You Don’t Need to Train to Failure to Build Muscle (But You Might Want To)

There are all kinds of theories out there about building muscle. Every gym bro will give you their opinion – lift to failure to build muscle, don’t lift to failure, lift heavy weights, stay light …but rarely is their advice rooted in science. Instead, these gym bros just spew the same things someone told them. Luckily though, scientific researchers have spent their whole careers determining the best way to build muscle. One of the big questions around building muscle is if you need to lift weights to failure to maximize hypertrophy. Below, I’ll distill the scientific research and provide practical recommendations to build muscle.

Lifting weights until muscle failure is not necessary to build muscle. Scientific research shows that lifting moderate loads and stopping 1-3 reps before failure will lead to the same muscle growth as continuing to lift until failure. Reaching muscular failure only leads to improved muscle growth when you are lifting low loads. Therefore, the scientific consensus is that you do not need to train to muscular failure to grow muscle (provided you are lifting weights that are a moderate load).

What is Training to Muscle Failure?

We need to ensure we are on the same page about what lifting weights until failure really is before discussing the merits of training to failure.

Training to muscle failure is continuing a set of an exercise until reaching the point where the working muscles are physically incapable of completing the current repetition at a given load (Beardsley, 2017; Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019).

People often think that they are training to muscle failure but instead are training to volitional failure. Volitional failure, on the other hand, is when people decide that they have “reached failure” and stop short before reaching muscular failure (Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019). Most people will have the muscular capacity at volitional failure to perform 1-3 more repetitions before fully reaching muscular failure.

The term failure will be used to describe muscle failure in this article.

When to Train to Failure to Build Muscle?

There is a belief in the resistance training and bodybuilding community that you need to lift weights until you reach failure to be able to grow muscle. As mentioned above, that notion is false. However, there are certain circumstances where lifting until failure is necessary to initiate the processes that build muscle.

Training a muscle until failure is required to build muscle if you are lifting a load that is relatively light for you (Beardsley, 2017).

The body is smart. We use the minimum amount of energy and muscle possible to lift loads in our workouts. As a result, the body starts by activating a small number of muscle fibers when lifting light weights. An increasing number of muscle fibers are activated as we perform more repetitions and our muscles get fatigued while lifting a light load (Beardsley, 2017; Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019).

Increasing the fatigue of a muscle by performing more reps results in stronger, fast-twitch muscle fibers contributing to the contractions, in addition to increasing the overall number of muscle fibers working. Fast-twitch muscle fibers have a greater potential to get stronger and bigger than slow-twitch muscle fibers (Lasevicius et al., 2019). Fast-twitch fibers also fatigue quickly.

There is also an increase in fatigue as the number of repetitions performed increases. As a result of the fatigue, there is a buildup of metabolic waste products in the muscle (which result in the pump you feel after a bodybuilding session). The waste is thought to affect the acidity of the environment and interfere with the ability of muscle fibers to contract properly (Lasevicius et al., 2019). This is thought to cause even more muscle fibers to be recruited to compensate for the decreased force production capability of each muscle fiber on its own (Lasevicius et al., 2019). The result is a nearly fully activated muscle that is under a high level of mechanical and metabolic stress as the number of repetitions increase.

A high metabolic and mechanical load causes significant micro-damage to the muscle fibers. The body responds to the damage by repairing the muscle and laying down more fibers, resulting in muscle growth.

How to Grow Muscle Without Lifting Until Failure?

As stated above, you need to do a lot of repetitions and reach muscle failure when lifting light loads so that all muscle fibers are activated during your set. However, when you lift heavy loads (>85% of max strength) all muscle fibers in the muscle are involved from the first repetition so that you can produce enough force to lift the weight (Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019).

Full muscle fiber recruitment is a key component to increasing muscle size. All muscle fibers are activated when lifting above 85% of your 1 repetition maximum load (Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019). Because of this, you do not need to reach muscle failure when lifting heavy loads to grow muscles.

In fact, a number of scientific experiments have confirmed that continuing to muscle failure has no additional benefit over stopping several repetitions short of failure. These studies concluded that “muscle fibers are sufficiently stimulated to grow” when high load sets are stopped short of failure (Lasevicius et al., 2019; Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019).

Therefore, you can grow your muscles without reaching muscle failure if you are lifting relatively heavy loads. Avoiding failure is particularly important for people that train by themselves or in an environment where failed lifts are dangerous (for themselves or their floors). If this is you, then you can lift a heavier weight and stop several (about 3 or so) repetitions short of failure and still have the same muscle growth as if you did reach failure.

Considerations for Training to Muscle Failure for Muscle Hypertrophy

Training to muscle failure is necessary to grow muscle if you are lifting light loads. However, lifting until you can’t lift anymore is very hard on the body. As a result, the body’s ability to recover from training sessions can be decreased when training to failure. In fact, the body’s anabolic hormones levels, which mediate muscle growth, can be negatively affected and actually lead to a lack of growth and adaptation. This is particularly detrimental if you are training a muscle group to failure multiple times a week (Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019). As a result, you may only want to train a muscle group to failure once a week.

It is suggested that you only perform training to failure for a maximum of about 4 weeks before switching to a different stimulus because of this effect on the body’s recovery ability (Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019).

If you are looking to up your recovery game, then I suggest you check out these articles:

• Are Massage Guns Effective?
• 5 Recovery Tools Every Home Gym Should Have
• Does the Post-Workout Anaerobic Window Actually Exist?

Research has also shown that training to failure may not be needed to increase muscle size in older adults (Schoenfeld & Grgic, 2019). This is presumably because of a loss of fast-twitch muscle cell activation as we age. Because we lose the ability to activate some of our higher threshold muscle cells as we age, we can actually reach our maximum activation earlier than younger people. Thus, there isn’t a need to reach muscle failure, even at low loads.

Summary Points on Training to Failure to Build Muscle

• Training to failure is only necessary to build muscle if you are using low loads
• Stopping short of muscle failure can still maximize muscle growth if you are lifting heavy loads
• Training to muscle failure can elongate the recovery process, so it may not be optimal if you are training a muscle group multiple times a week
• Training to failure should be applied to short training periods (about 4 weeks). Periods of different training modalities should be used after the training to failure block
• It may not be safe to train to failure on compound lifts. You may want to limit this type of training stimulus to single joint or isolation exercises

References:

Beardsley, C. (2017, November 5). What does training to failure actually achieve? https://medium.com/@SandCResearch/what-does-training-to-failure-actually-achieve-2837460c5f0f

Lasevicius, T., Schoenfeld, B. J., Silva-Batista, C., Barros, T. de S., Aihara, A. Y., Brendon, H., Longo, A. R., Tricoli, V., Peres, B. de A., & Teixeira, E. L. (2019). Muscle Failure Promotes Greater Muscle Hypertrophy in Low-Load but Not in High-Load Resistance Training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, Publish Ahead of Print. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000003454

Schoenfeld, B. J., & Grgic, J. (2019). Does Training to Failure Maximize Muscle Hypertrophy?: Strength and Conditioning Journal, 41(5), 108–113. https://doi.org/10.1519/SSC.0000000000000473