Training to Failure - Is it Safe?
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I have been super busy this past week and even though I couldn’t get to the gym, I still fit in some body weight workouts and dumbbell exercises at home. While I was lifting weights, I got to wondering about training to failure and whether or not it is safe. So far I’ve read varying opinions.
What is training to failure?
Training to failure basically means that you perform repetitions of a strength training exercise until you cannot physically do them anymore.
Is training to failure safe?
This is where it gets tricky depending on who you ask or where you do your research. So far I’m reading that bodybuilders practice this method in order to achieve big muscle gains. However, training this way could lead to injury for the inexperienced weight lifters.
Training to failure can also fall into the category of over training which is not good at all. Putting excessive stress on your muscles not only leads to a possibility of injury, but may also require much longer for your muscles to recover.
Training to failure once in awhile may be considered somewhat safe. I think sometimes I do it without even realizing it. I have lifted weights at the gym to the point of failure and felt the pain the next day. It may be wiser to train just short of failure for most workouts since extremely sore muscles are not an indicator of a great workout.
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Comments
Thanks for the post.
I think many people just assume that you have to train to failure, which isn’t necessarily true. This often leads to overtraining as you had mentioned in the article.
Lifting the correct amount of weight for your specific goals is very important, and your last few repetitions should be challenging. But you certainly do not have to achieve “failure” for every set you perform.
Hi! First off, great site, a good source of information for people. Just wanted to comment on this post, as it is something that is tossed around and there are a few opinions on it.
Training to failure is fine. Actually its great. The worst that will happen to you is you will have some sore muscles a couple of days after, but I guarantee you will get bigger results from it, and it is an adaptation process that needs to happen to get gains. You won’t enhance your risk of injury at all, unless you don’t give yourself enough time to recover. (one-two days not performing THAT exercise is more than enough).
In fact, with most of your larger more compound exercises, you do want to get close to failure most times, to actually get gains at all. If you can do 10 reps on something, and the last rep you feel you can do more, then you probably need to up the weight you are simply not giving your muscle enough stimulus. I am of the school of thought that you need to try to get a bit out of your workout, a little bit (not a lot) of pain, for much bigger gains.
You mentioned body builders training to failure. You will actually find the train past failure. Doing little extra things such as assisted ‘burns’, eccentric reps (simply lowering the bar and having something else pick it up for you for example), and other small techniques to really fatigue the muscle!
In regards to over training, it is a shady area. Yes, training to failue every single day, in successive days on the same muscle will lead to over training. But training to failure a couple of times a week won’t. Not a chance at all. Over training is a pretty hard state to get to, and you really need to be working very very hard, way too often, and with very little recovery means or time.
In saying all this, everyone has individual goals and needs, and one training technique may not be suitable for another.
I hope that helps clear it up a bit, it is a bit of a contentious issue, some people mistake training to failure (i.e the last rep being really hard to get out…) and training past failure, burns, assisted reps etc.
Cheers and thanks for all the great info.