to gain new muscle without ever going to failure? It seems that the assertion that repetitions to muscle failure are required for growth have a great deal of evidence stacked against them.
When we examine the human body it is ultimately a machine that desires homeostasis, which basically means it tries to keep everything at a comfortable moderated level. Doing things that force the body to adapt to regularly increased workload will make the body respond so that it can maintain this moderated state of being. In the case of resistance training, this means more muscle. If the intensity or weights are not increased, the body will strive to maintain its current composition, this is why you see many gym rats that have looked the same for the last 10 years; they do the same workout, lift the same or rarely change the weight they lift. However nowhere in there is it required that you perform sets to failure to activate muscle growth (of course there are many other factors that would inhibit such growth, one of the major ones is diet, and not consuming adequate amount of protein to actually build the new muscle your body requires).
Those that advocate the use of training to failure believe that the last rep of the set is the most productive for stimulating muscle growth. However as we know that the body responds to progressive increases in intensity and this can be achieved without ever going to failure.
This is why intensity is more important than the number of reps, and really the number of reps is irrelevant.
Don't train to failure, train to positive intensity.
Going To Failure – Is It Really Necessary?
