 Lifting to failure is probably killing your gains. Oh boy, you're gonna piss some people off. Boy, are we just on this kick right now of just to fend everybody? I know, punch everybody in the gut. We got all the cardio queens after us right now on YouTube. Cardio queen. Now you're gonna get all the bodybuilder intensity, you know, failure guys that are getting spots on every one of their lifts. Like you're gonna piss all them off. No, you know. There's a study that shows this. I know. Okay, so here's the deal. First off, to explain failure lifting. What that means is you lift the weight until you fail, right? You can't lift the weight anymore. Now there's always a debate. Do you fail on technique in form or do you fail when you just can't move the weight anymore? Whatever. Either way, it's too much intensity most of the time for most people. That's the problem. And there are studies that show that there's benefits. But studies are always, you know, eight to 12 weeks long. Temporary. Exactly. And when you train to failure, it is not, even though you reduce the volume of your training to make up for that intensity, it really does fry the body in a different way. Well, when we talked about the workout partner thing, this is kind of what came to mind for me because I do, I wish I remembered the exact study, but I do remember reading a study that talked about the benefits of training to failure and its benefits as far as muscle growth. And after reading that, that's all I needed to hear. Like, okay, I need to be doing negatives and a workout partner who's taking me to failure and this entire modality is devoted to just like ramping that intensity up to a really high level. Yeah. And so it was, I was stuck in this kind of trap for a very long time, at least a decade of training looked like every exercise that I did, I definitely did at least one set, if not every set to failure. And, you know, if I wasn't struggling, then I didn't get a good workout. That was my thought process. And that's also why I used to think that a workout partner was so valuable was, you know, the only way I could take this thing to failure every time is if I got someone to help me out. Yeah. Now, the truth is that their failure training does and can produce some pretty significant results. The problem is nobody programs it properly and failure training should be used appropriately. And I would argue by people who really understand technique form stability and know their bodies, because when you go to failure, the risk of injury does go up. That's just the bottom line. Just the amount of intensity that you're putting your body through, because here's the thing when you train to failure, if you don't ever do it and you try it, it's further than you think. Like you'll get to a rep and be like, oh my God, I think I have one more. Then you'll do it and be like, oh my God, I have another one and you'll keep going. And when your form starts to break down, oftentimes it's the weak link that breaks down, which dramatically increases the risk of injury. And for most people going to failure, that only is it not necessary, but it tends to set them back. And so with clients, I mean, let me ask you guys this with your clients, did you ever train when you were good? And forget when you sucked as a trainer, when you started getting good. Did you ever train clients to failure ever? No, rarely ever. Do you guys remember what it was that shattered your paradigm? I remember it was actually when I, because I had no interest really in powerlifting or Olympic lifting. And I really didn't follow that. That's probably more Justin and maybe even you. I didn't really pay attention to their programming and training until a way later. And I was shocked that the strongest people in the world, like never trained to failure. I mean, like literally hardly ever trained to failure. Like they're trained, not only that, but- Like 60 to 70% intensity. Yeah, their intensity was even way, you talk about the, we talk about two reps in the tank all the time, right? So we promote that. Like that's what most people should train for is having two reps left in the tank in their sets. And that's like what Olympic lifters and power lifters train like 80% of the time. It's not until they get, like to their peak or getting ready to get into a meet, do they test those limits, you know? And I thought that was so crazy. And it's like, how funny is this that you have all these weekend warriors or Jim bros that are lifting and we're all using spotters and you got this man, you got this and we're training this way. And yet the strongest, most muscular people on the planet when you talk about power lifters and Olympic lifters are never training that way. Or like you're talking about a 5% of the time they are training this way. It completely just shattered my paradigm. You tend to hear trained to failure from bodybuilders, but even if we use, and I don't necessarily like using bodybuilders or elite athletes as examples because what we're dealing with is a very, it's a very rare portion of the population with genetics that are on the extreme end. I mean, it's really no different than people who are over seven feet tall. It's so rare in real life. You walk around in real life, you never see anybody it's over the seven feet tall. That's how rare the type of genetics are. Well, it's not just that either though, Sal. I mean, when you're talking about that community, a big portion of them, especially the ones that look amazing are on anabolic. Then you throw that on top of it. And then I tell you what, one of the biggest things that I noticed from taking testosterone for as long as I did, one of the best things was the recovery ability. I mean, strength, yeah, that's cool, but you're eventually, your body kind of adapts to that and you start hitting your peaks anyways. Yeah, you throw shit at your body and you don't really get sore. Yeah, and I don't really get that sore anymore. So it's not like strength just keeps going up forever as long as you're on steroids. What was amazing though, was the recovery ability. Yes. Was that I could throw anything at my body and destroy it and my body had this ability to recover and get back. But genetics, the extreme genetics plus that produces this insane situation. And so taking advice from that category of people, you have to be very careful. I would say you'll get some answers if you look at all of them and kind of look at trends but you're not gonna get all the answers. But here's some clues, right? If you look at the pro bodybuilders, the elite top muscle building people with the best genetics and of course on anabolic and you look at the ones that train with the failure intensity model, what you tend to see is a high rate of injury. You tend to see, I mean, the most popular being Dorian Yates, right? Dorian Yates trained what he called heavy duty style training or excuse me, not heavy duty, blood and guts was the name of his style of training. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Is there no one? Oh, stop it. But it was borrowed off of heavy duty which was invented by Mike Menser and he had lots of injuries, right? Ronnie Coleman trained with an incredible intensity, right? Tremendous amounts of injuries. Then you have bodybuilders that didn't train that way who had a lot of longevity. Dexter Jackson. Dexter Jackson being a great example of a bodybuilder. So the risk of injury is very high. It does fry your central nervous system. It really does and the CNS needs time to recover just like muscles do, if not more so. Now, if I see a program with failure programmed in properly, then I would say this is good, but I never see that. I'd never see failure programmed improperly. It's almost always either the feature of the program or somehow it's the feature where they talk about intensity and how hard you need to train. But no, yeah, intensity is important but going to failure is too much for most people. And now, when did it change for me? I'll tell you. It changed for me, I wanna say late 20s maybe and up until then, like you, I trained to failure quite often and did the body part split the whole thing. And then I started reading these old strength books that were written by people in the early 1900s. And I noticed they all trained full body three days a week. They looked incredible. This is before supplements were even invented really. Forget anabolic steroids. And I thought, and then what they would write about in these books was make sure that you save some energy the way that they put it, right? Cause they didn't say failure. They said, make sure you have enough energy to train the next workout and don't, you know, essentially it would say don't beat up your body. And so I took it as, okay, if I'm training my whole body three days a week going to failure, I know is gonna crush me. What if I stopped a few reps short of failure? And the gains I got were literally within the first week I saw my strength start to go up. Well, that's why I had the biggest epiphany was like measuring more so on how my next workout felt. And, you know, there's this whole thing, like your body needs to heal, right? And so at some point, you know, there's healing or adapting, like which one are you doing? There's a sweet spot there where if you're adapting and you go into your next workout, you feel stronger, you feel more energized. And if you've never felt that in a workout and you just felt almost dread, like you're grinding your way through every single workout, you gotta assess, you know, that amount of intensity you're bringing. Well, that's where it came full circle for me. So first it was seeing the programming from power lifters and Olympic lifters. Then I remember like the first couple of times that I took like being very consistent, like in hardcore training, right? And training intensely. And then I took like a week vacation. Matter of fact, we used every July, we had this 10 day vacation, we'd go up wakeboarding. And that was all I did. No, I wasn't lifting weights, I'm out in the trees in the lake, like, and then I'd come back, you know, worried. I'm gonna be, oh my God, all I did was eat candy and sit on a lake and, you know, lay out and stuff like that, no training whatsoever. Sure, I was doing a little bit of cardiovascular stuff by doing wakeboarding, but not any strength training at all. Oh my God, I'm gonna lose all the strength and I come back stronger. Yeah. And that was kind of when it was like that, that whole thing came together for me. It was like, what the hell? And it's like, oh wow, maybe my body really needed to fully recover like that. And now that I am fully recovered, my body is responding and I'm getting stronger. That was when it all started to come together. And now here's what's interesting with failure training. And this is where I think some people get sold. When you do it for a short period of time, you do gain strength and you do, you can gain muscle in a very short period of time, but it's very short-lived. Which, well, that's where the studies are built around. Yes. That's the, because if you were to... Especially if you never train to failure and then you do it like for a couple of weeks, you see like, oh my gosh, I'm getting stronger and building muscle very, very quickly. That happened to me as a kid when I first picked up Heavy Duty by Mike Menser. And I was like, for a month, I saw these crazy gains. And of course it all stopped and plateaued completely. So as a long-term approach, it's really terrible. And again, I think it's just never programmed appropriately or properly. And when people use failure, they use it all the time. It's just all about intensity. So one of my favorite things to do as an older trainer when I started to get real good is if I had a guy hire me who had worked out for a long time and I'd look at their workouts and I'd see that they'd train to failure all the time, I would confidently say to this to them, I'd say, oh, I'll get you 10 to 15 pounds stronger on most of your lifts within a month. And they'd look at me like I was crazy. And I'd say, I'll refund you if it doesn't happen. You know what I would do? Just have them not train to failure. And then all of a sudden they'd see these crazy gains because they were overdoing it before. You know, it's tough. It plays with the ego a little bit, right? Because I remember lifting, I mean, I'm still guilty of this, right? I think we all are a little bit where you have a workout and you can just feel the weight like moving so easy. And it's like, oh, shit, this is 225. That's not a grind right now. It feels like it's moving up slow or smooth. Oh, let me throw another quarter on there and see how that goes. And then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, I've never lifted this. It's a PR for you in your workout. And then what do you want to do the next week? PR again. Well, if that was the best ever done, what could be next week be? So it's, you know, running as fast as you can into a brick wall. Yeah, that's really, so this isn't, I don't feel like this is us pointing at everybody else and saying, oh, everybody's doing this wrong and we're so right. Listen, I'm guilty of doing this too. It's very, it feeds the ego when I get in there and get a lift and it's the most I've ever done. And it's very tempting to want to keep doing that, to see where the end is and see, wow, how much stronger am I? But, you know, and initially you may see that, you may actually be able to do that back to back weeks and see gains and go, oh my God, I am getting stronger, but it's really hard to do that and then go, okay, it's time for me to go the other direction. Like you're fighting with the ego. Yeah, totally.