Some critics of high intensity training like to make the claim that “training to failure is training to fail.” However, if you consider the real objective of exercise and what it means to train to momentary muscular failure (MMF) it becomes obvious the truth is the exact opposite; training to failure is really training to succeed.

Your goal when performing an exercise is to impose enough of a stress on your muscles and the systems supporting them to stimulate your body to adapt by improving their capabilities, making you stronger and better conditioned. The more intensely you work – the greater your effort relative to your momentary capability – the greater the stress and the more effective the stimulus for improvement. Your results from exercise are directly proportional to your intensity of effort and have more to do with this than any other training factor, including things like the load used, specific repetition methods, set and repetition schemes, etc.

When you begin an exercise, your intensity of effort is roughly equal to the percentage of your one repetition maximum you are using. If you are capable of lifting one hundred pounds one time in a specific manner, lifting only seventy pounds in the same manner requires only a seventy percent effort at the beginning of the exercise (repetition maximums are specific to the manner an exercise is performed, since different repetition methods, ranges of motion, repetition speeds, etc. can make an exercise harder or easier). As your muscles fatigue each subsequent repetition requires an increasing percentage of your decreasing strength, a greater intensity of effort. When fatigue has reduced your muscles strength enough that the force they are able to exert matches the force of the resistance  you are working against and you reach MMF, you are working at maximum intensity.

If you quit an exercise before reaching MMF you may still stimulate improvements in muscular strength and size and other general, trainable factors of functional ability, but not to the same degree as you would if you continued to MMF and worked as intensely as possible. If you quit an exercise before reaching MMF you also will not know exactly how many repetitions you might have been able to perform; you won’t know if you would not have been able to complete another repetition in proper form, or if you could have done one, or two, or even three more. Without this knowledge it is difficult to evaluate changes in performance on a workout to workout basis which can be helpful in adjusting your volume and frequency of training to improve results.

So, several repetitions into an exercise when your muscles are burning, your heart is pounding in your chest, and every nerve in your body is screaming for you to quit, remember it is the last few hardest repetitions of an exercise and especially the very last rep when  you achieve MMF that matter most, and ask yourself what is more important? Making the best possible progress towards your training goals?  Or avoiding the momentary discomfort of continuing the exercise?

What does training to MMF really train you to do? It trains you to persevere through pain and discomfort to achieve your goals. It trains you to work even harder when things get tough, instead of quitting. It trains you to be stronger mentally as well as physically and builds even greater self-discipline that carries over to everything else you do. Training to MMF does not train you to fail; it builds and strengthens the traits that allow you to succeed.

Not training to MMF trains you to give up when things get uncomfortable. Not training to MMF trains you to avoid hard work. Not training to MMF trains you quit at something when you should be giving it everything you’ve got instead. Not training to MMF is what really trains you to fail.

In this week’s videos I explain the proper role of exercise in a fat loss program and why high intensity strength training is superior to “cardio” for improving body composition.

For more on high intensity training and fat loss read Getting Ripped.

Question: My girlfriend started training a few months back and now wants to change gears and not gain any more muscle but retain muscle mass. What is the right approach? Is not progressing on her lifts anymore going to do the trick?

Answer: While very few men don’t want to gain more muscle (if a man says they don’t want more muscle they’re either an athlete trying to avoid going up a weight class, or they’re lying) and even fewer women will gain enough muscle for this to be a problem (unless they’re using anabolic steroids or other growth drugs). However, there are some women who are naturally very responsive to strength training and do gain muscle quickly and may want to simply maintain their physique without continuing to gain beyond some point.

You’ve already guessed the answer; the way to stop gaining and maintain what you have is to simply reduce and remove the key factors from your workouts that are required for stimulating muscular strength and size increases; intensity and progression.

If you stop progressing the resistance on exercises for muscle groups she doesn’t want to keep growing and have her perform those exercises only for a fixed number of repetitions whether or not she has achieved momentary muscular failure and maximum intensity of effort, those muscles will stop getting bigger and stronger. Assuming you make no other changes in her workout, if you keep her resistance and repetitions the same on those exercises they will eventually cease to be challenging enough for her to stimulate further improvements in strength and size.

The lack of these factors is a big part of the problem with many people’s training and the reason they are not making gains in strength and size. The vast majority of people do not train anywhere near as intensely as they are capable of, and many do not keep a workout chart or journal to track and evaluate their performance and systematically progress the resistance they use. Without these their progress will be hit and miss, and far from optimal, if they make any noticeable progress at all. So, to look at this another way, if you want to stop making muscular strength and size gains another solution would be to do what almost everybody else in the gym is doing, and if you want to get the best results possible do the opposite of them, train with a high intensity of effort and with progressive resistance.

In this week’s videos I explain what momentary muscular failure is and why it is important for getting maximum results from your workouts in part one, and answer your questions on training to momentary muscular failure in part two.

In the first of a new high intensity training video series on my YouTube channel I explain what makes an exercise good or bad, why some good exercises are often wrongly considered bad, and how some bad exercises can be altered to make them good.

A friend recently shared with me an interview on the We Do Science podcast with Dr. Keith Baar from the physiology dept at UC Davis where he discusses the effectiveness of training with a single set to failure versus multiple sets. The first twenty minutes of the podcast focuses mainly on mTOR and hypertrophy, but a little after the twenty three minute mark the interview turns to the subject of one set versus three or five, and training to muscular failure. Although Dr. Baar isn’t saying anything I haven’t told you before (as a general rule you should perform one set per exercise to the point of momentary muscular failure) I find it interesting to hear other people’s take on it  and I think you will too: 

Berger isn’t the only one claiming this, but the majority of research comparing single and multiple sets does not show a significant difference in results (2, 3, 4). If you are training intensely enough, one set is not only as good as three or more sets for muscular strength and size increases, it is better because in the long run you’re less likely to overtrain and it will save you both time and wear and tear on your body; it gives you both a greater return on the time and effort you invest and a lower risk.

Dr. Baar: And so, you know, some people have challenged him on this and his comeback was that, well, you know, if I had said that one set was as good as three all of these practitioners would have come at me and said that I was wrong. Well, that’s not science, that’s just cowardice.

If you go back and you look, people who really believe that three sets are better, Stu Phillips believes that three sets are better than one, he published a really nice study where he showed sure enough you can get a little bit more hypertrophy but that’s because it was a relatively short study. Strength gains were exactly the same whether you did three sets of 80% or one set of 80%. So, what we’re learning is that it’s not important necessarily, what your volume is, what the volume of load is. It looks like what’s important is that you apply a load, and that you apply that load to failure.

If you’re only looking for muscle growth you can do it at 30%, 40%, whatever. Bodybuilders traditionally have done this where they lift a light weight lots of times they get to failure, muscle still grows nicely. If you want to grow strength rather than muscle size, so if you want to grow both strength and size together, now what you have to do is you have to lift a heavier weight to failure. If you are doing an exercise that you can get to failure then one set’s enough. So if you’re doing an exercise in a machine and you can do say, a leg press and you can get all the way to momentary muscular failure where you can’t press the weight up and even you can’t resist the weight in the negative direction, that’s what we call momentary muscular failure, one set is going to be sufficient to activate all the hypertrophic stimuli.

As I’ve explained elsewhere, although some people may respond better to higher loads and lower reps or time under load (TUL) and others to lower loads and higher reps or time, in the long run load has less to do with your muscular strength and size gains than your intensity of effort. If you value your long term joint health and functional ability though, you should not use loads that are too heavy for you to maintain reasonably good form for the full duration of an exercise. Also, although going to the point of eccentric muscular failure would definitely ensure you’ve recruited and effectively stimulated all the motor units in the targeted muscles if you do this on a regular basis for most or all of your exercises it can also be harder for some people to recover from.

Dr. Baar: If you’re doing a different exercise, say you’re doing a snatch, or say a squat, or a clean, where because of the small muscles that you need to have active in order to complete the exercise there’s no way that you can get your big muscles to failure, now what you have to do is you have to add subsequent sets because one set, you can’t get close to failure. You can only produce the motion then the small muscles of your back or the muscles of your grip are going to fail. So you need to come back with another set, and another set, and another set until you get closer and closer to failure. We know that because if you do, like I said the 30%, so you do a lower weight, and you do it to failure you get a hypertrophic stimulus, we know that because if you do blood flow restriction and you do a resistance exercise you get closer to failure.

This depends on how you perform the exercise. Unfortunately, the way most people perform many exercises this can be a problem. Fortunately, it is possible for you to safely perform exercises like squats and deadlifts to failure without the smaller muscles of the lower back or grip becoming a limiting factor if you know what you’re doing (I do not recommend snatches or cleans for anyone other than competitive weightlifters, however, since they provide no general physical benefits you can’t obtain more safely and effectively with other exercises). If you squat with sufficient depth and proper turnaround technique and you avoid locking out much less load is required and your back will not be a limiting factor. The same goes for deadlifts if you avoid setting the weight down between reps and use proper turnaround technique. However, if your grip is still a limiting factor during deadlifts you can work around it using straps or hooks (but not until after your grip starts to fail) and perform additional direct exercises to strengthen your grip.

This also has a lot to do with your mental focus. You’ll find you can reach failure with the target muscles in compound exercises like squats and deadlifts if you make a conscious effort to feel and focus on intensely contracting them rather than just thinking about making the weight go up and down. Remember, an exercise is something you do to your muscles with the weight, not something you do to the weight with your muscles.

Dr. Baar: So, the reason for this, the reason that there is this distinction is because in humans we don’t recruit all of the muscle fibers within our muscle except when we get to failure. So, when you’re not at failure you haven’t produced the load across all of the muscle fibers and as a result you are not getting activation of the signaling pathways in every muscle fiber, and specifically not in the biggest muscle fibers because the way that you work is you start with the smallest motor units that are going to be able to do the exercise, and if you don’t go to failure only those small units get activated, and those aren’t the ones you’re trying to activate by really pushing yourself to failure. As you get to failure you have to recruit bigger and bigger motor units until you’ve recruited every motor unit within the muscle and now every unit within the muscle has felt the load. As a result you get the stimulus across every motor unit. That’s true if you’re doing blood flow restriction, if you’re doing a low weight to failure, no matter how you do it what you’re trying to do is get the load across each muscle fiber.

Although you may have recruited all the motor units in the targeted muscles before you achieve momentary muscular failure, it is better for you to go all the way just to be sure. Then, after you think you’ve achieved momentary muscular failure keep contracting the targeted muscles as hard as you can for at least five more seconds to be really sure.  If you’ve still got doubts or questions about training to momentary muscular failure read some of my other articles on the subject:

Q&A: Training To Momentary Muscular Failure

Q&A: Criticisms Of Training To Failure

Poor Form Causes Injuries, Not Training To Failure

References:

1. Berger RA. Effect of varied weight training programs on strength. Res Q1962;33:168–81.
2. Carpinelli RN. Berger in retrospect: effect of varied weight training programmes on strength. Br J Sports Med2002;36:319–24.
3. Carpinelli RN, Otto RM, Winett RA. A Critical Analysis of the ACSM Position Stand on Resistance Training: Insufficient Evidence to Support Recommended Training Protocols. Journal of Exercise Physiology Online 2004;7(3):1-60
4. Fisher J, Steele J, Bruce-Low S, Smith D. Evidence Based Resistance Training Recommendations. Medicine Sportiva Med Sport 01/2011; 15:147-162.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly using analogies in learning, thinking, and communicating, and I use them frequently when teaching exercise principles. I’ve written about a few of my favorites here, including the sun tan analogy, the clothing analogy, and the swimming pool analogy. Some of you may also be familiar with the analogy comparing the futility of bailing a sinking boat with some small container to the inefficiency of some means of solving a problem, such as attempting to out-exercise a bad diet. I recently read a great version of this written by HIT trainer Tom Traynor, which I’ve quoted here with his permission:

A parable: You have a boat. But it’s taking on water slowly somehow. The short-term immediate solution is: Start bailing out the boat. With a Dixie Cup. So you start endlessly and relentlessly bailing water out with the Dixie cup – scoop-scoop-scoop-scoop and maybe – at best – manage to almost keep up with the water intake.

Oh, by doing this your boat might not sink – so fast. But it’s going down – trust that. But if you try to use the boat taking time off from bailing – it of course takes on water at an accelerated rate. You cannot really use the boat for much as you are constantly bailing – or else.

Moral: The water intake is food-like substances, crap and alcohol coming in through your pie hole. You body is taking on fat. (the water). By constantly bailing (“cardio”) you may see a slower rate of water intake (body-fat accumulation).

But constantly bailing is not the answer. The problem is your pie hole management (the hole on the boat)! The answer is not to constantly bailing out the boat with the Dixie Cup–the Dixie being long, slow, relentless, chronic, “cardio”.

You need to patch the fricking pie hole – man!

Related to this is the leaky boat analogy: Often, when there is a problem or something is going wrong we tend to look for a single, large, obvious cause when the problem is actually the result of a multitude of smaller causes. It’s like being on a leaky boat looking for a big hole to plug that may or may not be there while ignoring all the little ones because you don’t think they could be the source of all the water you’re taking on.

One little thing might not make much of a difference to your long term results, but a lot of little things can add up and undermine an otherwise effective exercise program and diet just like a lot of little leaks can sink a boat. You shouldn’t focus on these to the exclusion of the things that matter most to your results – get the big things in order before you start worrying about the little ones – but be aware of them and how they can affect your progress and make the necessary changes to improve your training, diet, or other lifestyle factors.

Question: I just tried a few of the exercises from your ebook Timed Static Contraction Training and they are an absolute killer! I think I need to build up to the 90 seconds, though, because I am used to short duration isometrics. Maybe 20:20:20? What do you recommend?

Answer: Because of the longer duration and higher average intensity many people who previously only performed traditional isometric training methods find timed static contractions (TSC) extremely challenging, especially the squats. If you’re not used to doing them it can be difficult to work through the burn and maintain the prescribed intensity of effort during the second and third phases. Rather than starting with a shorter time and building up, though, you should alter the relative lengths of the phases while keeping the total time the same.

While a shorter time would still be effective for improving muscular strength and size as long as your intensity of effort is high, I recommend keeping the time longer to also create more of a metabolic and cardiovascular demand and for safety, both of which are covered in detail in the book.

To determine how much to adjust the duration of the phases you should first attempt to perform each phase as explained in the book. Keeping track of the time, make a note of when either the burning becomes unbearable or you start to hold back your effort on an exercise. Do this for a few workouts. If you are able to continue the third phase for five or more seconds each time there is no need to adjust the durations, just keep doing it and you will eventually be able to work through the burn and maintain a maximum effort for the full time. If you are only able to continue for about the same amount of time, then reduce the third phase to this amount of time and add the time you took off the third phase to the first. For example, if you are only able to get through fifteen seconds of the third phase, reduce it to fifteen and increase the first phase to forty-five seconds. Then, after a few workouts increase the third phase and reduce the first phase by five seconds. When you are able to maintain maximum effort for the full  third phase, do it again, until you’re up to the full thirty seconds.

Question: Should I vary the order of my exercises from time to time? If I don’t, won’t the exercises I do later in the workout progress more slowly because I can’t use as much weight? Is it better to alternate between exercises for different muscle groups so I can use more weight or do all the exercises for one muscle group before moving on to another like pre-exhaust? How long should I rest between exercises if I just want to get bigger and don’t really care about cardio?

Answer: If your primary goal is to get bigger and stronger the two most important factors are intensity of effort and tension, in that order. So, you should perform each exercise to the point of momentary muscular failure in an order and with enough rest in between to maximize the resistance you are able to use in strict form and for at least a moderate time under load (between thirty and ninety seconds). You should also use a repetition method like SuperSlow, negative emphasized reps, or rest-pause reps which make it possible to use more resistance for the same amount of time.

Every exercise you perform causes both systemic and local muscular fatigue that affects every subsequent exercise, so although it might appear that you are progressing slowly or have plateaued on exercises done later in your workout this might not be the case depending on the exercises you are doing. For example, if you are making consistent progress on the first pushing exercise in a workout but appear to be stuck on the second, consider the increases in weight and/or reps on the first make the second more difficult even if they are separated by a few exercises, and just maintaining the weight and reps on the second would indicate improvement. Although altering the order would not alter the intensity of either exercise since intensity of effort is always relative to your momentary ability, because it would allow you to use relatively more resistance on whichever exercise is performed first it may be beneficial in the long run and would also allow you to compare progress on each of those exercises when unaffected by the other. If you are going to do this, however, it is important that you always write down the order you perform the exercises in so you’re able to compare performance on exercises performed at the same point in your workouts.

Alternate pulling exercises like chin-ups with pushing or leg exercises to prevent your grip from becoming a limiting factor.

Alternating between exercises for different muscle groups also allows you to use more resistance for each exercise since local muscular fatigue would be less of a limiting factor, but without having to rest as long between exercises so that you can make more efficient use of your time in the gym. Although rushing between exercises has been shown to have a beneficial effect on anabolic hormones like testosterone and growth hormone this effect is small, and probably not enough to offset the benefit of being able to use more resistance. Moving more quickly between exercises would be more effective for metabolic and cardiovascular conditioning, but these will still improve somewhat with slower paced workouts as long as you are training intensely enough.

When changing your exercise order there are a few general rules  you should follow:

1. Exercises should be performed in order from the largest and/or most muscle groups which require the most energy to the smallest and/or least muscle groups which require the least energy .
2. To prevent your grip from becoming a limiting factor during compound pulling exercises, they should be alternated with exercises which do not challenge your grip as much and before any direct forearm and grip exercises.
3. Direct exercises for your abs and low back should be performed after exercises which require them to work hard to maintain proper body positioning.

Although alternating between exercises for different muscle groups will reduce the effects of local muscular fatigue, if you want to reduce the effects of systemic fatigue on the resistance you are able to use for subsequent exercises you should rest just long enough that you do not feel you will be limited by it. You don’t need to wait for a few minutes between exercises, or until your breathing and heart rate return to normal (which could take more or less time depending on your current level of conditioning). Rest just long enough that you do not feel like you will run out of breath on the next exercise.

For more on exercise order read Q&A: Exercise Order And Performance, Dynamic Exercise Order for Greater Strength and Size Gains, Q&A: How To Bring Up Lagging Exercises?, and the chapter Exercise Order in High Intensity Workouts,