Are You A Failure? Failing at Exercise

To fail during an exercise is an honorable thing. However, true exercise failure is very rarely achieved.  Exercise failure occurs when you cannot complete a movement due to total neuromuscular and psychological fatigue.  Picture yourself petering out on a set of push-ups and barely moving to complete the last rep.  If offered a large financial incentive or threatened with great physical harm, could you do 1 more rep?  How about 2 more if I had a gun to your head?  The mind controls the body.  If the carrot or the stick is big enough you’d be surprised what you could do (not fly like Superman, but maybe lift a car off a child).

Understanding True Exercise Failure

NOTE: The Navy Seal and 'toughest man in the world", David Goggins, has a 40% rule:

"When you feel exhausted, tired and you want to give up, you´re really only 40% done: You still have 60% left....The 40% Rule can be applied to everything we do. Because in life almost nothing will turn out exactly as we hope. There are always challenges, and whether we are at work or school, or feeling tested within our most intimate or important relationships, we will all be tempted to walk away from commitments, give up on our goals and dreams, and sell our own happiness short at some point. Because we will feel empty, like we have no more to give, when we haven’t tapped even half of the treasure buried deep in our minds, hearts, and souls.”

A major goal of resistance training is to engage and tire as many muscle fibers as possible. After one light warm-up set of bicep curls, you will be lucky to engage 50% of the muscle within your arm. Increasing the weight, rep range, intensity and such will magnify the amount of fatigued muscle yet still not approach 100% involvement. Perhaps the most proficient way to fatigue the greatest number of muscle fibers is to work to ‘failure’.  This is where your level of commitment is leveraged. Are you willing or do what it takes and endure great muscular pain to achieve your goal?  How important is this exercise goal?  Do you have the proper amount of concentration and motivation to work extremely hard?  This brings me to a more important question: is it even advisable to workout to 100% volitional and physical effort?  I can say, without hesitation, no. Ever see those news stories where some octogenarian lifts a 1-ton tractor off her son?  It may be done, but after-effects on the body are astoundingly widespread; joint dislocation, burst blood vessels, torn ligaments and tendons, heart attack and more.  Let’s say you are not lifting tractors but working to ‘failure’ every time you go to the gym, the stress to your body’s systems would be too great and likely decrease your training effects as you’d begin to experience symptoms of overtraining.  The no pain, no gain dogma is an antiquated doctrine and has hurt many people in the gym.  Training outside one’s comfort zone with occasional scheduled bouts of discomfort will likely produce safe and more efficient results.  

UPDATE: After decades of research obsessing over optimal rep ranges, perfect programs, and ideal training volumes, science is revealing something beautifully simple: how hard you train matters more than how you train. It’s effort. And you don't need to lift to failure. Push until you have about 1-2 reps in reserve (RIR) and stop there. It is safer, less painful and just as effective.

Learning to push your own limits can be incredibly beneficial for breaking through plateaus and overcoming stagnation. To maximize the benefits of your workout, it's essential to harmonize both the mind and the body. Unfortunately, far too many people find their minds wandering elsewhere during their workouts. While it’s certainly better than doing nothing—provided they don’t injure themselves due to inattention—exercising while distracted, like watching TV or chatting on the phone, is unlikely to cultivate a great athlete or a sculpted physique.

Achieving greatness demands a significant amount of physical perseverance and physiological grit. By focusing more intently on your workouts, you can achieve better results in less time while also enhancing your mindfulness skills. Research indicates that regular exercise boosts cognitive functions and enhances brainpower. Einstein famously said, “If you can imagine it, you can create it.” While he probably wasn’t referring to squeezing in an extra rep at the gym, the sentiment still holds true!

How to Push Your Limits Safely

Tips to help you fail:

1. Visualize the exercise before you do it

2. Have a friend or trainer spot you

3. Use music for motivation

4. Write your exercise goals down and why you want them

5. Build your resistance to fatigue by practicing it often

6. Eccentric training and forced eccentrics (negatives)

7. Drop Sets

   
   
   
   

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Doug Joachim – NYC www.JoachimsTraining.com

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