The Latest Science on Training to Failure | Educational Video | Biolayne 

I have an innate sense of failure as soon as I wake up.

I've been in this game for a decade, and the last few years I've totally given up focusing on the science and research. I'm honestly not sure it matters what you do as long as there's intensity, consistency and progressive overload. I dunno if anything matters outside of that.

This is so off topic but man it is fucking weird that I’ve been watching you on youtube since the 2012 era when the fitness scene was dominated by Physiques of Greatness, Tigerfitness, icecreamfitness, twinmuscleworkout, Matt Ogus AKA the half natty king, etc. Can’t believe how many channels have come and gone in the last decade, and you’re still consistent as ever. Amazing.

Such an educational video! Great stuff man, thanks for the useful tips. Question... have you ever tried Next Level Diet? I got a muscle-building meal plan from them and I love it.

John Meadows basically believed in the same principles year's ago. "You don't need to take every set to failure, but i would recommend taking the last set to failure". Also the need to "take lighter sets to failure but maybe not on heavy weights".

I can't keep up with all of these studies and the recommendations from them. I am just going to keep lifting 😄 I figure it is better than nothing.

Appreciate the clarification and context for this study. Dovetails well with other discussions I've seen defining "what do we mean by failure" and different ways to push additional reps using techniques like mechanical drop sets or supersetting with extended stretching.

I love when science seems to indicate my instincts were correct! I like training compounds a bit further from failure, but isolations to absolute failure. It’s just what has felt best for me, and has seemed to generate the best results for my goals.

Thank you for continuing to educate, Layne

Thank you and your team for everything you do.

squats to failure is its own special kind of hell

Absolutely loved this video! Great content! Thank you 😊

Nice breakdown with some good practical advice! Excellent thanks!

Thanks for the great info Biolayne. 🔥👍🏻

Solid explanation, help to bridge the gap and some things I’m currently diving into, I appreciate that, thank you!

Love your study break downs

I was looking forward to this video when that study came out and saw all the kind of misinterpretations. Thanks for the great info

Great content as usual. Now we need a video on this sucralose genotoxic finding

You are right that most people don’t train hard enough. I’ve been training to failure on most sets for 40 years with great success for strength and hypertrophy.

Every video talk about how most people don't know what training to failure is, but rarely do we hear about those of us who feel like they're wasting their time if they don't reach failure or close to failure on most of their sets. I have a really hard time pacing myself, when I go to the gym I want to make it count, but this mindset also mean Im often burning myself out. Im stuck in a cycle of peaking, burning out and coming back. Everytime I have trained with cycles with set weights, Ive made significant improvement because the set weights keep me from pushing too hard consistently, think something like 531. Very informative video. Love the content. Thank you!

Great video Layne. In my experience, low volume, at failure always produced most muscle growth for me. Going to failure on compound exercises are also extremely dangerous.

So for hypertrophy, we really go with Mike Mentzer's principle, great.

Excellent advice!

Thanks for this video sir! 🙌

Excellent video as usual

Would love to see a study addressing Mentzer-style high intensity single sets, where you have a spotter help you go far past failure, wait 10 secs, go again, repeat, repeat, drop weight, repeat, repeat, etc. And not to do the study on untrained people, like most of these studies seem to be. I just switched to this style after years of standard volume training and feel like I'm triggering adaptation like never before. Plus with the emphasis on multiple days recovery between workouts, all the issues with aches and pains and chronic fatigue are gone.

Good info. Appreciate it

extremely informative, must watch video

Good stuff layne.

Very helpful. Thanks a lot

thank you for sharing the good info

Aside from that I get good results, this study makes me feel pretty good about my approach to hypertrophy. I figure I stick in the RPE 8-9 range for the vast majority of working sets, both for safety (no spotter/partner) and longevity (injury avoidance). The most detrimental thing I can think of is an injury that keeps me from working out; I’m not competing in anything, so even even less effective lifting from time to time is better than convalescence.

70 yr old natural. I know what I think is failure is not my actual gun to head failure. In effect, I go with what feels like failure which is probably 1 or maybe 2 RIR. It's safer, I'm old but using heavy loads, I grow, & can outdo many of the young guys.

Layne, you're my hero

thank you.

Your discussion about going to failure if you haven’t before is why i have recently considered hiring a trainer.

Having inflammatory arthritis…not always training to failure has been important for me to stay loose, recover better, and protect the joints

I love this channel!

Great vid thanks

Great video 👍

Thanks!

Hey Layne, I'd love to see a video on the topics of minimum effective volume and maximum recoverable volume

Great vid 👍

Really interesting stuff. I'm stoked about seeing this digging specifically into strength, and not just hypertrophy. Much of the research I'm familiar with only does the latter. As someone who is a natural body builder but happens to care fairly little about that, but a lot about strength (or longevity more generally), I'm happy to see the relationship visualized between RIR and strength development. In my case I probably should stop going to failure on everything (really squeezing out cm's/second for those last 1-2 reps), because that's what I thought strength probably needed as much as hypertrophy needs it. Perhaps now my (lagging) strength will start matching my (better developed) physique, which always makes me feel like a pretender :P

Depends on how you’re measuring strength. As Layne said, strength expression is a skill. So if your goal is to move heavy weight for low reps, that’s a specific skill you must use heavy weight to improve. But it’s not an accurate measure of strength. Strength is the amount of force a muscle can produce. Best measured by peak torque. I bet if you compared the groups with peak torque as your measurement of strength, lower and higher reps to failure would be very similar

The fatigue from high loads failure is also not the same from lower load failure. I agree with staying away from failure in early sets of a compound lift.

For my first job, I would get up early every day to take the train to failure. 😅 Even though I’m relatively new at this, if I’m doing 3 sets of an isolation, I like to countdown the RIR as 2,1,0 so I hit failure on the last set. Failure for me is either do or die but I can’t, or if my form breaks down enough that a bad rep isn’t worth the number or could cause injury. Good video! Regards to all.

Funny how so many people knock training to failure when they really don't know what it is because they haven't experienced it yet. It truly separates the crowd and you'll gain immense self confidence in yourself when you train, even one workout, to failure! Folks wonder why Mike Mentzer and HIT proponents recommended multiple days between training. Because they were bladting their muscles and nervous system. And it works for many people. Two things no one ever discusses; the infrequency leaves you ample time to live life and the aerobic conditioning from training compound movements to failure is immense

Great breakdown. Too many people extrapolate what feeds their bias - I agree with everything you said, this was my takeaway from the study, also, my 18 years experience. Taking compounds to failure was never a good idea-dropped bars on my chest, dropped squat bars, tweaked my back (deadlifts). The issue I find is, there are too many enhanced people that forget their body responds a bit differently to the nattys. No beef, just facts.

Pausing or racking the weights between a certain number of reps helped myself train close to failure but not to failure. This allowed myself to go heavier without the need for a spot. It takes some training beforehand to get the muscles and joints to this level. I wouldn’t start out training like that because it requires a certain level of fitness and strength to do it safely. On major strength exercises I wouldn’t bother adding weight smaller than 25 Lbs. For example 135,185, 225, 275, 315. I also like to train without stopping. Starting out with a weight I can only take the time to add more weight and move straight into the next exercise all the way to three sets.

Thanks for the info. I think now I have a better idea of what I need to do. For sure, drop weight, do more reps, stop before I drop the weights

Oddly, this is how I've been training for several years (except I would intentionally go beyond failure on the my last compound exercise set, e.g. bench press--forced reps x2 with spotter). Based on this information I would have ignored the forced reps, but for the most part I only try to fail on the last set with compound lifts. With accessory lifts, I'll fail only the the last one or two sets (typically at a much higher rep range) to ensure full exhaustion of my type 1 and type 2 muscle fibers.

The last half of this video talking about how people often don't know what failure ACTUALLY feels like is key. If you never actually fail how can you know if you're close to failure?

The morning after I pushed bicep curls to the limit 5 sets in a row, they were visibly engorged out of nowhere, and was lifting stronger the next workout. Sore AF. Personally like Layne said would not do heavy compound lifts to true failure. I don't want to get hurt/die/play with fire. Here to lose weight/get ripped not end up on disabled.

Train to failure. Give yourself more rest. Build muscle. Have a life.

HIT has done more for me than any other training styles.

I think it's hard for people to reconcile that training heavy and failure can be mutually exclusive. I pull a lot of theories out of my arse but you want to have heavy enough resistance to stimulate all fibures and that's all you need.

Yes!

Yes, I have mapped out my reps to weight, graphed it, expecting at high weight a exponential drop off in reps, a sudden performance collapse. What I found was instead an exact linear relation down to 1 rep. The relation is 2 reps lost per additional 10 pounds weight. I mapped this from my max reps which is 10. So from my highest 10 rep weight, I can add 50 pounds.

Two other considerations that favor training to failure: 1) You can use advanced set systems / workout structures that allow you to train to or past failure on mosts sets or even every set with minimal effect on performance in your next set. The best way to do this is with giant sets. Pick 3-5 exercises that use mostly different muscles and perform them consecutively with around 20-40 seconds rest between each exercise. Even though you are resting less between sets this actually lets muscles recover more (each muscle will get 5+ minutes rest before you use it again). Thus you can take your sets closer to failure. This works best with full body splits and upper / lower splits. 2) What is optimal in short term is not the same as what is optimal in the long term. If you train to failure consistently your body will adapt to that training style. For most beginner and intermediate lifters I think the #1 focus should be progressing your work capacity. That often means training closer to failure than is optimal in short term. For example: if you took two lifters and told the first one to never train to failure and the second one to train to failure every set, you would probably see that the second lifter, over time, would have better muscular endurance and recovery. Their muscles will adapt to be able to recover more quickly from intense efforts.

Interesting to see that in the end Pavel Tsatsouline was right in regards to Strength.

August 2021 took bench to complete failure rep 8 ruptured pec major. Now I'm back to the strength I was pre rupture. I still approach failure, usually staying 1 rep shy of failure. I'm trying to come back stronger than before. Thanks for the input, layne. Great job at nationals. Keep training hard.

Just a small remark: The change in velocity (i.e. acceleration ) is a consequence of the applied force, not the other way around. The hevur the load, the lower rhe acceleration FOR the same force (in case of maximal effort). If you are increasing the load without changing acceleration, you are just using more force.

Some critique I have heard (Brosep in Germany) is the part where they were guessing some of the data. Imagine they didn't guess it, then the Data/Curves would suggest that training to failure is better than training close to failure and suddenly the Bro Split would become way more interesting.

Great stuff! Hopefully we'll see more research to help explain the apparent disconnect between this meta-analysis and studies that seem to suggest 2-3 RIR is as good or better than failure. I'd love to know how going "past failure" with rest-pauses compares too, since I sometimes ending up doing that just out of pig-headeness when I want to hit my target number 🙃

Also remember this is from a powerlifting standpoint, bodybuilding volume/needing to hit a greater amount of total sets to work every muscle group does change the fatigue accumulation over weeks and months

Reg Park recommended not quite going to failure on his 5x5 in the 1950's/60's, so that still stands. Also Arnold said you should experience going to failure like the time when he was 15 and couldn't ride his bike back from the gym cos he was so knackered. After my 30 years of using weights, seeing trends and advice come and go (and the advent of the internet with too many commentators), my advice is do a mix of compounds and isolations at least 2-3 times a week, go hard almost to failure with good form, stretch, eat and sleep. End of.

The closer to failure the better. If you are a bodybuilder and want maximum results/mass, training to failure and beyond is going to give you that. I like to focus on DB/Calisthenic/machine exercises for training to and beyond failure. For example, I'll do incline Db Bench Press first for maximum contractions, then after do Wide Incline Barbell Press for more stretch, then DB Flyes for maximum stretch and hold the stretch for 30 seconds at the end. I don't see the best results when I do b*tch sets and leave reps in the tank. Warm-up sets have their place for sure, but the one-two set(s) I do to failure and one set I do beyond failure is what helps me grow.

Why has it taken people so long to make vids on this study. It came out weeks out and it’s like no one wanted to make a vid on it. I was expecting the following day for all the usual RU-vidrs to make vids on it. And they just didn’t. So thank you for the vid

This new study can increase sales in supplement market

After 3 microdiscectomies, I'm gonna pass on the squatting, barbell rowing and deadlifting to absolute failure. I'll be fine without knowing. That said, the last rep or two barely get up at all when I do an amrap set at the end. 3-5 second reps should be close enough without getting hurt.

I've been going to failure a lot lately. Trying out a super low volume low frequency high intensity program inspired by Mike Mentzer. Three sets to muscular failure with 30 second breaks, twice a week. Don't know if it optimizes muscle growth but it does optimize consistency which I'm otherwise not great at, especially since I do calisthenics and just have to grab the pull-up bar whenever I walk by the park gym.

First time I ran a powerlifting program I was as surprised by how low the RPE was on most sets.

Great video! I have learned a lot from your videos. I was wondering if you could do a video on this interesting study: "High-Protein Plant-Based Diet Versus a Protein-Matched Omnivorous Diet to Support Resistance Training Adaptations: A Comparison Between Habitual Vegans and Omnivores." They found simular results between the two groups over 12 weeks. Maybe the difference would be larger if they had followed them longer?

The looks of the workout program is interesting, will it be an app just like carbon is or will it maintain as a web page only?

This is why I'm a massive can of pre fatiguing my muscles with an isolation exercise it allows me to complete the rest of my workout doing compound exercises at lighter less fatiguing loads whilst close to/ to failure on some occasions past failure. Training in this way allows me to keep fatigue low but stimulus high

So true on the squats, I know most people don’t push it hard enough. I always go to 0-1RIR on squats, and by 1 RIR I mean if I go down idk if I’m gonna be able to come back up and this mentality serves me well because everything else is then easy. I can fail on everything else just fine now

Drop sets, pyramid sets, etc are relative to strength BUT it’s the tears and stress on the muscle that actually builds strength. When you build strength you ultimately build muscle size.

I still can't train to my limits quite yet, but I remember doing back squats and going down, but not being able to come back up. Had to dump the bar to the guards and wiggle out.

Joe Manganiello talks about failure in his book Evolution. Says if you dont have a problem walking to your car after the gym. You dont know the failure. Most people don't. Not going to failure makes sense if you are cutting and you need to simulate muscles to keep it and not necessarily to grow.

Good stuff Layne. A consistent caveat for proximity to failure training is SFR. Easy to define, but not the easiest concept to apply to your own training without experience. I compare it to going out drinking with friends. You wanna drink enough to have fun, get a buzz, and last the entire evening to maximize your experience, but if you cross the hangover threshold you better have your ducks in a row for tomorrow. Maybe a deload or active rest. Thats why I prefer an accumulation paradigm over the course of a mesocycle. I save the hardest "partying" for that last microcyle before a deload. Cool video man. 😊😊

I stick to 2 RIR purely because I train on my own and for safety (and my age) I never go to absolute failure on compound exercises

I've been hearing this same thing for the last 20 yrs

I only train to failure with compounds I have dialed in over the years. That excludes practically all lower body stuff because of low back issues. I am in no hurry to find out my deadlift 10 rep max weight. Weighted pullup is the safest, very hard to injure yourself. Most upper body stuff is relatively quite safe.

For unaware: RPE - rating of perceived exertion 1-10. 1 is barely an exercise, 10 is "you are gasping for air from effort" RIR - reps in reserve, i.e., how many more you think you could squeeze in with proper form.

I'v been training to failure for the last couple months, I'v seen results but man i feel so exhausted all the time

Layne can you please do a video on the new studies on Sucralose that it is supposedly Genotoxic ? What do you think ?

For a long time I did every isolation set to failure, not only did rest times get long but my resting heart rate would shoot up in a week or two and would only come down with about 3 rest days. I'm guessing CNS fatigue or something. On the other hand trying volume based progression took a ton of time and felt less effective. So there's a lot of individual learning. Stopped pushing compounds too close to failure after injuries but also trying to learn to progress on isolation movements without pushing every set to failure. Maybe as a bigger guy I should have more rest days plain and simple but it's hard to trust you are progressing by only going to the gym 2-3 times a week.

Hearing you describe ACTUAL FAILURE, I don't think I've ever stressed myself that much. I think I do, but based on your description I am very far from that...that being said, I've never had an issue building muscle if that's my goal...so I don't know..I like to always stop to what I call or heard others as well call to be TECHNICAL FAILURE where I may still breathe just fine and not lose stability, but my form starts to break significantly if I do another rep so I just stop.

I am 51 now and i stop using heavy weights, so i needed a way to reach failure differently. I now train near failure doing more sets and more reps, i used to powerlift too at 29 got injured got worse by a chiropractor (never see those chalatante) and gone tone of PRP and prolotherapy. At 47 i got cleared to start lifting heavy again but i reinjured myself so lesson learned. I get a sick pump and workout with 4 sets of 25 reps on the squat even if its light weight i do not do deadlifts anymore. I use a regular bodybuilding program. My goal is longevity i want to train for the rest of my life and stay injury free.

Rather than guess. I just go to absolute failure but, I mostly do bodyweight compounds. I ain't gonna lie though. I never take squats to failure. I take them to very painful. If you want to understand pain, take bodyweight squats to failure. Not pleasant at all.

I've been lifting for 40 years and have taken 6 to 8 months off (almost off) many times. The fastest gains I've ever made after a layoff was doing one set to or slightly beyond failure for each muscle group every day - no days skipped for two months, and very eccentric-focused, like three second negatives or three second hold-plus-negative on short-ROM exercises. I would do one pressing and one straight-arm exercise for chest and shoulders alternately to even out the extra triceps work. And of course the first ten days or so were a ramp-up starting well short of failure and skipping anything that was too sore. After the ramp-up I was basically never sore. Of course that doesn't give you a lot of work capacity if you care about that, but the size and strength came back like magic.

If you look at Dorian Yates regimen, first 2 sets warmup last set to failure on every workout. Seems he knew what he was doing over the decades

Hey layne, anyway you could do a video on the relationship between force and velocity. I’m a little confused on the topic of lower velocity means lower force. Maybe I’m even wrong saying that😂 but, I would love to see a video on that.

Really good at last everyone is coming to the common sense

Layne did you see Menno's post looking at the study that showed a group training 4-6 RIR had similar muscle and strength gains compared to the 1 RIR group?

Well, if I do 3 sets of 5. Going closer to failure in the last set is naturally occurring without changing reps or weight, since you need to anticipate and take a little bit easier in the first set so that you can hit five reps the last set.

I usually try to do at least the set as close to failure as I can. If I can barely finish the last rep and I’m sure there’s no way I could complete another rep then I’m happy with my effort. I would be very wary of taking squats to absolute failure.

My biggest concern (being 65 yo) is the breakdown of form due to fatigue as you approach failure, with a much greater risk of injury as a result.

In the end it's all about your ability to recovery from a given exercise. If you can recover from 1-2 sets of failure and by the next time you train you have gone up in reps/weight then you're recovered and that failure is stimulating enough. So why increase is ? Your body isn't quite like mathematical equation you are capable of tracking. It needs absolutely precise and you'll never know. So do the minimum required to stimulate growth and recover.