Training to Failure: Insights on Muscle Growth Techniques

Paul Carter emphasizes that training to failure is not always necessary for muscle growth, depending on load and experience level.

### Understanding Training to Failure: Insights and Practical Applications
* 👋 Hi, I'm Paul Carter, and I'm starting this YouTube channel as a tribute to my friend **John Meadows**, aiming for an **organic conversation about fitness topics**.
* ☕ My goal is to create short, practical videos, around **10 minutes long**, where I discuss common issues in training and provide **actionable insights** for your programming and execution.
* 🔥 A key topic I want to explore is the debate around **training to failure**, which has gained traction over the past year and a half, particularly influenced by figures like **Mike Mentzer** and **Dorian Yates**.
* 📊 Recent meta-analyses suggest that for heavier loads (85-88% of one-rep max), reaching **task failure may not be necessary**, while higher rep ranges (above 10 reps) seem to benefit from **training to failure for maximizing hypertrophy**.
* 💪 When training with heavier loads, **full motor unit recruitment** occurs from the first rep, meaning that the last rep may not add **significant value** and could lead to **unnecessary fatigue**.
* 🧠 I recommend beginners train to failure to develop their understanding of **reps in reserve (RIR)**, while more advanced lifters can effectively gauge their RIR without always **reaching failure**.
* 📈 Ultimately, the decision to train to failure should be based on **individual goals, training status, and the specific context of each workout**, as there's no "**magical**" benefit to that last rep.
* 🙏 I hope these insights help clarify the nuances of **training to failure** and empower you to make **informed decisions** in your fitness journey.

All right. Hi, everybody. I'm Paul Carter. I wanted to open it up, uh, this YouTube channel that way as an O to my, uh, my good buddy John Meadows who opened all of his YouTube videos that way. Hi, everybody. John Meadows here. And I wanted to, uh, start this one off by kind of honoring him with that. I've been asked to do this a lot, and I actually made a multitude of videos that I just ended up deleting because I just didn't like any of them. And I wanted it to be like a very organic format where I just feel like I'm sitting and I'm talking to you guys about some of these topics, and it doesn't have to be so exact on everything, but it's like a bunch of guys sitting around kind of talking about these subjects, and it's not like so granular and so exact and that kind of stuff. That is essentially what Chris and I do the podcast for, is to get more nuance and more granular with this stuff. So for this channel, what I really

wanted to do was to be able to, like, get up, have my coffee, chunk you guys out, you know, like a 10-minute video or something, talking about a simple topic, and give you guys some practical information that you can take away from it as far as your programming, as far as your execution, give you some insight maybe on some places that you think you feel stuck at. So that is kind of the goal of this whe, whether or not I keep doing this or not, but that's where I'm going to start at. My thought process is to broach a lot of the most common issues that seem to plague these discussions in these round tables, and even the research and the hive mind on what side they're on and what side the research actually says, say, what stuff is doing. And so there's only a few topics really, or there's kind of a limited number of topics I feel like people get stuck on and then debate really minor details or nuances in the data that ultimately

don't seem to matter a whole lot when you get down to it, especially when you start looking at long-term results versus short-term goals and then long-term goals, etc., so forth and so on. So, the one that has really been a lit like a big flame, if you will, over the past year and a half or so, is training to failure. And I think there's a combination of reasons why training to failure the last couple of years has become such a hot topic. Number one, there was kind of the resurgence of Mike Miner. I grew up on Dorian Yates, on Mike Miner, Arthur Jones. I did a ton. People would ask me all the time, like, What do you think of Mike Weir's stuff? And it's weird because if they haven't followed me for very long or they don't know my history, you know, they don't know that I came up and based my philosophies off gaining around the way Dorian trained and his philosophies.

which kind of directly came from Mike Miner, which were adopted over from Arthur Jones. So, the last few years, the whole debate about training to failure has become a really big, big, big topic about whether or not that last rep, and I think ultimately that's what we're getting into, is like, is that last rep super important, that failure rep, that task failure rep where you can do another one with good form, where you can't get the full range of motion, and even just defining task failure or what failure is, is, you know, can be a whole nuanced topic. But for defining what task failure is, means you cannot do another rep in that form, in that range of motion. So, it's standardized. That's how you standardize for progressive overload. So, the idea that you need to add in drop sets or partials or any of that kind of stuff, failure, getting to task failure, means you failed at doing that task, or if you've trained long enough, you'll know you won't be able to get another rep. That's also a debated

topic, but if you've been training a long enough time, you know when another rep is not possible, and you don't actually need to attempt that next rep. And I'll argue with anybody to the end of the world. I know when I can get that next rep. Somebody who's less trained, maybe they need to go ahead and attempt those to kind of cultivate that ability to understand where that task failure is going to occur. So, the debate about whether or not we need to reach that point in order to maximize muscle growth, that's the one that continues on now and has for such a long period of time. And I'll try to shed some light on the actual science behind it, then the practical application of that as well. So, the other part that came out that kind of lit this whole thing up was there was the meta-analysis on training to failure, and it showed the same thing that the made regression later. The made regression is just a fancy way of saying, Hey, we took your meta-analysis and we

found some other stuff we felt like should be included, right? So, it's a larger body of collective work that they're going to review. So, the MA analysis and the made regression, what people gloss over and missed, in my opinion, in those things was that they found some commonalities that everybody should be able to walk away from and take and use in a practical application standpoint, meaning you can take away some stuff from that research that will apply directly to your training. What applies directly to your training there is what they found was with heavier loading, that's like 88 to 80, uh, 85 to 88% of your one-rep max, didn't need you to get to task failure the same way higher repetitions did. We'll call higher repetitions here, in my opinion, anything above 10 reps. So, some people, again, say that somewhere around, um, 8 to 12 is moderate and above 12 is high or above 15 is high, but we'll just say if you're getting above 10 or 12 reps, we're

going to call that a little bit higher rep range just for the simplicity. Say we're going to call that a little high rep range, and we're going to call pretty much everything, uh, eight and below nine reps. I guess it's the left-out child of rep range training. Nobody uses a nine rep anything, but um, we're going to call 88 to 85 to 88% of your one rep max, which is going to be somewhere around five reps, depending on the person. It could be six, so, but it's going to be somewhere in that area. But when you get above 10 reps, what they found in the meta-analysis and regression was the higher rep ranges looked like they needed you to get to task failure to maximize the hypertrophy results. Now, there's a reason for this, which makes all the sense in the world. When you're doing higher rep, you have to have an accumulation of fatiguing mechanisms that build up over the course of those reps before a couple of things happens.

and that is there is a high enough degree of perception of effort that says, Hey, do you want to keep going because it's starting to get really difficult? and that difficulty is usually brought on by the increase in metabolites or cardiorespiratory demands, etc., so forth, so forth, and so on. But what ultimately is happening there is that we are increasing the amount of effort that is required to continue the set. So, in order to do that next repetition when it gets to that point, we have to exert a higher degree of effort. And when we exert a higher degree of effort, there's a higher degree of motor unit recruitment that we recruit at that point. So, that's one of the things that happens. The other thing that happens is that metabolites do help in slowing down contraction velocity. So, as we get into those higher repetition ranges and we have mechanisms that are saying, Hey, this is getting harder, do you want to continue? and then we want to continue, and then we give a voluntary effort to continue to recruit higher

threshold motor units, which control the larger fiber types. Now then, we also have fatiguing mechanisms that are causing the slowdown of contraction velocity. So, we have a higher degree of cross-bridging that is occurring between the actin and myosin, and that is what we think of as mechanical tension for those larger fiber types. Now, when you use that for lighter loads and we're doing higher reps, so what it appeared between the meta-analysis and meta-regression is that in order to get the maximum amount of hypertrophy out of those higher rep ranges, we did need to go ahead and train to task failure. An interesting note that I made on the podcast once was, I said, Well, if you're doing high reps, you're already getting all the fatigue that comes with the high reps anyway, might as well go ahead and get all the way to task failure. And that's pretty much how I see it. Now, when using heavier loads, it's not as important for a few reasons. When using heavier loads, you have full motor

unit recruitment from the first rep. So, if you're using 85 to 88% of your one-rep max, it takes a lot of effort from the very first rep to go ahead and move the load, right? So, you're already getting recruiting all of the high-threshold motor units from that very first rep, which means when you're using 85, 88, 90% of a one-rep max, all of those fibers, those largest fiber types, are already going to be active. And then the other thing is most of those contractions are already going to be involuntarily kind of slow, and then they get slower very quickly rep to rep. And then we've also basically reduced. It's already going to feel difficult just because of the fact that it is a heavier loading, so we're already have increased that maximal tolerable perception of effort. And again, once that reaches its maximum threshold is when we reach task failure. But getting back to the whole point of whether or not task failure is needed for a heavier load, it does not seem to.

be um as needed because again we have full mod unit recruitment from the first rep. So if we say take a five-rep max load and we do four reps with it, and we just knock off that fifth rep, what we tend to do is already get a sufficient degree of mechanical tension in those four reps. And then that fifth rep, a lot of times when we're training to task failure where we absolutely that last rep is just a grinder, grinder, grinder, grinder, grinder, there is an inordinate amount of calcium ion overload into the muscle cell on that very last rep. So it ends up kind of being a wash. Yes, it is an effective rep, but it carries more fatigue with it than those sub, the previous reps, the subsequent reps. Um, so the fact is you don't have to train to task failure. I think I used the word subsequent wrong there, didn't I? No, proceeding, right? Okay, so I got it right. No, I did it wrong. Either way, it doesn't matter. I need more coffee. So the point

is um if you're training with heavier loads, you want to go ahead and potentially cut off that top rep. Maybe you don't need to train to failure four or five reps um using a heavy load. So, four reps at a five-rep max load um, five reps at a six-rep max load. I feel like those are kind of good areas to be in if you're going to train uh if you're going to train heavier. The other thing I think that training heavier allows us to do is more adequately gauge our RIR anyway um. I think that RIR takes a little bit of skill. I think for people who have never trained to failure, you need to probably start training to failure so you can kind of cultivate that ability to accurately gauge your RIR. And then after you've done that, if you want to add in RIR type work, you're going to be a little bit closer to your true RIR, which I do think is important. And the reason I say this is because even for myself, knowing where one R is

It can at times be slightly tricky, but I pretty much got one R down. Two R can be, I think, way trickier than one R, and I don't think as many people can accurately gauge three R as they think they can. So, I personally would not recommend training in a three R state. I also think that you're just going to have to do way too many sets in order to get that sufficient amount of mechanical tension across those high-threshold motor units in order to get the results that you're looking for. But I do think you can work in the realms of a 1 to 2 RIR with heavier loading and spare yourself some fatigue. And I think you can use a failure approach built into your progressive overload to kind of gauge and see where your progressive overload is happening or how fast it's occurring across those weeks in the M cycle. So, for a couple of weeks of a 1 R, a couple of weeks of a 2 R, have some methodology that you're using and

then throw in a failure set every so many weeks so that you can kind of get an idea of, Okay, here was my failure set with this load a few weeks ago. Here is my failure set with this load this many weeks, etc., so forth and so on. So, I hope that gives you guys some practical stuff to work with as far as, like, you don't need to train to failure all the time. Every set doesn't need to be a train to failure. There's nothing magical happening on that last rep, whereas Mike B was like, There's something magical that happens on the last rep when you're training to failure. There's the mechanical machinery that gets turned on that causes muscle to grow. That's not true. There's all the mechanical machinery that's happening. It's happening on reps, you know, three reps out from failure, two reps out from failure, one rep away from failure. Yeah, it really just all depends on a multitude of other factors whether you're going to train lighter whether

you're going to train heavier, the amount of hard sets close to failure or to failure that you're going to perform your training status. So, beginners I think should probably train to failure. They can recover faster. More advanced guys probably don't need to train to failure on every set. I think that would actually probably be somewhat counterproductive. So, I hope these kind of give you some initial insights as to the whole should you train to failure or should you not train to failure. And the answer to that really is it just depends. Hope you guys have a blessed day.

Coffee and hypertrophy- how important is training to failure?

LiftRunBang

Paul Carter's YouTube Channel Introduction

Paul Carter opens his YouTube channel in honor of his friend John Meadows, aiming for an organic and casual format.

The channel will focus on common topics in programming and execution, providing practical information and insights.

A key theme will be the debate around training to failure, influenced by the resurgence of Mike Miner and Dorian Yates' training philosophies.

The concept of training to failure, particularly the importance of the last rep, has become a significant topic in fitness discussions.

Task failure is defined as the inability to complete another rep with proper form and range of motion, which is crucial for standardizing progressive overload.

Meta-analyses have shown that heavier loading (85-88% of one-rep max) does not require reaching task failure for muscle growth, unlike higher repetitions (above 10-12 reps).

The Importance of Rep Ranges in Hypertrophy Training

Higher rep ranges (10+ reps) require training to task failure for maximum hypertrophy results due to the accumulation of fatigue and increased effort.

This process leads to higher motor unit recruitment and slower contraction velocity, promoting cross-bridging between actin and myosin for mechanical tension.

In contrast, heavier loads (8 reps and below) do not require training to failure as crucially, due to full motor unit recruitment.

Using 85 to 90% of one-rep max from the first rep recruits all high-threshold motor units, making the fibers active immediately.

The heavier load leads to involuntary slow contractions and a quick increase in perceived effort, with task failure not being necessary for effective training.

Four reps at a five-rep max can provide sufficient mechanical tension, and training to task failure may cause more fatigue due to calcium ion overload in the muscle cell.

Training with Heavier Loads: Key Strategies

Training with heavier loads can involve cutting off the top rep and aiming for four reps at a five-rep max and five reps at a six-rep max.

This approach helps in accurately gauging RIR (Reps in Reserve) and cultivating the skill to assess it.

Working in the 1 to 2 RIR range with heavier loading can spare fatigue while still providing sufficient mechanical tension for optimal results.

Training to failure is not necessary for every set, as progress can be made with reps close to failure.

The idea that muscle growth is solely triggered by the last rep is a myth; mechanical processes occur throughout the set.

Beginners may benefit from training to failure, while advanced individuals might find it counterproductive.