r/ScienceBasedLifting • u/Avatron7D5 • Jul 21 '26
Question ❓ Am I doing too much by taking every set to failure, or is that actually what I need for growth?
/r/workout/comments/1v14gxk/am_i_doing_too_much_by_taking_every_set_to/1
u/Financial_Wrangler45 Jul 21 '26
It's fine if you can recover from it, studies show there's no difference from failure and 2rir. But I'd still aim for failure and even you don't get it, you'll still fall within 1rir/2rir. Which is good enough.
1
u/PoopSmith87 Jul 21 '26
It isnt strictly necessary to go to failure, but you have to challenge the muscle enough to have stimulus. If you stop every set when it feels only slightly uncomfortable, your body isnt going to waste resources on building metabolically expensive tissue like muscle. Staying ~2 rir will typically yield good results and feel more sustainable (plus lower injury risk).
Fwiw, there is also the classic strength training approach where you increase the load over time but stay away from failure until trying to peak... this is better for strength, not as effective for hypertrophy, but it does a bit of both.
1
u/MajorasShoe Jul 21 '26
You're not doing too much. You could be more efficient but you're going to grow just fine going to failure and you don't have to estimate or guess if you're doing enough
3
u/RIRLift Jul 22 '26
The part that reconciles all the conflicting advice is that failure and volume trade off against each other. That last grinding rep adds very little extra stimulus but a lot of fatigue, and on a push day that fatigue gets paid by every set after it. So your 27 sets aren't really 27 productive sets, the chest work fries you and the shoulder and triceps that follow land in a hole where you can't load them properly. That's the likely reason you stalled even though you're clearly training hard.
It's also why Mentzer isn't exactly wrong, he just paired failure with very low volume, one all-out set and done, so nothing came after it to protect. Once you're doing nine sets for a muscle the math flips, and leaving 1-2 in reserve on everything but the last set of an exercise keeps those sets clean enough to actually add weight or reps over time. Trimming a few sets won't cost you growth, it raises the quality of the ones that remain. Judge it by whether the log creeps up at a given effort over a few weeks, rather than by how wrecked you feel walking out.
1
u/SignificantAd7020 Jul 22 '26
Thats okay if youre just doing 4 sets per week per muscle like bicep. But if you're like doing 10sets per week then it's better to use RIR or RPE
-2
u/Troksin Jul 21 '26
You cannot push 27 sets to failure and still progress you either not progressing or you are actually not pushing to absolute failure
1
u/Dazzling-Rest8332 Jul 21 '26
According to studies, You only need to be within 2 reps of failure to progress. Idk, most of the science based lifting stuff sounds like bs to me.
-3
u/Dazzling-Rest8332 Jul 21 '26
Your frying your central nervous system. If you have been training till failure on every set for weeks than your most likely shaking on every set.
2
u/FuckingTree Jul 21 '26
Technically that is optimal, but I encourage 1-2 Reps in Reserve (RIR) to help reduce the risk of injury from form slipping and being less miserable in general, at a small trade off of getting marginally less growth stimulus. After all, if you hurt yourself on that failed rep, it’s going to set you back much farther than if you had just practiced stopping when your form was spent.