In part one, I said that good coaches are not afraid to change their minds when enough evidence is presented and thus, I went over some of the nutrition things I have changed my mind on in the time I have been in the fitness industry. Let’s continue with the training stuff.
You have to train to failure to build muscle
I used to train to muscular failure all the time because I thought it was necessary to build muscle. I still do it, but I incorporate failure training sparingly. Why? Because it can hurt the amount of volume (sets/muscle group) I can do.
Even in the literature, there isn’t much difference in muscle growth when we compare 0 reps in reserve (failure) to a few reps in reserve. So feel free to train to failure but do it intelligently and for a purpose rather than because “Jack the mountain” in your gym told you, “you need to die in the gym!”
A warning: Knowing that you don’t have to go to failure to see gains can be counterproductive because you might start leaving too many reps in the tank. Be aware of that.
