How often should I work muscles to failure?

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FedUpFattie
FedUpFattie Posts: 6
in Fitness and Exercise
I read a long time ago that to get the most out of your weight training you should routinely work each muscle group to failure. How often do I need to do this for it to be effective??

Thanks! :)

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  • Showcase_Brodown
    Showcase_Brodown Posts: 919 Member
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    Although I don't think this is necessary to be "effective," I would say go to failure pretty much every set. But there are many ways to skin a cat and it may just come down to what you prefer to do.
  • Highwayman_33402
    Highwayman_33402 Posts: 6 Member
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    What are the goals?

    What is 'failure'? Is it the last rep to you cannot do without assistance or dropping the weight? Or is it when your form breaks down and you move into different positions to keep the weight moving?

    For hypertrophy (bodybuilding, gaining mass), the emphasis is on exercise volume. Sometimes the last few reps help with volume. For strength, a number of people that I respect shy away from training to failure.

    Starting Strength
    http://startingstrength.com/resources/forum/showthread.php?t=8345

    Stronglifts
    http://stronglifts.com/5x5/

    MDA
    http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/printthread100595-2.html

    And my favorite...Dan John
    http://danjohn.net/2010/03/a-bit-of-honesty/
    "This insight leaped me into a great realization about why training to failure is such…a failure. You literally make failure a normative movement. The body responds by saving itself the time and effort by reducing the time and effort it takes to fail."

    For strength, training to failure has a place in determining a true 1 rep max, but those sessions should be few and far.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    I would suggest a beginner's full body strength training routine like Starting Strength or Stronglifts. These are full body 3x weekly routines. With both you start of light which allows you to work on form as well as well as develop your smaller helper muscles and tendons and whatnot. You progressively load on weight every session so that in pretty short order you are lifting to almost failure (note that it is pretty unsafe to lift to total failure).

    As a novice, you do not have the requisite knowledge to program your own routine so I would advise against that...it will likely lead to muscular imbalances as well as a greater risk of injury. Note that you don't want to just jump in lifting "heavy" to almost failure...you need to let your tendons and smaller muscles catch up to what your larger muscles are capable of otherwise you end up with tendonitis and the like.

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