When it comes to hitting failure throughout exercise there are a million different articles and clips that come up with conflicting information.
I’ll give you my experience with it.
Failure is beneficial to every discipline and modality at some level.
Let’s look at a couple of different things –
MMA/Football/Boxing (Sports specific)
Muscle Building
Fat Loss
If you are an MMA athlete and you are sparring hard on a Thursday for a fight – It’s probably not smart to go to failure or beyond failure with high percentages or forced reps etc in your S&C workout on a Tuesday or Wednesday.
Because your Thursday sports specific (Priority) performance will be impaired.
Let’s say you do it 4-5 days prior though… You’ll be pretty much full recovered for the sports specific work and will have gained the benefit from it.
The same rules apply when it comes to fat loss or muscle gain. Going to failure might not be the best move possible to help you achieve the goal as efficiently during that specific workout.
BUT… It will pay dividends in the future.
There is one aspect of going to failure or beyond failure that we cannot overlook.
It’s very hard to measure it in theory with science – But it is a necessary and specific benefit.
That is the mental aspect of it.
If you “Level up/Enter a new mental playground” by pushing yourself to failure and beyond. You can reach new heights in terms of your performance.
Your mental capacity has increased – Your performance has been pushed to another level and you’ve managed to reach a height that you didn’t think was possible before.
All because you have a new found resiliance of pushing to failure and beyond.
THAT – is why you should do it.
My advice – Set specific days each month in which you look to train this way.
Be smart about it in relation to impacting other workouts.
And enjoy building that mental muscle just as much as you do the physical one.
Andrew