[ireallydunno]

ok so i always hear work out tell failure and so on but im not quite sure what it is is it when u work out untell u cant lift no more with that curtain muscle or what? lol

[billy d]

yes u have the basic idea about lifting till failure. but the more important part to understand is not to get in the habit of always training till failure.

[mindstar]

training until failure means working until you can no longer get a rep with proper form...occasionally you can cheat the last rep up, but really, you get better results with good form.

[monkeybiker]

What they said. It is lifting the weight until it you can not lift it anymore even if your life depended on it. You don't necessary have to train this way. You just need to be progressively increasing the weight you lift over time.

I normally always train to failure. Making strength and muscle gains has never been easy for me(apart from the first few months) and I have to train very hard to force the muscles to adapt. If I stop short of failure my strength will not increase.

[yotajay]

Alot of pro bodybuilders and strength trainers will go till failure. I myself do it.

[ireallydunno]

alright thanks i new it was some where around the lines of what i thought it was but yea thanks lol

[blacktaboo]

working to failure is great....basically repping till u cant get another rep done by urself....then u might want to do force reps....but everyone doesnt react to failure training the same thats y its always good to have a training partner when doing this...for safety reasons...

[BBenthusiast]

i like to rep to failure on the odd occation because the next day i really feel it, and to me, i hope, that shows i really worked the muscle and hope it grows lol

[CfStrongman08]

I dont want to sound arrogant or a know it all, theres a lot to lifting im still learning however i do know a bit. Your 16 and i dont know how long you've been lifting. That being the case i dont know if you want to do this quite yet. There is something called overtraining that is actually counter productive. This is just as bad if not worse than not going hard enough. Every persons body is different and you might be fine doing this. Personal i have not gone for failure, the reason being i quite young myself and have no real reason too. It just ups ur chance of injuring youself. Unless you planning on competing i would not do this. If you have to though just make sure you have a spotter. lol

[monkeybiker]

Originally Posted by CfStrongman08

I dont want to sound arrogant or a know it all, theres a lot to lifting im still learning however i do know a bit. Your 16 and i dont know how long you've been lifting. That being the case i dont know if you want to do this quite yet. There is something called overtraining that is actually counter productive. This is just as bad if not worse than not going hard enough. Every persons body is different and you might be fine doing this. Personal i have not gone for failure, the reason being i quite young myself and have no real reason too. It just ups ur chance of injuring youself. Unless you planning on competing i would not do this. If you have to though just make sure you have a spotter. lol

I don't agree. Unless you cheat to try and get another rep you should be fine. Once you get to the point that you cannot lift the weight you just lower it under control.

You must remember that you can perform the negative part of the exercise with a lot more weight than you can the positive part so it should not be a problem lowering the weight once you have reached positive failure.

[Thomas_Rivera]

CfStrongman08 is right about overtraining. Overtraining specifically is when your losing strength. Whether overtraining actually exists is a whole nother arguement.

But if you are doing negative reps, with bad form or forced reps with bad form you can injure yourself.

I'll give you an example, this slightly older guys, maybe 30s, pretty skinny. He was sitting by me in one of the chairs used for bicep curls mostly, and I was using thirties, he was using thirty fives. To show me off he swang his body to rep the 35's out, while I was using proper form for the 30's. What did he do after he got a few reps? He held his back because he had hurt himself.

Personally I don't go to the point of a forced rep ever. Using a forced rep with bad form is the same ideal as dropping that weight and picking up a lighter one. When you twist, turn, bob, or move your body around during a rep the extra momentum helps you through it, effectivly lightening the load.

[monkeybiker]

I agree with the overtraining part just not the part were he said training to failure risks injury.

You should only lift to the point were you cannot complete another rep in good form. If you cheat to finish the last rep then you risk injury.

It's very rare that I will do forced reps or drop sets also.
Most people that do it don't do it properly anyway. I see people do some reps and when it starts to get hard they reduce the weight and continue for some more reps. They would be far better to just push themselves to get another couple of reps with the same weight and then stopping. It just doesn't make sense to do a drop set before you reach failure with the starting weight.

[CfStrongman08]

just not the part were he said training to failure risks injury.

I appologize you are correct.. however at the age of 16 i doubt he has had much experience in BBing, therefore his risk of injury is greatly increased. I mean if he had perfect form every rep like you monkeybiker, than yes you are right he would be fine.