Training to failure works; at least for a while. Your body’s first initial response to a difficult weight training stress is to get stronger. The reason your body chooses this response is because it will make it easier for you to lift the same weight the next time you lift it. If you keep placing your body under a difficult weight training stress, it will keep trying to get stronger as long as it has a reserve of recovery power to deal with the training stress. At some point, you will get strong enough to lift enough weight to make it difficult for your body to recover. This is when your body starts to go into a state of overwhelm. You can keep on trying to push your body harder and harder to become stronger, but why would your body want to become stronger and allow you to lift more weight when it is already overwhelmed with the amount of weight that you are currently using? The answer is that it wouldn’t. How do you minimize this problem?
Change Your Strategy
When you reach the point where you can’t push your body to keep on gaining, you need to change your strategy. Quit pushing for max reps and training to failure unless you are testing your strength, which should probably be limited to once every six weeks. Bill Pearl and Vince Gironda were top bodybuilders who trained for many decades. Pearl won the Mr. Universe several times, and Gironda was also an excellent bodybuilder who happened to miss out on placing higher in the contests that he was in because the judges of that era thought he was too muscular.
What Gironda and Pearl Thought About Training to Failure
Not only did these men lift weight themselves, they trained thousands of people and had a chance to observe how multitudes responded to various forms of training. What did both Gironda and Pearl conclude? Don’t train to failure, it is not a good long term training strategy. I personally would say use it as long as it works, but don’t buy into the philosophy that a muscle can’t be stimulated unless it is pushed to failure. Numerous top bodybuilders and powerlifters attained their level of success without going to failure. Listen to Pearl and Gironda
Bill Pearl
Vince Gironda
Lee Hayward also gives his opinion on training to failure with the belief that it is not necessary.
If you don’t train to failure, how hard should you train? I believe in repeating reps of a set as long as you can maintain the same rep speed and the same pace. This means that if your rep speed starts to slow down, or you begin to pause longer and longer between reps in order to gather your strength for the next rep, you are in danger of your producing a stress that your body will object to by ceasing to grow stronger.
Strategy #1: Microloading onto Perfect Reps
If you are stopping your sets at the point where you can no longer maintain the same rep speed and rep pace, you can gain strength by microloading a pound to your lifts every week or every other week. The key is to microload while maintaining the ability to do perfect reps. Perfect reps means that you are using perfect form and adding weight at a rate that allows you to maintain the ability to keep using the same rep speed throughout each set.
Strategy #2: Allow The Marker Rep To Get Easier
A second strategy is to push to the point where you notice that you are pausing longer between reps, or you notice that your rep speed has suddenly become slower in comparison with the previous reps of the set. Keep using the same weight and the same amount of reps from workout to workout until you gain enough strength for the slowness of the last rep to vanish. You will then be able to perform every rep using the same rep speed, including the last rep. This strategy can be repeated over and over to keep gaining strength without overwhelming your body.
If you have been training to failure and it has been working, keep doing it. If it has stopped working, it would be wise to change and I have just given you two strategies that you can try. Best of training of training to you.