Your Failure Isn't a Beginner's Failure

Opener

Everyone argues about whether you need to train to failure. Almost nobody stops to ask what failure actually is. When a beginner and an experienced lifter both say they took a set to failure, they are usually describing two completely different sets.

"Take some random dude from a chem class and have him do a bench press to failure. That is an entirely different failure than you going to failure on a bench. It's not even the same. Who knows what they're failing for, but it's certainly not going to be the reason you're failing. They're failing because their stabilizing muscles are fatigued, or they get out of a groove, or they just aren't used to pushing hard, or they don't really even know what failure is, or it just got hard."

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1. Failure is a skill you learn

The first time a set gets hard, most people stop. That point feels like failure, but it usually isn't the muscle giving out. Learning to keep going past that first stopping point takes years, and it is part of getting better at the sport.

"You get on a bench press, and when you're not doing anything other than just pressing the bar, there's a failure point. But once you learn to work through that, you've got two more reps there. Once you learn to drive into it, once you learn to really brace yourself, that's a whole skill. That's a whole part of progress in the sport that you need to learn."