> “Now, it’s not that training to failure is a complete waste of effort. Some research finds training to failure does increase muscle growth compared to the sam

> “Now, it’s not that training to failure is a complete waste of effort. Some research finds training to failure does increase muscle growth compared to the same amount of sets not taken to failure. The benefit seems to simply be the result of the extra reps you do, as completing the same repetition volume by adding more submaximal sets can achieve the same amount of muscle growth. And there is a big cost to the beneficial effect of training to failure. Training to failure greatly increases the amount of fatigue you induce and the subsequent recovery time your muscles need.” My understanding is that there is a pretty big asterisk here: for the submaximal sets to be effective, they need to get close to failure. You're not going to be very effective doing sets with 10 reps in reserve. But the thing is that beginners typically aren't very good at gauging how may reps they actually have in the tank. There have been a number of experiments where people were asked to rate how close they were to failure. And then they were asked to actually go to failure. And everyone underestimated - sometimes by quite a lot. So, for people with experience in the gym, this is probably good advice. But I think for newbies, going to failure can be beneficial just because the directions are so robust - people are much less likely to plateau for mysterious reasons.