The best method for building muscle

This article will offer new insights in training to failure.

How do increments work?

What is better for muscle volume?

Performing technical, explosive repetitions of basic exercises without much effort, thereby increasing force production and improving inter and intra muscular coordination?

Or...

Exercise to failure with moderate loads?

The first option has always been the basis of my training philosophy. Why? Because explosive, technical reps stimulate maximum strength development. And strength is essential for greatness. But I've been forced to rethink my position.

I've always thought failure should be avoided. But maximum growth without it is probably not good enough.

Muscle growth trigger

A recent study found that if you reach failure during volume training, the weight doesn't really matter. Muscle growth and protein synthesis was the same with three sets to failure with 30% max and 80% max.

What does that mean? That training to failure leads to maximum muscle fiber engagement, regardless of the weight used.

Are you shocked? I was. What surprised me the most was that failure can be the MAJOR trigger of hypertrophy. It wasn't the weight loaded or the explosiveness used, but the muscle failure itself.

Science

Let me bring you up to speed on the study:

Three sets to failure with 30% max led to the same hypertrophy as three sets to failure with 80%, both to failure. This makes it clear that loaded weight is not the main factor in growth. Three sets to failure with 80% produced about twice as much growth as one. From this we can conclude that the amount of work matters, but is not the main factor, otherwise the same number of sets with 30% would not produce the same results as with 80%. Obviously, the 30% exercisers did many more reps than the 80% exercisers before failure, but the hypertrophy response was the same in both groups. Neither the volume of work nor the number of repetitions in a set can be a determinant of hypertrophy stimulation.

The real trigger for muscle growth

Muscle growth appears to be triggered by reaching failure, not by accumulated muscle fatigue. So without failure, adding work alone won't give you more muscle.

In the study, triple failure was superior to single failure, and the hypertrophy with it was always the same regardless of the weight used. This also gets rid of the need to add weights in every workout.

If you've been exercising for a while, it's clear that using 30% max will probably put you to sleep before you get to failure. The free choice of weights gives you freedom. Simply choose the weight at which your muscles feel best. Choose the weight at which you feel the muscle contraction best

When you don't have to add weight in every workout, you can focus on achieving failure with a weight that feels comfortable to you. If you add weight after a few workouts, it doesn't matter as long as you get to failure. Only add weight when the existing weight doesn't seem right for your muscles.

Failure, not fatigue

Just to be clear, failure is the point at which you can no longer complete the next rep despite your best efforts. This seems to be the main stimulus for muscle growth. Something happens at the point of failure that sends a signal to the body that you need to adapt.

Don't lose faith in mechanical work. Let's take an extreme example. You load up a weight that you can barely lift, do one rep, and in the middle of the second rep comes failure. You can hardly expect this to give you maximum growth stimulation. Failure is indeed a major growth trigger, but it produces the best results with enough mechanical work done.

So how much do you load?

A study compared 30% and 80% 1RM and found the same amount of hypertrophy with failure. So is there a best possible load? And does it even matter?

First of all, don't think that loading more than 80% of the max will still improve results. Too much weight, on the other hand, will make the outcome worse. If you load too much, failure will not be preceded by enough mechanical work (reps) to maximally activate proteosynthesis.

I also doubt that weights in the 30-50% of max range will be optimal for normal, healthy individuals. However, it might work for someone with an injury. Healthy individuals will find the first reps at 30% to be pretty useless. In theory, however, this shouldn't matter.

If the first part of the series doesn't give you enough of a sense of tension, you will easily lose focus. You'll be mindlessly throwing weight around instead of quality contractions. That's how hard it is to get to true muscle failure. Failure will be more psychological.

For most people, the optimal load range for failure will be 60-80%. This way you perform 8 to 15 reps before failure.

As long as you stay in this zone, the results should be the same. The exact percentages don't matter and you don't need to add weight every workout. You can even use a different weight each workout and still get maximum results.

The most important thing is to choose a weight that makes your muscles feel good from the first repetition, but not so heavy that you lose tension and compensate with other muscle groups or connective tissues.

What about strength?

Training to failure with moderate weight can build strength as well. After all, Westside School triathletes use 12, 25, or 50 reps for some exercises. If it didn't work for strength, they wouldn't do it.

If you train to failure with a lower weight, you can get stronger, but heavy weights are still essential here. You also have to think about the efficiency of the nervous system.

Although failure will engage the most muscle fibers, it does not mean that the intramuscular coordination, the rate of their engagement and the degree of activation will be such that it will be optimal for exercises with weights close to your maximum.

The ability to produce force with a muscle is a general physical trait, but the ability to use that force to your maximum output is a special skill. And it needs to be trained.

The trouble with training to failure

1- It is exhausting.

Sometimes too much. Is it really a good idea to go to failure on complex exercises like squats, deadlifts, push-ups and repositioning?

The burden of one such set to failure is huge. Imagine the optimal three. That kind of metabolic load can destroy your capacity for hard work for the rest of the workout, and it can also affect your training frequency throughout the week.

2 - You need to do it separately.

Nervous system workouts (heavier or explosive exercises) and muscle growth workouts (to failure) should not be done at the same time and on the same exercise. Training to failure is better done on machines or isolated exercises where we don't stress the nervous system as much.

3 - Not optimal for complex exercises.

Heavy exercises are not the best idea because you rarely get to failure of the right muscles. It's not about failing to complete reps, it's about failing to perform a contraction of the right muscle. People still don't understand this difference.

What is it? Two things. By positioning the body, we can compensate and let other muscle groups exercise when the target muscle starts to fatigue. We're not over-stimulating it because it's not really working anymore.

And the second thing is that you want to do the minimum amount of work before failure. It shows that you're capable of contracting the right muscles effectively and putting more tension on each rep.

So in complex exercises you don't get contractile failure of the muscles, only failure in the exercise.

It is likely that none of the muscles involved have reached true failure. The fatigue is distributed over too many muscles, not just our target muscle.

Complex exercises are better for heavy weights, which should be part of any training program.

4 - Failure is easy to fake.

You may also be lying to your pocket. We've all quit a set a few times when we were still able to continue. Some people just can't handle the pain. If you can't reach failure, you can't reap its benefits.

5 - You can't use a large volume of work.

Training to failure is much harder than training without it. You can't indulge in the same volume of work during it.

Three sets seem to be best. And a total of six sets per muscle group will be the most you can manage. Most of the time it will even be too much, unless you reach a true failure. It's easy to do too much work, and turn around your ability to adapt to it.

How about stretching the set even more

If failure is a trigger for muscle growth, why not stretch the series even beyond it? Use one of the intensification methods, such as crash sets or breaks, and fail one or two more times.

Will it help growth? Maybe. But the trigger is failure, not the accumulation of more and more fatigue. So more work is more likely to be counterproductive, but multiple failures might still be more effective.

However, extended streaks are much more demanding than normal ones. If you do them constantly, you run the risk of hurting yourself more. They will be very effective on the last set of the exercise and you must not do them every workout. And definitely don't use them to compensate for failure. Rather, work on being able to get to that point.

Conclusion

Hard work on the basic exercises is essential for anyone who wants both strength and size. Today, there is no doubt that working to failure is beneficial for volume training as well. Optimal muscle growth may not even be achievable without it.

Just remember that if you have both of the above mentioned types of work in your program, it's not a good idea to do them both at the same time. Use them separately, and they will complement each other.

Note: Special thanks to Dr. Stuart Philips and Dr. James Steele for their help in putting this article together.

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Source:www.t-nation.com
Author:The Single Best Muscle-Building Method