Need some educating on "Fitness Terminology"

[Sakmongkol]

Depends what you want to do. For bodybuilding it's a very good thing. Bodybuilders love the pump, the burn, and the high you get from going to failure. For strength training...

I disagree going to failure/forced reps is negative for both physique and strength training. This **** will burn your CNS out ridiculously quick. Getting strong and recovering should be paramount for both Strength and Physique trainees until they reach an advanced level.

The pump or nutrient loading is not causing "real" growth in a trainee, this dogma: That dropsets, forced reps, high reps and low weights, not training for strength etc will cause a admirable physique is bullshit. It is widespread in the community becuase the pros in flex with out of the world genetics and running more anabolics than you could ever dream of doing are at a very advanced stage of their training when performing this.

If you get strong, you will get big.

[Teh El Macho]

Really, I wouldn't even say that training to failure is a very good thing for bodybuilding, at least for a natural trainee. It can have some applications, but for those without chemical assistance, you're not going to want to go to failure very often.

^^^ This. A lot of people miss this very important factor. I would also take that further and suggest that many of the exercise routines that you find, not just on the bbuilding magazines, but in the "men's fitness" mags would not work as well for those who train naturally.

People who start training and are eating somewhat right makes gains regardless of what they do - and what they do is either a) something they pick up from such magazines, or 2) from trainers who also based their workouts on such stuff. But past a certain level, they'll stall.

Such "bodybuilding" routines won't deliver the promised goods for most because the constant isolation work, machine work and such (the staple of such workout routines) won't do **** for strength. And as such, without anabolic supplementation, they won't do ****. Add to that the idea of training to failure (and without the anabolic supplements to help recovery), it's just wasted energy, like a dog chasing its own tail.

That's the stuff fitness mags don't say when they publish their monthly workout routines. A little bit off the tangent, but...

[TheRuss]

I'm going to go ahead and say that training to/through failure worked fairly well for me in terms of hypertrophy (without any help from steroids), and I didn't have any problems with CNS recovery. My hypothesis as to why is that at the %RMs I was working at, the point of failure was my anaerobic glycolysis energy/waste disposal system rather than nerves.

I never did have much luck with supra-maximal training through failure (read: negatives), though.

[CharlesTC]

This thread has been rather informative - short of trying to decipher the abbreviations.

I just had to be sure that what I was doing wasn't something that was fucking up my muscles or something.

[Kentucky Fried Chokin]

I'm going to go ahead and say that training to/through failure worked fairly well for me in terms of hypertrophy (without any help from steroids), and I didn't have any problems with CNS recovery. My hypothesis as to why is that at the %RMs I was working at, the point of failure was my anaerobic glycolysis energy/waste disposal system rather than nerves.

I never did have much luck with supra-maximal training through failure (read: negatives), though.

Same here. Back when I was just trying to get big and sexy I went past failure without any problems (I puked once, but i don't think that counts).

[Teh El Macho]

It did work for me in my first years, up to 95-96. After that, it stagnated me. That and doing **** like bench presses with elbows flared out and skull crushers past failure and negatives and stuff (as the "pundits" at the gym water hole and mags recommended me) lead to some serious inflammations, on the shoulders, knees, elbows, you name it.

The only time I ever do to failure, if ever, is via drop sets, two or three drop sets at the most with minimum rest between drop sets. High intensity in very short amount of times and not much volume.

I find that a lot more effective to put on size than what working to failure or past failure with the type of volume that's usually recommended.

[Emevas]

Like I said in my original post, working to or even past failure can have application to the natural trainee, but it's a limited one. Trying to use it for every set of a workout isn't gonna be the best thing.

From a purely anecdotal standpoint, I've only trained to failure maybe 3 times in my life (not counting missing singles) when I failed on squats doing supersquats, but never had issue with hypertrophy training to before failure.