Train to failure or not

[Mats Trane]

Hi all

I train 4 times a week with different body exercises.

What are your opinions on training to failure.?

Which is more effective?

train to failure

or like what Pavel calls "greasing the grove" (not training to failure but doing reps and stoping before failure but more times a week).

[JL]

I think most people(e.g., coaches, athletes) are junking training to failure. Across the board (powerlifting, Olympic, bodyweight) few people are advocating it. I really wish better science was avaialble on these subjects. I think I saw one study which had failure vs. not to failure, and going to failure turned out to be better, overall. The maximum strength was negligable, but the amount of reps the failure group was able to do was greater. The flaws, they kept the volume and frequency the same. By not going to failure you can achive greater volume and train with more frequency. Since, greater frequency usually means faster adaptation, the impact of that factor was not evaluated.

[StevenL]

there are too many arguments about this. it depends on how you perceive "failure". to me, failure is going COMPLETELY to failure, as in doing pushups until you can no longer push up even a fraction of an inch. to some, failure means going until you cannot do any more reps in good form, for instance, holding a straddle planche until your hips start to drop. nervous system burnout is a very real thing and can happen easily if you work too hard too often. use your own discretion and if you feel a little beat up, go easier, and if you feel fresh, go a little harder. there's no reason to put a lot of science behind it all.

[Gregor]

One word and my opinion....

I never train to failure->when I was doing exercises to failure my CNS was shutdown constantly. My opinion is If you are not on "juice" it's not wise to train to failure more than once a month...

[braindx]

For strength especially if you're training fairly high frequency (>4-5x a week) you shouldn't be going to failure.

Do you last complete-able rep with good form or one short of that. But if you're starting to to have a sagging core (which is generally the case with a lot of the exercises) it's a good idea to stop because (1) it's going into failure at that point and (2) you're not hitting the exercise as it should be hit which can lead to bad movement patterns.

[Mats Trane]

Thanks all! I love clear answers! No doubt, I won't be going to failure

[Kamali Downey]

Most people who do pure strength work don't train to failure because it would take longer to recover. If you are a bodybuilder who trains each musclegroup once a week yeea it may be fine but probably not for strength enthusiasts.

Consider most olympic lifters train 2-3 times a day, 6 days a week. But never to failure. It works. Training to failure simply isn't necessary unless you're just after pure hypertrophy.

[Arch]

Does anyone have book/article recommendations for subfailure training? I'm trying to read Pavel and Poliquin if I can find them... I'm a former lifter, but now I'm only interested in developing clean&jerk, deadlift, squat, bench, rows in addition to gymnastic work (though I will still do calf, trapezius, abdominal, and bicep/tricep work for vanity's sake). With training to failure, sets were simple (light warmup plus two sets to failure). How many subfailure sets are recommended? How do you know when to stop if you don't go to failure? Any guidance is appreciated (still waiting on the book)...

[Blairbob]

From knowing where your max rep or poundage is, you volumize from there.

If max rep and poundage was say 100x15, you would work at say 50% of that (GreaseTheGroove). If max pushups was 30 or pullups was 10, you would do 15 or 5 reps per set. Weights or reps would stay the same for an 8-12 week cycle under steady state but may differ on a different protocol.

[David Picó García]

The usual schema is 3x5 or 5x5. It's simple put a weight where you could do 6 or 7 and do 5 reps. that way you would be doing 5 sets with the weight of 6 reps. I'm sure you didn't do 5 sets with the weight of 6-7 reps (may be one or two sets of 6 reps).

Also you will find that if you train far from failure, the next day you'll find you can repeat the same muscle group, no pain. I'm sure sure you wont be able to do 4 times a week of pec training (bench press for example), with 5 sets with the rep schema of 12-10-8-6-6 until failure. Training with 5x5 without failure, you can.

[Kamali Downey]

You could also do 8x3 or 10x3.

[JL]

From knowing where your max rep or poundage is, you volumize from there.

If max rep and poundage was say 100x15, you would work at say 50% of that (GreaseTheGroove). If max pushups was 30 or pullups was 10, you would do 15 or 5 reps per set. Weights or reps would stay the same for an 8-12 week cycle under steady state but may differ on a different protocol.

Are you saying do 50 lbs. at 15 reps, or 8 reps at 100 lbs.? I would think 8 reps at 100 lbs., because intensity is the most crucial factor in all strength research I have read. Using fifty percent of my max reps has always been tough to buy into for me. I know many people swear by it. I think I tried it for pushups years ago, and I felt myself get good fast at lower reps, but my total reps didn't see such a dramatic increase. I would love to see the real science behind grease the groove nailed down. Namely, what intensity it works best at, and optimal frequencies. Currently, I wonder if it takes advantage of the maximal power stimulus theory. If you can do ten, but you just do five reps, you don't have any reason reason to leave anything in the bag, and can up the power output. One thing I read was that you can recover faster from power based training faster than maximal strength workouts.

[braindx]

From knowing where your max rep or poundage is, you volumize from there.

If max rep and poundage was say 100x15, you would work at say 50% of that (GreaseTheGroove). If max pushups was 30 or pullups was 10, you would do 15 or 5 reps per set. Weights or reps would stay the same for an 8-12 week cycle under steady state but may differ on a different protocol.

Are you saying do 50 lbs. at 15 reps, or 8 reps at 100 lbs.? I would think 8 reps at 100 lbs., because intensity is the most crucial factor in all strength research I have read. Using fifty percent of my max reps has always been tough to buy into for me. I know many people swear by it. I think I tried it for pushups years ago, and I felt myself get good fast at lower reps, but my total reps didn't see such a dramatic increase. I would love to see the real science behind grease the groove nailed down. Namely, what intensity it works best at, and optimal frequencies. Currently, I wonder if it takes advantage of the maximal power stimulus theory. If you can do ten, but you just do five reps, you don't have any reason reason to leave anything in the bag, and can up the power output. One thing I read was that you can recover faster from power based training faster than maximal strength workouts.

GTG is mainly based on training the CNS component of strength. If you can do 10 and only do 5 reps then with GTG it is expected that you'll be doing another possible 5-10 sets throughout the day. In this case, avoiding failure like the plague is crucial to the success of the protocol so that you don't burn out when you do it the other probable 6 days of the week.

Otherwise, if you wanna set up a study for the protocol be my guest.

Maximal poundages and power train both, but CNS component is very important in expressing strength without substantial increases in muscle size. Uh, read this:

http://physiotherapy.curtin.edu.au/reso ... neural.cfm

Recovery due to power/strength is debatable. A lot depends on how much volume you're doing if both are at max intensity. Sprinting 3+ times a week will burn most people out while squatting heavy 3x a la Starting Strength won't. However, once you get into heavier weights with deadlift for example.. at 600+ lbs DLs it's possible to burn out from one session every week or even one every two weeks. The same would not be true for sprinting or other power expressive exercises.

[JL]

That link did not work.

[braindx]

That link did not work.

It did when I posted it. Their site is probably down for a bit.. for reasons I do not know.

This one should work:

http://web.archive.org/web/200802050349 ... neural.cfm

[JL]

Great, your new link worked. Very concise. Do you know of any way of getting the research for Komi (1986)? I'm interested in how he came to the conclusion of the benefits of periodization.

[braindx]

Great, your new link worked. Very concise. Do you know of any way of getting the research for Komi (1986)? I'm interested in how he came to the conclusion of the benefits of periodization.

I'd try google scholar.. or maybe one of the russian archives. Um, I think Gregor or Ido was talking about that somewhere.

[JL]

I've tried scholar, but just pulled up references. I think one time the title came up, but no content. That might have been NCBI.

What are the Russian archives? That wouldn't be Verkhoshansky's publishings, because the good stuff is in Russian?

[braindx]

I've tried scholar, but just pulled up references. I think one time the title came up, but no content. That might have been NCBI.

What are the Russian archives? That wouldn't be Verkhoshansky's publishings, because the good stuff is in Russian?

That would be the stuff when the USSR existed. I just saw it somewhere on this forum being referenced so maybe talk to Ido or Gregor about it (assuming they don't see this thread).