Do You Need To Train To Failure?

It’s a common perception that you need to absolutely smash yourself to build strength and maximise muscle growth. If you’re barely able to walk after a leg session or you’re sore for days on end after, that was a great session, right? Maybe not, it seems.

Part of the protocol people often perceive as being necessary to gain muscle is to train to failure when performing their sets – that is, doing an exercise until you’re unable to complete another repetition. The idea here is that by overloading a muscle and reaching failure, you will trigger a response – in this case, muscle stimulation and subsequent repair and growth so the next time around you’ll be able to complete your last rep. A stronger muscle, the theory goes, is usually a larger muscle.

But according to a study done in 2006 by Mikel Izquierdo, a Spanish researcher, it seems that training to failure might not make such a big difference after all. In his study, Izquierdo divided 42 physically active men into two groups, one group performing bench presses and squats to failure and the other doing the same exercises with the same weight, but avoiding failure by doing half as many reps but twice as many sets. So, what happened? Traditional thinking would assume that those who trained to failure would have achieved better results, right? It turns out both groups had almost identical strength gains. Similar studies from Australia and Brazil have returned similar results and also come to the conclusion that failure versus non-failure training yields very little difference in terms of muscle growth. Some have also pointed out that those who train to non-failure can recover faster and possibly better avoid injury.

Still not convinced? Former World’s Strongest Man Hafthor Bjornsson says training to failure was very rarely something he did, saying it created self-doubt and dented confidence.

So when should you train to failure? While there is some evidence to indicate training to failure may create more muscle stimulation and hence results, you should treat training to failure like any other training protocol – that is, use it as a tool to break through plateaus or to change up part of your training program. But, all in all, there really isn’t that much evidence to say training to failure will give you bigger, stronger muscles.