Is it worth training to muscle failure

What is muscle failure

Muscle failure is a condition in which a person is unable to complete a repetition with a given weight and full amplitude. It occurs as a result of fatigue - central or peripheral.

When the central nervous system (CNS) is tired, the excitability of motor neurons - nerve cells that send signals to muscles to contract - decreases. Muscle failure can also cause local or peripheral fatigue. In this case, the muscle fibers themselves get tired, for example, they accumulate products of anaerobic metabolism and interfere with their work.

Approaches to muscle failure can really be useful, but not for everyone and only under certain conditions.

When to train to failure

If you are a seasoned athlete looking to increase strength

The untrained muscles of a beginner receive the necessary stimulus for growth somewhere in 3-5 repetitions to failure. Then a plateau sets in and a greater stimulus does not increase hypertrophy.

By training to failure, you are simply wasting your energy, fatiguing the nervous system and increasing the risk of injury, which is especially true for beginners who are unfamiliar with the correct technique.

But it makes sense for the trained athletes to carry out approaches "point-blank". This technique forces the trained muscles to activate more fibers and provides faster gains in strength.

If you want to build muscle at home by exercising with light weights

When you do a high-intensity exercise, 80-100% of your one-rep max (1RM), your body immediately tense all the muscle fibers to lift such a heavy weight. But when you work with less serious weights, 30-50% of 1R, in the first repetitions only part of the muscle fibers is turned on.

Therefore, low intensity does not lead to significant muscle hypertrophy: some of the fibers that are left without work will not receive an incentive for growth and will not increase in size.

Exercising muscle to failure will help increase hypertrophy when working with light equipment. As fatigue builds up, the body will have to connect more and more fibers to keep moving. So in the last reps before giving up, all muscle fibers will work. They will get the load they need and will grow as efficiently as if you were working with a lot of weight.

However, it is only suitable for the development of muscle mass. To build strength, you still have to work at high intensity.

If you don't exercise very often

Recovery is an important part of the training process. Exercise stimulates growth, but hypertrophy itself occurs during rest. Therefore, in order for muscles to grow, it is important to give the body enough time to recover, otherwise at least part of your efforts will be wasted. Exercising to failure slows recovery by 24 to 48 hours.

This means that point-blank sets will not work for you if you train a muscle group every other day: they simply will not have time to recover.

Splits are another matter, in which each muscle group is loaded 1-2 times a week. With this regimen, you will have time to recover and benefit from training to failure.

In addition, it is worth paying attention to another factor that slows down recovery - age. The older we get, the slower the body regenerates, so older people are better off not using approaches to failure.

If work to failure suits you, you should still not use it in every workout and in any exercise: it is fraught with overtraining and injury. There are several rules that will help you use the technique correctly and get only the benefit.

How to make training to failure only beneficial

Apply the method for simple movements

At the beginning of the article, we talked about the fact that CNS fatigue reduces the excitability of motoneurons, as a result of which the command to contract simply does not reach some fibers. In this case, a part of the muscle remains unused, the fibers do not experience mechanical stress and do not receive an incentive for growth.

Therefore, we must try to keep the nervous system fresh as long as possible.

Training to muscle failure puts a heavy load on the central nervous system, so you should not use this technique in exercises that already put a serious load on the nervous system, namely:

In the explosive elements of weightlifting: snatch and clean and jerk, pulling with detonation.
In complex gymnastics: exits on rings and a horizontal bar, complex types of pull-ups, upside-down lifts, push-ups in a handstand.
In multi-joint movements with free weights: deadlift and bent over row, bench press and standing press, squats, lunges, and others.

And this applies to all people, including experienced athletes. In one study, trained men performed basic multi-joint movements to muscle failure and after 10 weeks gained less muscle mass than those who did over-set sets.

Until failure, you can perform:

Single-joint movements with free weights: lifting dumbbells for biceps, extension for triceps, spreading on the shoulders.
Single-joint exercises on simulators: flexion and extension of the legs, rise on toes for pumping calves.

Such movements are less exhausting for the central nervous system, since only one muscle group works in them. When using sets to failure, the load on the nervous system will be adequate and will not lead to overwork and a decline in performance.

Observe the correct technique

If the technique breaks down during the approach, the exercise becomes dangerous, can lead to muscle damage or other injury. Therefore, it is especially important to correctly recognize when muscle failure occurs.

Failure is when you can't do a single shot with the right technique.

That is, if for the next lift of a dumbbell to biceps you swing with your whole body or do 10 pull-ups with a jerk and skew to one side, the failure has already come. Stop on time.

Do not use constantly

It is best to alternate sets to failure with regular workouts. For example, you can do four sets with a margin, and the last one is "point-blank." This will save the nervous system from overloading and at the same time ensure the inclusion of all muscle fibers.

It is advisable to take into account the periodization. For example, you can turn on sets to failure during peak periods and forget about this technique during your recovery workouts.