The Official Gym & Fitness Thread

Why is failure less important when building strength?
Wouldn't at least the psychological benefit be huge, especially towards comp time?

 

I'm trying to lift more in the true RPE 8-9 range when I lift. Want to try to push more for failure... I guess I just don't care enough to try that hard when the time comes lol.

 

1. Going to true failure wrecks your CNS. Takes days to fully recover. So one max out session means you don’t operate at 100% for the next couple training sessions
2. Psychological also can be bad. If you’re 3-4 weeks out from comp and the max you need to hit is 500 but you don’t get it that day, it can mess with your head when the game day comes. Sometimes leaving the max out for comp is better. Atleast in my experience.

 

That does make total sense. I also know you want to use any max reps to failure sparingly.

I would just think it would be hard to ever test yourself if you don’t do it.
Like I dont compete… so I don’t have to worry about being ready for a comp. I just care about being stronger.

Its the same way in running. You do speed work but rarely ever run race pace on longer runs before race day. Race day you have to have faith in your training and trust you can bring it.

 

Exactly. If you don’t compete then you basically get on a program of some sort and you’ll have a “peak” week where you’re supposed to be the strongest. Just max out that week and bam. You’ll see where you’re at

 

If you train to failure in a typical 8-12 week strength block you basically run out of escalation room. You can touch failure or close to failure very briefly but it is strategically placed at different times in your program, program dependent. You can’t have both high intensity and high volume for very long without de-loading, getting injured and overtraining and then going backwards. (Intensity is basically your proximity to failure).

 

I wonder if that’s why I have this tennis elbow feeling in my left elbow joint.

 

Probably has to do with exercise selection or execution!

 

Yeah, I have to figure out what’s pissing it off. I’m constantly having to put muscle rub on it and take Advil.

 

Isnt your wife a PT?

 

Yeah lol

She says...stop exercising it.

 

The way I read this is if I stay low intensity and low volume I will not injure anything.

 

Then I would listen to my wife.

She can tell you what it is, what causes it, and how to rectify it. Ignoring it just makes it worse. And just FYI long term use of NSAIDs like Advil eventually hinder healing.

I'm jelly. I wish I married a PT. Would save me a lot of time and medical bills.

 

True fact lol

 

There is another issue re: training to failure for competition stuff. When my spouse was in PLing, her coach was adamant that training to failure risked training to fail.

 

So you are telling me that you should never train to failure ever as a strength athlete?

I'm not sure I know of a top strength athlete that doesn't talk about doing failure in training. Now failure doesn't have to mean maxing out. I understand the potential harms of training to failure on sets of 2-3 reps, but see less of an issue with training to failure on sets of 8 reps (for example).

Genuinely interested in the discussion as I know we have very experienced people here on both the hypertrophy and the strength side.

If the answer is avoid that whenever possible, where are the strength people training to in terms of RPE?

 

I’m having a hard time developing my side & lower pecs. I’m wanting that nice clean line and I’m not getting it

Maybe I’m not doing enough decline or need to incorporate copious amounts of dips.

It’s frustrating me though.

I watched this: https://youtu.be/5sHsJJM4nZU

 

Well, I don’t know about strongman, but I do know powerlifters don’t typically train the big three in sets of 8. Absolute strength is low reps and lots of rest. This involves partials, board presses, box squats etc to accustom the body to deal with heavy loads without crushing your cns.

I think real strength athletes, test, set a program, and then test again. Bodybuilders go to failure as it’s about getting blood in the muscle and doing the right amount of damage. So I’m not sure I know enough to use words like never etc, but I will say that from a bb perspective failure is used in a targeted way and is not typically absolute inability to move a weight…the guys who do that are most often still learning what they are capable of/training the movement. BB often uses other mechanisms to fully fatigue a muscle including drop sets, TUT, or my fave, Dogcrap training.

Training to failure (depending on how you define it) has its place but often it becomes about ego over intelligence.

 

So chest shape is largely genetic, definition or “clean lines” at the side is leanness or absolute size.

Build more overall mass and then lean out. No issues with adding all the accessory work but prioritize heavy basics to get over all growth. Presses and dips ftw, no one has gotten huge with cables .

and make sure you aren’t compensating by having your tris/delts doing the work for you, concentrate on the mind muscle connection. If you’re having issues with that, a light warm up of cable flyes can help focus your attention prior to presses.

 

Well said @mindstar