Training to failure

If you lift weights mindlessly like most people I see at the gym, you are achieving very little results.  Going through the motions while lifting very light weights and reading a paper is not going to get you that sculpted body you are looking for.

There are many questions that come up around the topic of achieving that lean and shredded look.  How many reps to do in a set, how many sets, how heavy should the weight be, and how often should you work the same muscle group.  These are all legit questions and there are many schools of thought and I won’t even attempt to say that any one works better than others.  I am here to give you one of my approaches to weight lifting and building muscle.

In some cases and with certain muscle groups, you can work your muscle to failure and then not have to worry about it for the rest of the week.  I like this approach and use it periodically since I can plan out my week and make sure I hit every muscle group.  You can use this method to change up your routine, hit each muscle really hard, and force it out of its comfort zone.

What does it mean to train to failure?  It literally means that you’ve exhausted the muscle to the point where even if you rest for a minute you can’t do another rep.  How to get to that point is up to you.  It can be done with light or medium weights and with as many sets as necessary to get you to that point.  It’s not necessary to get to muscle failure with each set but make sure you’ve exhausted the muscle by changing the approach which can be doing different exercises and experimenting with different weights.  For example, if you are feeling muscle fatigue after a few sets, try lighter weight and see if you can continue.

Push ups can certainly be worked this way.  When doing push ups to failure I used to do 100 rep sets, followed up 80, followed by 50, experimenting by doing them fast, then slow, then fast again, and using different positions(wide, narrow, diamond) until I literally could not squeeze in a single one.  I would then not do any push ups for the rest of the week.  By using this approach I noticed that each week I was stronger than before since muscle had proper time to heal and rebuild.

But then there are some muscle groups that can be hit more regularly than just once a week even if you work it to failure.  Abdominal muscles for example can be (and probably should be) worked more frequently but again, that’s up to each individual since our bodies respond differently to the same routine.  Listen to your body and make sure you build in a rest day if necessary.