Why Some Bodybuilders Are Better Off Not Training To Failure

After doing just a little research a new trainee will see that most people promote the principle of ‘training to failure’. Failure is the time at which the nervous system simply can’t take anymore at a given weight and crashes, causing your muscle contraction to come to an end. Training to failure would seem to make sense in that you are pushing yourself to the limit.

And, as we’re constantly being told, pushing ourselves to the limit is the only way to make the best gains possible – anything else is stopping short or copping out. However, for some people, is there more to be gained by not training to failure constantly?

For some people, I truly believe training to failure too frequently causes negative central nervous system effects that will hinder progress. I think this for a few reasons. Here’s why…

Everybody is different. Not only physically but mentally, and both are interconnected. Now, it’s well known that even mental stress can affect muscle and strength gains negatively. And training to failure causes mental stress – plus, a lot of physical stress.

Some people can cope with physical and mental stress better than others; this is just how it goes. By not training to failure regularly, some people will be leaving a lot of potential gains on the table, while another group of people who attempt to train to failure regularly will cause themselves too much physical and mental stress and hurt their progress.

Trainees should experiment with training to failure regularly, sporadically, and stopping short of failure for certain periods and see what progress they observe to get a better picture of which training intensities work best for them.

It’s also worth mentioning that some people would get better results from training to failure regularly, but they underestimate how long it takes them to recover fully and could in fact benefit by training the same muscles to failure still, but training them less frequently. I’ve had some of my best results in strength and size by training my body parts very hard once a week.

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Renegade for Bodybuilders?

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Question: Jay, how would you modify the Renegade method for competitive bodybuilders and what kinds of workouts would you write for them?

The Renegade Method, is all about getting bigger, stronger, faster, more mobile, more agile and more explosive.

Will you end up looking better? Of course, but you’ll also end feeling and performing better, which definitely can’t be said about typical bodybuilding programs.

Bodybuilding is about stepping on stage in briefs with pro tan and posing

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I have tons of respect for the guys who do it and I drew great influence from guys like Arnold, Franco, and Yates. I actually am a big fan of old school bodybuilders from the 70's and 80's as evidenced by the pics I use here on the site quite often. That’s when bodybuilding was awesome. And those guys I listed all moved some big weights.

I also have plenty of friends who compete in bodybuilding and take nothing away from them. Those guys work their asses off.

But that’s not what we do. That’s not what this site is about. There’s a reason the people who read this site are here and not on Ronnie Coleman’s site.

Renegade style workouts are more about becoming an all around warrior; someone who has a great physique but can also perform like a badass. The performance part is the primary goal here. That’s what drives the aesthetics. We’re not simply chasing a bigger pump or some other intrinsic goal.

I’m not a big fan of “how would you modify x for y” questions regardless of the topic or subject matter. I’m talking across the board in life. It’s like saying how would you modify the game of football if we decided to play it with a baseball?

I’m not trying to be rude at all but I’m just saying that people have certain beliefs and do certain things for certain reasons. Asking them to change them for an individual concern doesn’t always work.

You can’t ask Bruce Lee to teach a different way. You can’t ask a guitar teacher to show you the chords a different way.

When someone comes to me and wants to build muscle I give them a Renegade program with explosive power, maximal strength, bodyweight and strongman stuff like Uncaged. It’s not typical bodybuilding.

If, all of the sudden, I start writing six day, body part split workouts with giant sets, high reps, pre exhaustion and all that then it’s no longer a Renegade program. That’s not what I do.

I believe that natural, genetically average guys will get the best results by:

Training body parts somewhere between two and three times per week and even up to once every five days for older, beat up guys (and more frequently for younger guys with excellent work capacity)Using moderate volume (50-100 total reps per week, per muscle group)Training with fairly low reps (5-8 with some tens here and there)And a focus on long term (not necessarily every single workout) progressive overload (strength gains). Johnnie even shocks himself with the weights he lifts.

If you look at bodybuilding, from the beginning til now, you’ll notice that the biggest guys are always the strongest guys.

Franco and Arnold were strong as shit.

Greg Kovacs moved some monstrous weights.

Yates and Coleman would put a lot of powerlifters to shame.

Johnnie Jackson seems superhuman when you see the amount of plates he piles on the bar.

Sure, you hear or read about the 275 pound guy who only uses 30's on curls and 85's on dumbbell presses but that doesn’t mean that will work for you.  And I can guarantee you that the guys using bigger weights than he is also have bigger biceps and pecs.

Big, compound exercises are all that’s needed to achieve that in most cases. There are very few heavyweight powerlifters who have massive gaping holes of missing muscle.

Olympic lifters backs look pretty impressive despite the fact that they don’t do bent over lateral raises, pulldowns, face pulls, and every row variation ever created.

If all you ever did was focus on getting progressively stronger on 12-20 big exercises for the next 5-10 years you’d end up pretty damn large. It’s all the noise in between that distracts people and leads to the spinning of the wheels and the lack of progress. Believe me, I know. I’ve been guilty of it myself.

Eventually, if you have been training for several years and you feel like you have a weak bodypart, that’s a different story. Then maybe you put it first in your routine or add a little bit more volume or frequency for short periods. Maybe you add in some more backward sled dragging to bring out your quads a little more or whatever. That’s what I suggest in that situation.

But that added specialization work gets added in the context of a Renegade program with power work, maximal strength work, strongman, etc. I don’t all of the sudden prescribe a Flex Wheeler workout circa 1993.

Now, if you want to do a Flex Wheeler or Shawn Ray workout from the 90’s that’s totally cool. I get that. It’s your option. It’s just got nothing in common with the Renegade Method and so I would never write a program like that or even modify one of my own to resemble that.

If you have more than one or two lagging bodyparts (like me) it probably just means you need to stay the course and get bigger overall. You can’t have weak rhomboids, upper pecs, biceps and hamstrings. That’s called just being small. Or smaller than you would like to be and you probably just need to gain another ten or twenty pounds like most people in that situation.

And no matter what you do, unless you’re a newbie, that’s gonna take time, dedication and a lot of hard work.

Tags: Aesthetics, Arnold, Asses, Badass, Bodybuilders, Bodybuilding Programs, Bruce Lee, Franco, Game Of Football, Guitar Teacher, Old School, Performance Part, Physique, Renegade, Ronnie Coleman, Subject Matter, Those Guys, Weights, Workouts, Yates

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