HOW To Train To Failure

Should you perform every set to failure?

Should you train to failure at all?

These are two of the most popular questions in the "science-based" fitness industry right now.

And yet, while most are comfortable answering such questions straightforwardly, there's something funky going on here.

No one is talking about HOW to train to failure.

If I'm being honest, very few seem to know!

So, my goal in this article is to teach you the "how".

Because whether you like it or not, training to failure is a skill - one that can be developed rather quickly when implemented with the right methods.

Failure Training Has A Bad Rap

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, I should make clear that the kind of failure training I promote is probably different from the kind you're imagining. 

Many think that failure training is inherently dangerous. 

And I don't blame anyone for thinking that. But it's a half-truth.

When injury videos go viral, the injured people always fail the lift they're attempting. So...it makes sense to assume failure training = bad.

But people who end up in these positions are usually being morons. They're almost always using loads they have no business trying to lift (they strap on every accessory like straps, belts, wraps, etc.).

What we don't see, however, are the thousands of repetitions these individuals safely performed prior to catastrophe - and also to failure - when the cameras weren't rolling and their egos weren't involved.

This is the lifting equivolent of seeing a video of a plane crash (an obviously horrific event) then assuming the next plane you board will crash, too.

Statistically speaking, by the way, flying on a plane is 19x safer per mile traveled compared to driving a car in the United States. Driving is far more dangerous, yet most people don't worry about driving 7 days a week (many who are also texting simultaneously...).

There's an obvious analogical flaw here, which is that there's no data to suggest that training to failure is any more safe than not training to failure.

But I do think our intuitions fail us in regard to understanding the relative safety of failure training (especially because there's also no data to suggest that failure training is any more dangeorus than non-failure training).

Although we'll be talking about failure training in the context of this article, be aware that these concepts do not just apply to failure training, but non-failure training as well.

Defining Failure

Defining failure is like chasing a moving target.

The differences in how we define failure ultimately determine the experience of failure training that we have.

For example, many of the people who get hurt training to failure (or training at all) actually aren't training to the kind of failure we should care about.

Instead, these people tend to train with the goal of "just moving the weight".

But "just moving the weight" isn't an actual training goal, it's just an egoic distraction that makes the stimulus of an exercise less efficient.

As a consequence of trying to "just move the weight", any boundary on technique is erased. If there are no boundaries to the goal one is chasing, then anything goes, and "anything" is usually the place where people go to use more weight than they can handle.

From a 30,000ft view, here's how I define training to failure: when one can no longer complete a desired task within the constraints of the technique one should ideally use. The inability to complete the task is also involuntary, meaning that true failure is not something we control, but rather something that happens to us.

Make It Safe

When training to failure, the first (and most relevant) concern is safety and comfort. 

If the exercise isn't comfortable now, it's likely not going to magically become comfortable when you add more load, do more reps, or train with more effort.

If the exercise isn't safe - meaning that you cannot fail a set without worrying about being crushed or trapped in some way - at minimum, it won't be sustainable.

Imagine the safety differences between two exercises: the leg extension and a barbell back squat.

When performing leg extensions, there are no safety concerns apart from the individual's preparedness to perform the exercise. When the individual can no longer move the shin pad, the pad stops moving, the individual relaxes, and the pad returns to its starting position.

When performing back squats, however, the safety concern magnifies substantially. What happens if the individual can't get out of the bottom? Are they comfortable dumping the bar behind their body? Are there other people in the gym who could be caught in the crossfire? If the rack has safeties to fail on, are they appropriately positioned?

While a skilled lifter can make a back squat much safer than an unskilled lifter, the baseline safety concerns exist nonetheless - one never knows what could happen under a bar while experiencing tons of pressure through the torso and head.

Meanwhile, an individual could literally lose consciousness mid-set during leg extensions and nothing of consequence would likely occur.

This isn't to paint back squats as inherently dangerous, but rather that, in the context of failure training, one should consider the relative amounts of safety between exercises before making any further training decisions.

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Make It Easy

It's one thing for an exercise to be relatively safe, but it's another for an exercise to be easy to reach muscular failure on - and this is the second essential layer to the failure cake.

Let's use the same exercise comparison: barbell back squats versus leg extensions.

When you begin to fatigue on a leg extension, what happens?

Well, for one, the rep speed slows down. But what else can really happen? At most, someone will awkwardly squirm around in the seat and perhaps change how fast they're moving their shins.

Ultimately, there's very little one can do in a leg extension to continue the set with any muscle that isn't the quads (the target muscle).

In addition, there's very little one can do with their bodyweight to create a kind of "cheating" momentum that we so often see in many other exercise scenarios.

When you begin to fatigue on a back squat, however, you have a multitude of options to escape reaching failure in the target muscle (in this context, the quads): 

• The hips might begin to shoot back out of the bottom
• Losing control of the eccentric (the descent) and dive-bombing into the bottom position
• Rounding and arching the spine progressively more to transfer more fatigue into the erectors as the legs get tired

Put concisely: certain exercises make it really easy to fatigue the target muscle, while other exercises make it more difficult.

Again - it's not that back squats are a bad exercise because of this. It just means that if someone is going to train to failure on a back squat, they'd better be highly skilled and mindful of what their goals are and what the exercise will demand of them as fatigue in the target muscle accumulates.

Silly Humans

Over the last several years (much to my surprise) I've found many people are adamently against certain exercises - like leg extensions - specifically because it is easier to train the target tissue with less effort devoted to maintaining technique. Here's how I feel about this idea:

This is kind of like saying you're against driving your car to the gym because driving makes traveling more efficient compared to walking or running - it is truly nonsensical.

And there's a painful irony here.

When we select exercises which make it easy to target the muscles we want (with safety in doing so), we're actually able to challenge the target tissues with much greater specificity and effort than we otherwise would.

Many of our intuitions about this are totally backwards. 

The easier an exercise makes it to accomplish our goals, paradoxically, the harder and more safely we can train.

So, if you're new to failure training, start with machine exercises or exercises that make it very easy to hit the target muscle. 

Once you become totally comfortable training to failure in highly stable and low-risk scenarios, you can work toward training to failure on lifts that are more complicated or higher-risk, like barbell back squats, RDLs, deadlifts, etc. (only if you want).

Staying In The Lane

Much of what prevents people from executing sets to failure is the inability to "stay in the lane" of the target muscle as fatigue sets in.

Let's stick with the squatting example.

Imagine you're trying to target the quads, which (generally) means staying more upright and driving the knees forward and backward to lower and raise yourself.

As fatigue sets into the quads, people often panic and "switch lanes" to the glutes, adductor, and erector muscles by dropping the chest forward and pushing the butt backward.

Instead of staying in the lane of the target muscle - the quads, in this case - people shift the muscular emphasis to other tissues to offload fatigue.

Put simply: people change their technique when they start to get tired, and end up fatiguing non-target tissues that are not part of the exercise's main goal.

If you're a powerlifter, this might be great, because you want to recruit everything you can in order to lift more weight.

But if you're training to target a specific muscle, shifting lanes is just wasted energy.

If you instead remain in the muscle's "lane", two things happen:

1. The speed of your reps will slow down
2. The range of motion of each rep will decrease (not always, depending on the exercise, but often)

When the rep speed slows down and/or the range of motion decreases, people often get upset: "ugh, I didn't do more reps"!

But this is confusing to me...

Because the GOAL is to get to this point.

The entire purpose of doing an exercise is to fatigue the target muscle.

If you complete all of your reps like it's a warm-up, you're missing the point.

Slowing of reps and decreasing of range are signs you're staying in the correct lane.

As the rep speed slows and as the range of motion decreases, stay in the lane. That's what allows you to be precise in targeting any muscle.

The Mental 

So far, I've established general guidelines for failure training: pick exercises that make it easy to fail safely on and that make it easy to challenge the target muscle.

The more effort you need to devote to trying to stay safe and trying to prevent yourself from cheating, the less energy you'll be able to direct toward the desired goal.

The mental side of failure training, however, is just as important as the physical.

Many people feel the need to "attack" training as if they're heading into some kind of warzone. While there may be a specific time and place for this - as in high-level strength sport - much of the training for general muscle growth and strength (in my opinion) should be approached with a calm state of mind.

Poor execution of an exercise, while often related to a lack of understanding of biomechanical nuance, is more often a product of poor attention.

This is especially true in exercise contexts wherein training the target muscle is easy and safe (like in a leg extension).

How much skill do you really need to perform a proper leg extension? Once you've set your leg and knee in a comfortable position, kicking the pad and lowering it slowly is about as complicated as it gets.

And yet, many people enter a state of panic as soon as they start to feel a burn in their quads. This is the cause of the lane-shifting we discussed earlier.

The issue in one's execution therefore isn't rooted in ignorance of the task, but rather the inability to become comfortable with the burning sensation in one's legs as they approach failure.

Now is the time when things will start to sound a bit esoteric, so if you're new to the concepts I'm about to describe, try to hang with me...

The Present Moment

I've learned a lot about meditation and meditation-related concepts from author and podcaster Sam Harris. 

One of the most important lessons I've learned from Sam - and the mindfulness meditation style he often recommends - is that the present moment is all there ever is. Everything else is just thought arising in the mind (if that sounds crazy to you, I highly recommend listening to any interview that Sam has done on these concepts, like this one).

So how does this apply to lifting?

Imagine you begin a set, feeling composed and in control.

But as fatigue builds and discomfort emerges, thoughts arise: This is getting harder. How much more can I take? Soon, those thoughts escalate into resistance: I can’t do this. I need to stop. It's too painful.

And yet, this spiral into panic is entirely optional.

If you direct your attention to the sensations themselves—the burn in your muscles, the heaviness of your breathing—you may notice something surprising: the sensations, in and of themselves, are not inherently painful. They are simply sensations, devoid of the emotional weight we attach to them.

Think about the times you've done exercises where you don't feel that "burn" but rather just loads of pressure in a muscle.

It is only when sensations are accompanied by unexamined thoughts that panic arises.

In truth, the real cause of panic is not the sensation of effort but identification with the pain: How much worse will this get?

Ironically, even as you endure the discomfort of a hard set, your mind convinces you that you can't...

Here's a solution: imagine watching yourself from a third-person perspective. You've likely had the experience of watching someone else do a hard set: you know they're in pain, but you don't feel anything yourself (at least, not physically).

What do these sensations actually feel like, stripped of the mental narrative? When you stop clinging to the thoughts about pain, you see the experience for what it is: temporary, manageable, and a necessary part of growing bigger and stronger.

This tendency to resist the pain is why training to failure so often has a “bad rap.”

Instead of staying grounded in the direct experience of each rep, we are consumed by thoughts about how much we dislike the discomfort or how much more we have to endure.

These thoughts pull us away from the technique, focus, and intention required to make the exercise effective (the thoughts are what pull us out of a muscle's lane, and ironically are what end up making the set more miserable than it needs to be).

Again, it’s worth reminding yourself that fatigue is not your enemy—it’s the thing you’re pursuing.

The burning sensation in your muscles is not a problem to be avoided but a signal that you’re accomplishing exactly what you set out to.

Shying away from this discomfort undermines the process. In fact, the only real risk of harm comes from letting panic dictate your actions (like rushing through reps, channging technique, or yelling to spike your heart rate so that you can finish a rep).

So, the next time fatigue sets in, remember: the sensation you’re experiencing is just that—a sensation.

It's not your enemy.

It's actually your friend, because it lets you know you're in the right lane.

Allow yourself to just observe the sensation like someone is tapping a finger on your skin. You’ll find that you can meet discomfort with calmness.

Staying in the muscle lane while under fatigue is really empowering, and it only gets easier the more you do it.

Bringing It All Together

To summarize the major points of this article:

• Failure training is not inherently injurious. Lifting with poor attention and an ego-driven mindset often is.
• Pick exercises that are so specific to a target muscle that you don't have much of an option to use non-target tissues.
  • These exercises should generally be: highly stable, comfortable in any rep range, easy to add load to, easy to fail in a low-risk way with.
  • This is a starting point recommendation. 
• Rep speed slowing and range of motion decreases are the goal. Stop running away from them (stay in the muscle lane).
• Approach your sets with a kind of calmness that you would when meditating. At least when you're starting to learn how to train to failure. Become a third-party observer and allow the rep speeds to slow and the range of motion to decrease.

Send me a response email and let me know what you think of all this.

-Ben

P.S - if you'd like to support me and my work, consider becoming a paying subscriber. You'll get brand new video lectures every week and access to live Q&A calls with me. Start a 7-day free trial here.