Training to Failure?

[cbo]

Lifted for two years str8 with pretty good gains and stopped.  Now am lifting again and seeing people bigger than i was at a shorter amount of time.  I have been reading a lot about actual routines and I think i may have been overtraining.  I was always led to beleive that you pick a weight that you will fail around 6-8-10 ish reps.  So every set of every workout i was goin to failure.  Now im reading everywhere not to do more than two sets to failure for each bodypart.  Doesnt that defeat the purpose of going past the "burrier",, where the growth is actually stimulated?  If im on my 7th or 8th rep and I still have a rep or two in my, shouldnt i push it to failure or just stop there?  CONFUSED<< HELP

[slaveboy1980]

Lifted for two years str8 with pretty good gains and stopped.  Now am lifting again and seeing people bigger than i was at a shorter amount of time.  I have been reading a lot about actual routines and I think i may have been overtraining.  I was always led to beleive that you pick a weight that you will fail around 6-8-10 ish reps.  So every set of every workout i was goin to failure.  Now im reading everywhere not to do more than two sets to failure for each bodypart.  Doesnt that defeat the purpose of going past the "burrier",, where the growth is actually stimulated?  If im on my 7th or 8th rep and I still have a rep or two in my, shouldnt i push it to failure or just stop there?  CONFUSED<< HELP

you def dont have to go to failure, often stopping a rep or two away can be beneficial. but alot of it depends on how you set up your training: frequency, volume, exercise selection, muscle group trained etc. if your training a muscle once a week (which isnt optimal) going to failure will often not be a problem (altho even here i wouldnt take every set to failure).

going to failure isnt necessary for growth, progressively heavier weights are. so dont be confused.  if your going to failure on every set and you feel that  your body is recovering and your making progress; obviously keep doing what you have been doing.

going to failure gives you a more 'anabolic signal' in the short term compared to not going to failure, but has to be balanced against individual recovery, training volume etc.

if your bodybuilding i think you can go to failure more frequently than if your into powerlifting, other than that your body will tell you if your recovering or not. but you certainly dont have to go to failure inorder to grow.

so id say: take some sets to failure, but not every set. and how much is that? cant give you an exact answer..depends on the factors i have mentiond above.

[MisterMagoo]

there's two kinds of failure: positive and absolute. positive failure is a good thing, absolute isn't.

the difference is basically if you can do 10 reps with X pounds, do 10 reps and stop there. the less you rely on a spotter, the better. of course, if you can have a good training partner, tell him not to help you "grind out" reps on the bench or whatever. if you fail, dump the weight.

pushing your limits is good. continually toasting your CNS isn't. you always want to do as much as you can, but when you drift into grinding through reps with assistance, you're in trouble.

slave also is right that failure is less of an issue in BB'ing, i think, mostly because you're not doing such absolute maxes. for example, trying to grind out a 13th rep on the bench is going to fry you less than going for a 3rd rep with 150 pounds more.

[cbo]

THANKS GUYS,, i needed to hear that,, yeah i was deff talking about bb'ing.  So maybe a set or two for each exercise ill go to failure.  THANKS for the info,, KEEP IT UP!!!!

[YoungBlood]

Some coaches believe that you shouldn't go to failure at all- Pavel Whats-his-name is one of them. I think Coach Poliquin also feels you really shouldn't go to failure either (a bit more on that later).
Guys like Platz always went to failure. Mike Metzner advocated always going BEYOND failure. Once you reach failure on your set, you do forced reps, then forced negatives and partials etc...exactly what Pavel tells people to NOT do.
So what is right? Neither and both.
Occasionally I feel it's OK to go to failure. Every few weeks I think it's OK to do the beyond failure thing. But I do not ever constantly go to failure like Metzner and Trevor Smith believe in. I feel that it will actually teach your body (more so your brain) to fail at that number in that exercise. Stretching it? Maybe, but how many times have you been in the gym and tried to squat or similar, and no matter how hard you try, you just can't get that 13th rep? I tend to believe that if you always fail on 12, you have to try adding a few pounds and backing off on the reps or taking weight off and then adding reps. In other words, find a way to trick your body to adapt by adding a different stimulus.
Charles Poliquin says that you should also stop the set if, for whatever reason, you can't reach about 80-85% of your targeted rep range. If you're aiming for 10 reps on the bench press, if you can only do eight with good form, that's OK. But if you struggle on the seventh rep and need help, you should rack it and change exercises. I think his theory behind this, is that it is training your body to fail and you will not succeed if you keep failing. However, certain lifters (and I've done this too) don't care and if they lift and fail-even on a single- they'll just keep going till they do get the rep/lift.
 Each person has their own theory. I've tried to apply as many as I can to see what works. Everything of Poliquins has worked for me. Particularly the 80% of failure and quitting. Once, for about 6 weeks I did Incline DB Presses. I would get 8 with the 100's one week. The next week I would get 5 on the second set (I was doing 5 sets) and I would quit and move to my next exercise- thus decreasing my total sets per bodypart from 8 to 5. The next week I did my training with nothing different except perhaps a bit more enthusiasm. I got 10 reps. Next week I moved up to the 105's and the cycle continued. When I failed below my target rep range, I quit and moved on. And again, my reps with the same weight increased.
I've also used the HIT method Metzner advocates, and while I felt more thoroughly exhausted at the end of the set/workout, the only difference I noticed was my weights going down and maybe a bit more detail. Overall, I didn't feel the means justified the end (I think that's the saying!) for me and my goal.
 

[candidizzle]

i guess stopping one rep short of complete failure on multiple sets would cause some growth


but i truly believe in going to failure, then past failure...using drop sets or forced negatives or static holds or rest pause training.

i personally utilize forced negatives and drop sets alot in my training lately. it what made me grow in the beginning, and i got away from it for a while, now im doing it again and its workign well. i like training this way better anyways.

[wes]

You should train to failure..............jus t not on every set,or every exercise,and not at every workout.