Should You Exercise Until Failure 🤔
I’ve always wondered this should I exercise till failure or a couple of reps from failure?
There’s good evidence to suggest that training to fail creates more muscle stimulation, which could potentially boost improvements to muscle strength and size. “Exercising to failure can fully activate your muscles and lead to more muscle growth,” Mazzucco said But wait there's more. This is interesting because there is another article that says “The main results of this study show that there is no significant difference in strength gains between training to failure and conventional training.”
Another study showed it had an advantage but there can be a downside. When you put on a lighter weight and do 20 reps then it becomes more of a cardio workout.
Training to fail promotes excessive muscle damage. Of course the way we build muscle is by creating microtears in our muscle and when we recover it regrow. This excessive muscle damage takes longer to recover, which means you can’t train as much.
If you’re following the 90-percent rule, and sticking between 60 to 85 percent of your 1-rep max, you can train to failure between 2–4 times per week.
When you don’t get enough rest it can lower testosterone and when you lower testosterone these things can happen “a sudden drop in performance, fatigue, and trouble sleeping. But that’s not all — research has shown that repeated intense exercise without adequate rest can cause a significant decrease in testosterone.”
muscle protein synthesis is lower when you don’t train very hard in your sets as opposed to when you go to failure. Which again would theoretically mean more growth when you train to failure given the importance of protein synthesis levels for growth.
Actually leaving a couple of reps in the tank can improve your overall sets by not decreasing reps as the gym sessions go on.
This diagram also suggests for optimal muscle growth its best to leave a couple of reps.
Conclusion
A lot of the articles are saying a different thing but there are things you can get out of all of them. Training to fail provides more muscle stimulation but it damages muscle more, which gives you a longer recovery time and if you don’t fully recover it could lower testosterone. So leaving a couple of reps in your set is better then training to failure.
