It’s an age-old question for bodybuilders. Go to failure on every set or leave reps in the tank?Failure, which is also known Momentary Muscular Fatigue, occurs when an individual can no longer perform another rep with proper form, forcing the lifter to stop or pause the set. The concept of training to failure is certainly not new to bodybuilding. However there is not one agreed upon training system where training to failure is approached the same way.

In the early 1970s the notion of training to failure was popularized by a number of well-known bodybuilders with the belief that training to the point of muscular failure was the necessary stimulus for maximum muscular growth.

Others however have pointed out that training to failure is not only unnecessary, but it may be counterproductive and show that outside of bodybuilding, powerlifters seldom train to failure and Olympic Lifters rarely ever take sets to the point of failure and are able to obtains large, strong and muscular physiques.

So should you train to failure? Well, the answer is not a simple “yes” or “no” and in fact it’s a bit of both.