How Often Should You Take Your Sets to Fail?

The Strength Log

Do you build more muscle mass when you train to failure, versus stopping a few reps short?

In today's episode, we discuss a new study that examined this. Then we’ll zoom out and debate a lot of different scenarios, to give you a better understanding of when it might matter more if you train to fail, and when it might matter less.

Two common definitions of training to fail are muscular failure (when you can’t lift the weight anymore, no matter what), and technical failure (when you can’t lift the weight anymore with the technique you want to use). Both definitions are legitimate, and regardless of which one you use for your training, we believe you will learn useful information from this episode!

We finish by answering a handful of questions from our listeners on this topic, including:

• How hard is knowing when you’re 1–2 reps from failure?
• How does training to fail affect recovery?

Let’s go balls to the wall!

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