Does ‘training to failure’ build better muscle strength?
health
Scroll.in reports on a counterintuitive finding in resistance training research: pushing every set to failure may create fatigue without actually building better muscle. Reaching failure means continuing until you cannot complete another repetition with good form. An alternative is stopping before that point, a technique called repetitions in reserve. If you could do ten reps but stop after eight, you have two in reserve. The biological reason: your muscles contain two main fiber types, with type two fibers producing more force and growing more than type one. This suggests that pure exhaustion might not be the most efficient path to strength gains.
Source: https://scroll.in/article/1094726/does-training-to-failur...
Listen to this story
Hear this and more stories in a personalized audio briefing.
Open The Chonkerton