There are a few issues with taking every set to failure, the most important being that it will substantially increase your risk of injury. It sounds great until you consider compounds like the deadlift that can ruin your back if your form is bad, and by definition, going to failure means your form will be imperfect at some point. There are lots of macho powerlifters out there with permanently ruined spines who will probably die earlier than they would have otherwise, due to mobility degradation.

Particularly as you get older you become more injury prone and your recovery time slows down. This necessitates being cautious about how quickly you increase weight and how often you go to failure.

The better goal to target is increasing volume, where volume is defined as Sets x Reps x Weight. The literature doesn't conclusively establish that any one of these is "more important" than the others for hypertrophy. The only real caveat when you follow this rule is that at a certain extreme of low weight / high reps (like 50 reps) you wouldn't actually be doing resistance training anymore, it'd be cardio.

2 reps in reserve is fine and far less painful, but you need to go to actual failure often enough to know where failure is on each set. I’m nerdy enough to suggest rolling a 20 sided die for each set, and on a 1 take it to failure it’s not that complicated and keeps your predictions honest.

As I understand it taking a set near failure works reasonably anywhere between 5 to 30 reps, but 30 well controlled reps with good form * 3+ sets for each muscle group gets really boring.

Boring is subjective though. For some like me the ideal weight gives endorphins where as too much feels like cortisol. Too light is sort of nothing. So I aim for that "yeah I pushed something" feeling. Which isn't failure.

Let’s be realistic, everyone goes through periods when they just don’t want to work out.

So optimal in terms of personal preference is defiantly worth considering alongside optimal in terms of results, but optimal in terms of returns on effort defiantly has a place at some point in our lives.

This is key to recognize. Even when you don’t “feel” it you still go and do your program. But, when you do feel good, you go and push.

Yes guess it depends on your goals. Whether you are doing it for health, vanity, work or competitions will adjust the calculus.

I mean if you're going "until I can't maintain proper form" is there seriously a risk that you're too far from failure to make real progress?

It’s a nuanced topic.

If you actually can’t use proper form that’s already failure of one of the muscles you’re trying to train. However many people resort to improper form well before that point.

Further the risk isn’t just injury, using excessive weights you can’t properly train with can mean failure to provide proper stimulus to a muscle you’re targeting.

What about longer rest periods? For example if I wait 1hr between sets I can do full weight again without dropping down weights with a 2-5min break. In fact I can get multiple more sets in and significantly increase my total volume if I spread a workout over a day (which is easier with WFH). Any thoughts on this? Is there not enough muscle fatigue with this approach?

Hard to stay warmed up that way. What you’re describing is how people tend to get big without the gym (lifting heavy things through the day) but they also tend be pretty active in between (think farm work).

But as long as you’re not going so hard you risk injury, it might be great overall. Could be really good for your mental state.

You might also be interested in reading about Pavel Tsatsouline's "grease the groove".

That's why I always get as close as I can until I feel my form suffer, then stop that set. I've hurt my neck a few times, and it's always been from "oh i can push ONE more..." then suffer for it. It's never been worth 100% optimized gains. A few people I know did the same with deadlifts and paid for it, right now one's awaiting back surgery that's basically cost her all her savings.

Perfect form isnt a thing, its all a matter of what joint positions you are adapted to produce or reduce force in. So the problem with form breakdown isnt that the position you end up in is dangerous (no, rounding your back some is not bad), but that you are not prepared for the stress in that position.

Its unfortunate that people say deadlifting "wrong" causes injury, while the evidence does not support it. People should not be turned off from lifting heavy by such statements.

Your point about the injury risk going up is valid. That being said going to failure and beyond is extremely effective way to train.

As I mentioned in another comment a possibile way to mitigate the risks is to reduce the load and make the exercise harder and increase the time under load by slowing down the exercise.

Also it's a good idea to swap from a higher risk exercise to a safer one to crank out the last reps. For example from squat to leg press.

I think the total volume idea is more flawed than you realise. Pretty much everyone would be able to achieve greater volume, on any exercise, just by decreasing the weight, so your high rep caveat is covering up for quite a lot. This is true mathematically for an Epley style model for example.

> Pretty much everyone would be able to achieve greater volume, on any exercise

I’m not sure this is true and it might be the opposite. Lactic acid will build up with light weight while trying to hit a volume number that will make it hard for people to finish.

Anecdotally, my gym had a "challenge" some times back where the goal was to achieve the max total volume in one set without pause.

I tried various combos of weight* reps, and in the end the optimum was somewhere in the middle because no matter how light the weight there was a limit for me at about ~150 reps.

In my case, the curve would be: total volume increases quickly initially at you go from max weight/1 rep to something like 20/30 reps, then something of a plateau as things equalise, then it goes down again as you reach the max reps threshold.

Great point. Personally I find lactic acid build up way more limiting for me than muscle fatigue. It's why I gravitated towards power lifting.

>While one might think "I can do 50 reps with low weights"

The caveat is that you need anaerobic training. Low enough weight and it’s cardio, you don’t get giant legs by walking to failure for example.

Has anyone really ever walked to failure on a regular basis? I typically have to stop because of blisters not muscle failure. (The furthest I've done is 12 miles with +10% weight.)

I backpack often (usually 8-13% bodyweight in my pack) and during long summer days I can comfortably push well into the 30 mile per day range if there isn't too much vert to slow my pace down. My feet get sore, brain gets tired, and I run out of daylight well before any sort of muscle failure in my legs. If you aren't used to walking from sunrise to sunset doing so would build muscle, but your time would be better spent on a progressive overload leg routine in a gym.

Yup, I have never gone that far (but my summer hiking is entirely at high elevation with lots of climb) but I have never found anything like a failure point--I wear out because of time (not even daylight--I've made navigation errors that left me out there well past sunset), not muscle failure.

I used to persistent hunt to failure, ended up with bulky calves and tibialis.

Where were you doing this? Were you ever successful? How did you do it, like what were your tactics? So many questions!

I’ve never heard about modern people doing serious persistence hunting, except for a stunt that I read about years ago. I think it was organized by like Outside or some running publication that got pro marathoners to try and they failed because they didn’t know anything about hunting

Right? Where’s the well written blog post on this I want?

I'm honestly surprised that anyone would care to read about it, we just called it 'hunting' with knives.

Third. Tell the story!!

Answers inline. Had to break this up into two comments.

All of which I have done is legal, I do not hunt native animals, only introduced species. I apologise for anyone who may find the following details grotesque, the damage that these animals did was often quite nasty.

> Where were you doing this?

Central Queensland, Australia. I had to get permission from farmers and national parks and wildlife if I was to go on their property. I started this when i was around 5 years old , doing walk hunting which is just the same thing but for a full day. I think this prepared me as a child to 'long distance' the tracking. Knowing what tracks looks like, mud and fur on trees, how animals traverse rivers, where to start and stop looking for tracks so that I don't waste time looking at the wrong spots.

I have also done this on properties in Daintree, in far north Queensland (tropical). I found rainforest hunting much harder because finding tracks was a challenge and I had to spend time worrying about crocodiles and snakes and poisonous trees, being prey myself.

I might be doxing myself, however I don't think many of the kids I went to school with end up on HN, but I've been wrong before, if you know who I am, please stfu.

> Were you ever successful?

Regularly, almost every time that I found tracks I was able to catch at least 1-2 animals, largest take down was about 13 animals, I would say less than 10 times over the course of 5 years I came home with nothing. I would hunt almost every other weekend.

I followed the steps taught by my father, who is a australian bushman who seems to know every tree and animal, can see and hear animals hiding in the bush that I can only see after trying to look for 10 minutes, my mother is equally as good in the bush but with less hunting and more capable when it comes to the people side of things.

> How did you do it.

I hunted with my brother and father and sometimes mother.

Basic equipment: - Knife - Arm guard(s) - Water - Dried meat - Backpack - Matches and lighter. - Tourniquet - First aid kit (not always)

I did use a modern knife, I don't know if that is cheating or not, but I feel like strangling or bashing an animal to death was a bit cruel. I have hunted with dogs a few of times, but you can't bring them on national park land so this limits the success.

I sometimes wore leather guards (leather vambrace ? made by my mother) on my arms and ensured i had some kind of leather scarf around my neck because cats get scratchy, dogs get bitey and pigs will try to gore you with tusks. I once used a kickboxer arm guard but it had holes and I was bitten through the holes, so not doing that again.

I did not wear shoes when hunting in the central Queensland, it seemed safe enough and I didn't impale myself too often, feet adapt.

I mostly hunted pigs, dogs (not dingos), large cats, or deer. I have successfully only caught deer less than handful of times.

> like what were your tactics?

This is the 'ideal' situation, it doesn't always work this way but it's what the goal is, one needs to adapt to the changes as they happen.

Tracking phase:

Walk an area that had prints, track the prints, follow the freshest ones. These paths you can use later, because animals will frequently go back to an area they know if you lose them.

Usually the best place to start tracking is around crops and other large animals, pigs and cats will separate the young offspring from the group and kill them for food.

By paying attention, you can get a good idea of their behavior, the animals will repeat successful behavior that gives them food and water.

This usually, but not always means that they will be going for water at dusk and dawn. The first step is denying them that water, wait near the place they get water.

Hunting phase:

GOLDEN RULE: NEVER UNSHEATH THE KNIFE UNTIL YOU ARE CLOSE ENOUGH TO GET THE KILL. (I have had friends come hunting and cut themselves slipping down an embankment with the knife drawn, infuriating!)

SILVER RULE: DRINK WATER, ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH FRESH WATER SOMEWHERE.

BRONZE RULE: If you get lost, do NOT just start wondering, you idiot, relax, don't panic and listen, drink some water, look for smoke and light.

You (the first) will need to be there before they get there, so this often means being there well before the sun rises. Stay downwind so that the animal doesn't smell you and not come to the water.

Ideally you want to be running them east so they are looking into the rising sun, not the biggest deal but if you have this option, take it. next best option is to have them running 'on the plain' , aka not in trees, this allows you to track them by sight.

If it is a herd animals (aka, everything in my list but cats), a small group will typically test the area first and the full group will join them when they consider it safe.

At this time it helps to have a second person circle around and take the position about 1000-1500m (call this person the second) on the return path, again downwind from the tracks (this can screw up if you have changing winds)

Wait till the full group appears, hopefully the sun is up enough that you will be able to see prints left behind.

You want there to be enough light that you can see the tracks, so sometimes this means letting them 'start to drink' before you begin the hunt.

You have to make yourself seen as the biggest threat possible, make noise, appear large, use a torch to make light, sometimes you can sneak up close enough and get the first kill by hand and then make a lot of noise (sneaky sneaky!) . This may mean shoulder checking the bigger animals, diving on them or booting them to get them moving.

Chase them (direct them if possible) towards the person hidden ~ 1000m away, be as aggressive as possible in the movement to keep the moving quickly. This -will- tire you out but the second person will continue giving chase.

Second must also be as 'aggressive' as possible while trying to keep the main group together.

The animals will USUALLY split, this is very common, but you need to make an educated decision on which animal to pursue. I've had most luck with the males (more reasons to follow).

You can usually hear the animals (and the human making noise) and catch up within 15/20 minutes at a moderate pace. We have 'woops' and 'aaahs' sounds which travel well and are clear over distance to signify left and right directions (if the animals are ahead / too quick). I believe that this is an older aboriginal hunting trick in some tribes.

Because the first person is trailing, it is usually a shorter path to catch up. Once caught up, the second take take a breather, give them some water and you keep going.

By this point you are usually at the 5.0/6.0 km mark. Your first animal will either collapse or stop in its tracks (easy kill). Some smarter animals will attempt to fight you when they realise they are tired.

If you find a log nearby, (some people carry a short staff/walking stick) you can hit it/throw it to spur it onwards, into further tiredness. You want them to be so tired they can't put up a fight. Pigs will often do this in an attempt to allow the sonder/mob to gain extra distance while you deal with it, but ideally you want to keep them moving together.

Large cats also will defend their group this way, usually this will give them time to get up a tree or hide, but you must keep on them so they don't have that luxury. Its quite hard to kill a large cat this way because they will try to claw you or get on top of you and attack you, bad times.

If you are lucky enough to have a third person, you hopefully position your third person in high ground nearby, so that whatever direction they need to go, the travel is downhill (it's easier, better visibility and you can adapt to changes when things change).

This should usually be the older person (or the newest) because they have the animals tired and need to continue to present a threat, but not too long.

By this time the animals will be out in 'new territory' and this is where risk happens, they will no longer be following the usual routes they know and can act erratically.

Here is where the persistence is, you kinda need to 'rotate' the front chaser, have someone who is has the energy to chase the main group, and the trail people shepard anyone who breaks free back to the main group. This can be anywhere from 10-20km. Keep someone at the front, continually giving chase, this person should make tracks as CLEAR as possible, footprints on mud and dirt, leaving arrows in the dirt, pointing to the direction they are going (when tracking humans foot position is NOT always the direction they are going).

This is where most injuries happen in people, do not ignore them. Rotate the people at the front, leave people behind that are too tired, hurt (but not dying), tell them to start a small fire, hydrate, and rest, do NOT keep going.

If animal group has any offspring, they usually can't walk by now and mum won't leave them alone, you need to make the decision on if you kill the mum + kids now (usually the first and second can do this) and the group continues on.

After a few rotations of slow jogging, backtracking and tracking, you will find even the most hardened of animals has tried to find cover/hide.

The cats go up trees, the pigs try to hide in logs/brush/wherever, deer will go to a thicket/grass and crouch and hide. You can usually just meet them where they are, let them try to take the first blow (on your armored parts) then go in for the kill. Most times though they are simply too tired, panting on the ground in a state of fatigue.

Always aim for a one cut kill, go for the jugular and be sure, it is cruel to have to go for two, sometimes you must, but don't aim for it.

Since the group has split, circle back.. the footprints will be very easy to follow now because they will be deeper (since they are panicked) fresher (because today), and if there was a sow with piglets, they will be noisy. Usually they will not be resting not too far from the group. The sun will be about 10/11AM and they'll be hot, tired and thirsty.

If you can't find any, wait downwind for a few hours and see if they come back to the water at dusk, if they haven't had any water they will be very thirsty and this chase usually won't go on for more than about 1.5km.

Dragging carcasses back to civilisation can be a real pain in the arse, if you know there are other feral animals in the area, bury it deep or burn it. The fire can be a good method of finding/giving directions your hunting mates if you are lost or new.

Most of the pigs had some kind of worms (only good after being cooked, and then only for dogs), so the meat was not so great. The dear meat was 'passable' for jerky and cats and dogs were not worth the trouble.

I respect the marathon runners for even trying, its very different as you need to both plan, think, run and pace yourself. The whole hunting isn't a sprint, its a slow methodical paced plan, I have many fond memories of spending time with my family in the Australian bush, hunting and camping.

Check anybody that has done the AT.

You think they hike to failure??

(And you should be looking at the CDT, anyway.)

I don't know. All cyclists I know seem to have massive thighs. And these are amateurs who don't do any kind of strength training, just hours and hours of cycling every week.

There's a difference between the guys who cycle Tour de France vs the ones who go around in the velodrome.

The former group is endurance athletes with skinny legs and the latter group is more focused on maximum power. Similar to marathon runners vs sprinters.

The pro velodrome cyclists do tremendous leg training programs specifically to develop the muscles. It's not the cycling that builds that muscle.

>All cyclists I know seem to have massive thighs.

Yeah uphill cycling or sprints probably go anaerobic at times, you can tell because you need to stop from the muscle burning/refusing to move, rather than going out of breath or general tiredness.

Squat training is a must for cyclists. Heck, there are youtube videos of a German competition (squat as many times as you can with your weight on the bar) with high-level competition (powerlifters, strength athletes, OLY lifters). It was overwhelmingly won by the cyclist.

Well you’re not applying much mechanical tension to the quadriceps when “walking to failure”. This is nowhere near analogous.

The weight does matter. You will never get bigger if you don't add weight to the bar, and you will never get bigger if you only train at 1% of your 1 rep max, no matter the number of reps. Producing a training stimulus requires placing the muscle under sufficient tension (enough weight) enough times to be at or near failure.

Well understood, but not widely known. The myths and superstitions around anything health related are frustratingly durable.

Novelty of stimulus is a huge factor, especially as training continues over years. Failure from a set of 20 is very different than failure from a set of 5, and bodybuilders will periodize their training to cycle through the different flavors of stimulus. I think a big contributor might be neuromuscular adaptation. Cycling through those different intensities over training periods measured in months will make this apparent anecdotally.

> bodybuilders will periodize their training to cycle through the different flavors of stimulus

Some will, many won’t. It’s clearly not necessary.

They mostly cycle for health (injury prevention) and sanity (not to do the same damn thing).

There's also the risk of injury.

At very low reps and high weight, particularly for highly coordinated motions (squats, dips, pull-ups, Pulver press back-extensions), there's a much higher chance for injury due to insufficient support at one or more positions within the entire range of concentric and eccentric efforts by all activated muscles. We all have, at the very least, minor intrinsic asymmetries that need explicit addressing.

There's also intra-set recovery. Roughly (very roughly) speaking, your endo-neuro-muscular system "adapts best" where there is a refractory period for a reset-to-quiescence between exertions.

There is real truth to "muscle memory" and the exclusive way to achieve that (and avoid injury) is through a sufficient amount of well-formed repetitions. The only way to achieve those repetitions is by using a resistance that's sufficiently low.

Asymmetry is normal and you cannot address it (outside of repeatability of movement, aiming for no form degradation during high load).

As long as your movement does not degrade horribly, asymmetry is fine.

Even before strength training, your one arm is dominant, more precise. But this has an effect on your leg as well.

Doing unilateral work will never change that asymmetry. As you get stronger, due to drastically different activations of the nervous system between the sides, you will get slightly different adaptations.

Looking at powerlifters, most of them have visibly different sizes of hip, leg musculature between sides. They even have drastic flexibility differences where one hip goes deeper, or the musculature makes the barbell sit skewed on the back.

To be clear, by "addressing" I did mean altering form and training to lessen the risk of injury due to asymmetry. FWIW, I wear a heal-cup in my right shoe and do additional rotator cuff warm-ups to due minor leg asymmetry and an old injury.

Even Smolov has clear discrepancies in the way his feet are positioned.

What about the old gym adage "training to failure is failing to train" - is there any physiological basis for this, or is it mental, or just a myth?

That’s a Pl/Oly mindset rather than a BB/hypertrophy mindset. Totally valid advice in the right context.

Long story short, failed reps get much more risky and problematic as the weight you’re lifting approaches your 1RM.

Exactly this. When I was in my best shape my deadlift and squat were in/on the way to 2.5-3x my body weight. You don’t want to fail that without a lot of help and safeties.

Note for the uninitiated: That figure is not even impressive or competitive with competition lifters. This is just “guy who put in the time and work” numbers.

Don’t sell yourself short though. Those are very respectable numbers ahead of the vast majority of the population.

Yeah, for sure. It is in line with someone who went to the gym 4-5 times per week and had a coach/trainer. Just hard work and help from an expert.

Look up lifts and weight multiples and a 3x weight deadlift is advanced to elite.

https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/deadlift/lb

Yeah I was doing fine for the usual people going to the gym. I’d be last in a competition. I’m neither on steroids or an elite natural athlete. My point isn’t to say I’m weak, only that I’m not unusual for someone who went to the gym 5x per week and had a personal trainer/coach.

Be sure to not take strengthlevel.com too seriously.

It holds true, but with some caveats.

Generally training to failure is completely fine for say a set of tricep extensions. Generally safe.

However, training to failure on compound lifts like a deadlift or benchpress, or involving sensitive muscles like a shoulder press, isn't.

Technique generally suffers at the point of failure. Making a habit of doing thousands of repetitions in the next decade at the point where technique fails, on an exercise that can mess up your back permanently, or your shoulders, is bad advice.

For these exercises it's better to stop 2 reps short of failure. This is more safe. Also it requires moderate recovery getting you back in the gym quicker, meaning you can compound more incremental improvements in a given training period (say 5 years).

Even then, some still cautiously go to failure to keep an understanding of what their failure point really is. You could go for a PR once or twice a month for example and go to failure, with a proper warmup, spotter etc. But purely for hypertrophy there's not really a point, this is more for strength training.

Generally people that say they train to failure mean 2 reps in reserve. Training to absolute failure on all muscles is very rare and generally advised against.

True. Generally, the more isolated the exercise and the smaller the muscle the "safer" it is to train-to-failure at a higher duty-cycle.

Put another way, you can do crunches to failure every single day, but you'll want to keep some reps in the tank for squats and you'll want to plan on at least 12-24 hours of recovery between squat sessions.

not an expert, 2 years of serious lifting, but this is probably a good adage for the average person from my current understanding

training to failure puts you at higher risk of injury and there are diminishing returns as you approach your 1 rep max and/or failure

hypertrophy can happen with more reps or more weight

strength gains are usually just focused on progressive overload

though, of course, hypertrophy will happen either way and contributes to increased strength, but this seems to be further confirmation that you can gain muscle size either way

It's definitely way more nuanced than that. You have to approach exhaustion to get the body to eventually build strength. But you need to carefully time your rests/deloads and handle plateaus with more volume.

i definitely agree it is more nuanced! might not have communicated it well that in the context of untrained people and beginners that these guidelines will work for quite a while and most of the nuance applies much more once you get past the easy beginner gains

for example, if someone new starts with low weight to work on proper technique and form, and adds weight each week they will continue to both get stronger and to gain muscle

i'd imagine the average person who is casually lifting might not even get to this point and could easily spend a couple of years before really hitting a spot where the nuance is more important

Where could I find more information on proper set timing?

I like Mehdi's description over here as a good starting point:

https://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5/intermediate/#rest-p...

Has a paper from 1976 but this seems in line with what I've read elsewhere

basically, 2-3 minutes is probably good for most of your lifting, you could go to 5 minutes if you are doing your heaviest lift of the day

this is also a reasonable way to make sure your workouts aren't going to take 3 hours at a time

some people really mix max this though if they're focusing on super heavy lifts. i remember being at the gym and watching people take 8-10 minutes between sets when they were putting up 400-500lbs on a squat. they also arrived before me and weren't done when i was leaving and, i'm assuming, they were interested in powerlifting competitions

i've actually started looking at reactive training system with mike tuchscherer who has a lot of interesting things to say about training, rest times, etc. been startin to build his stuff on RPE and fatigue percentages in to my training and it has already been super insightful and helpful

https://store.reactivetrainingsystems.com/blogs/default-blog...

This guy has a PhD in exercise science and is a very evidence based dude and breaks things down very nicely.

https://youtu.be/DupQfkoI-Sc?si=QK_w2d99TcvNcQsD

Honestly from a personal training/lifting coach. When I could spend serious time in the gym there’s a lot to just having someone with expertise for 30 minutes to give perspective. You can do a lot of it over video today as well.

In general YouTube is a good resource. There are a lot of respected coaches that also produce content.

It ends up being personal, but you want enough time to catch your breath and be “ready” to go again, but no more.

I’ve never heard that, it’s usually the opposite- people do strip sets and the like to reach failure

Failure also taxes your nervous system and joints which don’t take as kindly to stimulus as muscles do and take longer to recover (or accumulate damage in case of joints)

Brad Schoenfeld Has been on this body of work for a long time, and he is "Mr. Hypertrophy" in the field. So yes

Training to failure for me personally only brought injury and set back my progress by weeks.

If you were a newbie just getting started.. the ligaments and tendons take much longer to strengthen than the muscle. So the muscles getting stronger will outpace the connective tissue.

Second potential issue is too much training vrt recovery.

A good way to add safety margin when training to failure is to reduce the weights and slow down the exercise and increase the time under load.

For example bench press, do 5s down (eccentric), 5s pause (isometric) and then (optionally) 5s press (concentric). Your weights will go way down because this exercise will be so hard. But the stress on the joints and ligaments will be reduced.

Fifty is excessive but you’re better-served doing 12-20 reps more than fewer, heavier reps if you’re pushing hypertrophy and already well-trained.

That matches what I've been told by various personal trainers. 6-8 reps if focusing on strength, ~12 for all round, and 16-18 for size/endurance. Do three sets, weight should be enough that the last couple of reps on the first set are a bit of a struggle. Subsequent sets just push through as far as you can.

Your trainers clearly never read Starting Strength.

No idea, I certainly haven't. This was decades ago, though, so it's entirely possible that established best practice has changed.

these days your better of not reading that, probably. bunch of outdated and bad advice coming from that corner.

What do you recommend?

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Also probably move around a lot, doesn't matter how, ideally by finding something fun to do that involves moving around a lot.

This is a common myth that came out of nowhere and has been debunked.

1-5 reps for strength. 5-30 reps for hypertrophy.

This article claims that's false, that 8-12 at higher weight leads to the same result as 20+ at lower weights.

The research is studying young untrained men. Everyone puts on muscle at mach chicken when untrained.

Not being able to do a rep with proper form is the definition of failure.

How about making muscles fail by stretching them under load?

Depending on what you mean by "fail" and "stretching", that sounds a lot like eccentric training [0] (a.k.a. "negatives"). It's effective but notorious for causing delayed onset muscle soreness.

I trained myself to do pull-ups using this method, repeatedly lowering myself in a controlled motion from the top position while I was too weak to actually pull myself up.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eccentric_training

There has been a lot of "long length training/partials" information/research in the past couple of years. A very useful information, you should research more (or ask more specific questions).

thats a different thing tho. the term "stretch mediated hypertrophy" is used loosely in many places and i think originally refers to really just hypertrophy caused by the stretch. iirc the lengthened partial gains are not thought to be caused by this mechanism.

You are correct. SMH is used incorrectly in most places, but you explained it well.

But after that people started experimenting and researches started publishing a lot of interesting findings. And found a lot of applicable things that are based on the original SMH research and that is partly/fully explaining new findings.

Like is was found that it having only the partial range of motion, training the one when the muscle is lengthened is clearly better than training in a position of a shortened muscle.

Moreover, some research even found that doing such "lengthened partials" is better that doing the full range of motion.

Therefore, people try to utilize more of the lengthened portion of the movements (especially if it is impossible to work the muscle in both the lengthened and shortened positions, so one has to choose anyway), while some go as far as getting rid of the shortened portion altogether.

akshually theres quite some interesting data on this. it has been shown that stretching alone can indeed produce hypertrophy (in birds and humans), but the required protocols are so intense that you wont want to do them (i think its hours in incredibly uncomfortable positions), so dynamic exercise still wins.

One would also expect it not to do as much for strenght, since adaptations are somewhat specific to the training.

Sounds like a great way to injure yourself, also would only work for eccentric motion

To me it doesn't sound much different than "taking your sets to muscular failure".

Not all muscles resist extension, some do the opposite and contract.

i don't understand what this means. the stretch feeling is an involuntary muscle contraction that is happening to resist extension on the opposite side.

> Loads for each set were adjusted to ensure that volitional fatigue was reached within 8–12 and 20–25 repetitions for the HL and LL limbs, respectively

I would argue both categories of the study are about low reps. I don't see how the body would tell the difference between 12 and 25 reps. If you said between 5 and 500, like it has to meaningfully take much longer, otherwise why would doing something so similar have any meaningful difference?

The way I think about it is that nature mostly reacts to order of magnitude changes. 12 to 25 is the same thing.

Like why not make a study to see if its more nutritious to eat dinner in 15 or 20 minutes?

This is spoken like you've never done any reps at all?

There's not much difference in hitting max at 12 and at 25, from anecdotal experience. The study corroborated that as well, even though with small n.

What do you mean by there’s no difference? The difference is in the relative load needed in each example.

Well of course you change the load, but the stimulus is interpreted the same way by the body. I didn't think the question was at that level.

> but the stimulus is interpreted the same way by the body

That may be your intuition, but it’s certainly not everyone’s, hence the studies… Many people will intuit heavier weight = more effective.

It's not my intuition, it's just knowledge about processes in nature.

Almost nothing reacts to changes smaller than an order of magnitude to anything. It's one of the best rules of thumb.

Except that this is something that was well established before, making this study pointless.

I feel like I would definitely notice if I went from 12 to 25 reps on any exercise I do. Although typically I max out at 8 before adding more weight.

> I feel like I would definitely notice if I went from 12 to 25 reps on any exercise I do.

To be clear, the implication is that 12 and 25 have different weights so they tire you the same amount. Do you think it would be a very strongly felt difference in that situation? What would the difference feel like?

Yes, this is why classic body builders like high reps because they get the pump but you can get the same growth (and there’s lots of research saying more) with training to failure with low reps and high weight but it doesn’t give you the pump.

Well the idea in the earlier comment is that a 2x rep difference isn't very much to be the difference between "low" and "high". It's not disputing that you can get a difference, but saying the study didn't try very hard to probe it.

Of course you would personally notice. But the parent was talking about the effect on muscles. And it has been long estsblished that 5-30 reps (perhaps even highter) will cause the same hypertrophy.

Obviously, for practical reasons the optimal range for each exercise will vary. For squat 5-10 is definitely better than 10-20 let alone 20-30. For DB side raises highter reps would feel better than the lower rep range.

You consciously notice of course, like what kind of argument is that. The point is the stimulus is the same for the body unless you change it by orders of magnitude, the study agrees that this is the same also.