Should you train to failure ?
Today we’re going answer this question. For anyone that may not be aware. Training to failure or complete fatigue is when someone goes through repetitions in a movement, and they continue to do so until they can’t complete anymore.
What we’re going to cover
- Benefits of training to fatigue
- Potential unseen downsides
- How to effectively implement it into your own training.
Benefits
All right, guys. First of all what we’re going to do is go through the benefits of training to failure or complete fatigue. I’ve got our main two here
Psychological – overcoming adversity or challenges.
Physiological – positive physiological adaptations (getting better)
Psychological
Let’s create an example – you’re in the gym, say for instance you’re going through a max effort on the reps, so you’re going to do as many as you can until you can’t do anymore.
That sense of achievement you get by completing more than you thought may have or pushing through those harder reps can be really beneficial in creating confidence in and out of the gym
Physiology
Maximal muscle fiber recruitment and fatigue – When someone goes to complete fatigue and they can’t do anymore reps that means they have fatigued out or all the fibers in that muscle or the majority of
Metabolic fatigue – To put that in a simple way it’s cell stress. Instead of the actual tissues getting stressed it’s more stress within the cell. There are your main two benefits there.
Potential downsides you may not be seeing
Total training volume
What that is is just the amount of tonnage you’ve done at the end of a session. A very easy way to think about that, if I bench pressed 100 kilos once, that’s 100 kilos of total volume, so if you do it five times, you’ve got 500 kilos, and then obviously it continues on.
A quick way to work tonnage out ! ( reps x sets x weight = tonnage)
To give you a quick example,
Scenario 1 – if someone was using training to failure as their main method,and let’s say they’re going to do five sets with 100 kilos, and then they hit their first set, let’s say they get seven reps,and then they hit their next set, they’re fatigued, so they won’t get the same amount of reps again. They may hit five, and then they’ll induce more fatigued. Now they may only get three reps on their last three sets.
Scenario 2 – Where someone else, what they might do is keep it conservative and just do five sets of five at 100 kilos, and therefore they’re going to actually do more. They might seem as they’re the ones not struggling so much, but they’re just playing it smarter and they’re going to have more tonnage at the end of the session.
Lets look at the tonnage of each scenario –
Scenario 1 – (set 1) 7×100 + (set 2) 5×100 + (set 3) 3×100 + (Set 4) 3×100 (set 5) + 3×100 = 2100kg
Scenario 2 – 5x5x100 = 2500kg Scenario 2 achieved 300kg more work !
“Why does tonnage matter?”
For anyone that doesn’t know, total volume’s going to be your biggest contributor of fatigue, therefore resulting in adaptation. (strength and size)
Psychological and Physiological Burnout
We could go into this further, but today i’m going make it real simple.
If you feel as though you have to train to complete fatigue every single session, mentally and physically you’re going to burn out
Injury
You’ll notice that when training to failure or fatigue your form will break down. A little bit of that’s okay. Though you don’t want to ingrain that movement pattern.
What I mean by that is, say for instance we have a set of ten, after the fifth rep you start to get fatigued and lose your form there. What you’re actually doing is ingraining the wrong movement pattern there.
With your main lift, say bench press, squats, and deadlifts, and any kind of rowing movement, it’s actually a skill within itself, and you want to do that skill well so you can move more weight and get more from the movement.
If you fail to do the skill well and then start to ingrain poor movement habits over time, and then you continue moving on in that way and training to failure, an injury is just a matter of time.
How to implement training to fatigue
You want to implement it with purpose !
What I mean by that is it shouldn’t just be thrown in randomly.It should serve a purpose so you can actually get the maximum reward from using it.
I’ve got some key ways to use it that I’m going to give you now.
AMRAP sets(as many reps as possible)
Say I’ve got someone squatting, I’ve got five sets of five set up and the lifter successfully completes the first 4 sets of 5 with relative ease and they’re feeling good. What I’ll let them do is AMRAP the last set because it doesn’t affect total volume. All they can do from there is increase volume.
Isolation exercises
Let’s say you’re doing a chest or a push workout, chest flies would be an isolation movement. Training to complete fatigue with this movement isn’t going to be too detrimental because ideally you’ve already done your main lifts. You’ve hit your pressing, you’ve hit your multi joint movements, and then from there you’re going to go into the isolation movements. You’ve already created your tonnage. You’re now more trying to target the muscle itself, so it’s a perfect time to use train to fatigue or failure in your programming.
To Summarise
Most of all, remember to use it on purpose. Don’t feel as though you have to go into the gym and just hit every set to failure without long term intent. It actually can be very detrimental and that’s why some people are stuck on the same weights year in and year out. You want to use it to your advantage, so remember implement it with purpose, AMRAP rep sets, isolation work, and then also if you’re looking for that psychological benefit as well GO for it !