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Comment by AlbertoGP | Hacker News Reader

Interesting read: “Now, it’s not that training to failure is a complete waste of effort. Some research finds training to failure does increase muscle growth compared to the same amount of sets not taken to failure. The benefit seems to simply be the result of the extra reps you do, as completing the same repetition volume by adding more submaximal sets can achieve the same amount of muscle growth. And there is a big cost to the beneficial effect of training to failure. Training to failure greatly increases the amount of fatigue you induce and the subsequent recovery time your muscles need.”

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A long time ago I remember reading, probably on misc.fitness.weights or something like that, that the lay crowds misunderstood “to failure”, and that it was intended to mean “until you can’t maintain perfect form”.

No idea if there was ever a shred of scientific method behind that statement but it struck me as good common sense wisdom anyways.

> A long time ago I remember reading, probably on misc.fitness.weights or something like that, that the lay crowds misunderstood “to failure”, and that it was intended to mean “until you can’t maintain perfect form”.

That seems funny to me. While someone's form breaking down leads to inefficiencies in specific muscle targeting and / or an increased chance of injury I think that approach would end up leading to people bailing when things start to get hard. I've seen a lot of people never put additional weight on the bar because they were afraid of their form breaking down when in reality measured incremental load increases are what helps makes one big and strong.

A good example of "to failure" is when you can't perform a lift symmetrically, or you find yourself cheating by e.g. moving your elbows, lifting your heels, etc.

So the idea is that the minute you're moving your elbows you're no longer getting any training benefit from the activity?

I believe the thinking is more that you're taking an injury risk that gain you nothing compared to stopping and resting, and doing another set once recovered if you want more volume.

Because injury will set you back far more than missing out on a few reps.

Certain breakdowns of form certainly will cause injury. You don't want to round your lower back while dead lifting, but adding a bit of swing to your bicep curls will not.

The idea is that you are increasing your chance of injury because you've hit short term hypotrophy of the CNS/muscle.

"To failure" is a relative term. Someone who has lifting for a very long time knows their body very well. "To failure" some days might mean they don't even finish their warmup.

The reason I started this whole conversation was in response to the quote that failure is “until you can’t maintain perfect form”, which implies it's not a relative term.

> end up leading to people bailing when things start to get hard

Funny you should say that as I remember it coming up in the counterarguments at the time. Both in terms of neuromuscular control and also general personal motivation type angles.

> I think that approach would end up leading to people bailing when things start to get hard.

If you can still maintain form while it's hard, then you haven't reached the limit yet. Velocity of a lift decreases as you approach failure (you're in the "hard zone"), but you should keep going until you either can't complete rep without twisting and cheating, or if you know yourself well enough that you know you'll have to do that on the next rep. Periodically you should try going to actual failure to make sure you know what that really feels like.

There are a couple different definitions of failures

Mechanical failure - your form is being compromised, usually induced by muscular load

Throughput failure - you could maintain form but your cardiovascular capacity is the limiting factor and you are starting to decrease in tempo (either in the eccentric or concentric)

Partial Failure - you use assistance on the concentric or eccentric to continue to do the one that’s still has workload capacity

Each type of failure induces a different level of lactic acid build up, or muscle tearing, and can be increased in different ways. Usually one of them is a limiting factor and is why progressive overload is proven to improve strength and size.

Most of the people I’ve worked with don’t know true failure (within 1-2 RIR [reps in reserve] left) because they’re limited in cardiovascular capacity to even reach failure or they aren’t pushing themselves due to fear of form breakage/injury.

The reality is you shouldn’t be doing 1 rep maxes often, but you should be lowering the weight and experiencing true failure in order to progressive overload properly.

> “Now, it’s not that training to failure is a complete waste of effort. Some research finds training to failure does increase muscle growth compared to the same amount of sets not taken to failure. The benefit seems to simply be the result of the extra reps you do, as completing the same repetition volume by adding more submaximal sets can achieve the same amount of muscle growth. And there is a big cost to the beneficial effect of training to failure. Training to failure greatly increases the amount of fatigue you induce and the subsequent recovery time your muscles need.”

My understanding is that there is a pretty big asterisk here: for the submaximal sets to be effective, they need to get close to failure. You're not going to be very effective doing sets with 10 reps in reserve.

But the thing is that beginners typically aren't very good at gauging how may reps they actually have in the tank. There have been a number of experiments where people were asked to rate how close they were to failure. And then they were asked to actually go to failure. And everyone underestimated - sometimes by quite a lot.

So, for people with experience in the gym, this is probably good advice. But I think for newbies, going to failure can be beneficial just because the directions are so robust - people are much less likely to plateau for mysterious reasons.

I have been building large upper-body muscles with resistance body weight training on the pool. That means pushups essentially, but the steps-area of the pool let me do them with full hanging body weight and with many wide arm spreads.

It's important to have variations in how to position the pushups. I do 30-70 reps depending on difficulty of arm position, usually two or three sets a day max, each set can be a different position. When I feel strong I do reps slowly both on ascent and descent. Due to my flexibiility (a very important factor in having elongated shape big muscles in pecs etc), I also do triceps also in many widths by putting my hands behind me at the pool border and lifting my weight; it is very demanding exercise, also works back and shoulders.

However the most important tip no one realizes for growing muscle, for having resistance, for having tonus and for a real fast recovery comes from India. Apply oil to body (preferrably all of body, leave for 40+ minutes as you sit or meditate, listen to music; use old clothing and wash it separately, oil trashes and stains all, and it quickly ruins any stretch fiber and elastics bands on shorts etc). Coconut oil gives the most mass, good for hot season. Ginger oil good for winter, get south american Buriti oil if you can (mix some drops to coconut, use with utmost caution, observe the effects, how it makes you agitated etc, never use it in summer), brazilian indians used it for going to war, it makes muscles really bulge, The greek used oil for wrestling matches too, and for looking strong. Oil is not all about the shiny effect, it improves muscles tremendously.

I would compare the effect of not applying oil to the muscle parts after a workout to not eating any protein after a workout. It's such a dramatic effect.

You're gonna have to cite something other than the exact fallacy the article talks about

I thank thee, I suppose, for not engaging with a downvote like the 4 others in quick succession, and instead doing it with a reply. It seems I bristled the conventional perspective of HN with my anecdotal experience. Of course, anyone could buy some bit of coconut oil and try once, and it'd explain it better than a citation. Call it reproducing study results,

I could offer many medical citations, it is true, even western ones, but the alternative focus of them would possibly attract even more condescension and people mentally labelling my comments as if I was making an argument for using black magic to attract riches into your life.

I'd be interested in the citations, I thought your post was a joke (although I didn't downvote).

This is not really 'unconventional wisdom' to be honest (maybe in the 'bro-science' circles)

However, at the same time, you're not getting hypertrophy from too many reps at a low % of 1RM (let's say, under 30%)

Edit: I can accept the 30% they give at the article, that's not such a low rep load (before the 50% I had there)

And of course you can train to failure at 30% - the number of repetitions around 35 as it can be seen in the quoted article in fig 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3404827/

I once had physical therapist who got quite far in the amateur natural body building world by only lifting 1lb weights. He was getting a PhD in Anatomy(!) and wanted to demonstrate that you don't need to lift heavy to get hypertrophy. Although he did not recommend this approach as the most time-efficient, he emphasized that gains can be made at the extreme end of the low weight-high volume spectrum.

What you say directly contradicts the article.

Do you have scientific studies to contrast against theirs, since the whole point of the article is to contrast intuitive "broscience" against what studies actually show?

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