TRAINING TO FAILURE

Training to muscle failure is one technique that can bring a challenge to your body. But if overused, it can lead to overtraining and fatigue, so it should be well-planned and used sparingly. With that said, training to failure can be a catalyst for reenergizing your fitness program and reaching new levels of muscular development, performance and athleticism.

Suggestions for Using Muscle Failure in Your Routine
There are a number of ways to incorporate muscle failure into your workout. Here are a few examples of what this might look like:

• Try to go to failure on your last set of a given exercise. For example, it you have performed 3 sets of 25 pushups, attempt as many repetitions as you can safely perform on your 4th set.
• Lessen the amount of weight you use. If you performed 2 sets of 8 Lat pull-downs at 135 pounds, decrease the weight by 20 pounds and perform as many repetitions as you can to reach muscle failure.
• Choose only one exercise per session to apply this method. If your chest workout consists of flat bench, incline bench, and cable crossovers, use this method on the last set of crossovers.
• Avoid this method on exercises where you are capable of using heavier weights unless you have a spotter. Examples of this would include any type of bench press or squatting exercise.

– Rick