Hypertrophy

I’ve always been a little confused about training to failure and could use someone else’s opinion.

First off from what I’ve read it seems that when you train to failure it’s your nervous system that is failing. But does it have any effect on your muscles aside from the few extra reps you perform, which could just as easily be included in another set. Personally, I don’t like training to failure all the time but on the other hand it’s really cool to push yourself, and sometimes you go way beyond your expectations and you realise that you weren’t 2 reps shy of failure but closer to 5.

Second, when you train to failure with higher reps it’s not the same as low reps is it? It’s not hitting the nervous system as hard and the muscle feels most of the strain. Therefore I’m thinking I could go to failure with higher reps with less negative effects.

Thirdly, I’m interested in the effects of training to failure on all sets, just the last sets of an exercise, or just training to failure every third week followed by a recovery week.

As Charlie has rather emphatically said, Training to failure is training to fail! He believes (as do I cause if he believes it basicallly so do I), that the coach should never put their athlete in a position to fail. They should always come out the other end feeling good. Work towards personal bests and not failure.

I agree completely. I believe that if you are performing sets for hypertrophy at a given %, the number of reps you perform should match the load (i.e. if you are doing 12 reps for a set, 12 should be the maximum # of reps you can perform to comply with overload)

I’d train to failure in the off-season to add bulk to my hamstrings and lowerback.