Beyond failure: five weider principles that allow you to train past failure, increase workout intensity and accelerate muscle gains

Flex, May, 2002 by Greg Merritt

Knowing when to go beyond failure is more difficult to ascertain. The five set-expansion techniques outlined here can significantly boost the intensity of your workouts. If you've never used them before, your muscles are in for a shock.

Utilizing them without incorporating enough rest will lead to overtraining, so you may want to limit their use to one extended set per bodypart. If you want to utilize them more often, work out less frequently and/or do fewer sets per bodypart. There's a reason why high-intensity adherents such as Dorian Yates do less volume than other champs: By going to failure and beyond, their muscles quickly get fully taxed. Greater volume would be counterproductive.

If pushing your sets to failure means that your workouts need to be shorter or less frequent, so be it. Train as hard as you can, go home and grow. Don't fear failure in the gym. Confront it and, at least some of the time, challenge it by expanding your sets beyond previous boundaries. When it comes to stimulating maximum muscle growth, failure is a bodybuilder's best friend.

RELATED ARTICLE: BEYOND FAILURE

1: Welder Cheating Principle

Once failure (i.e., inability to complete a full rep with perfect form) is reached, perhaps the easiest way of extending the set is via the Weider Cheating Training Principle. In this context, "cheating" means moving the weight through the full range of motion of a particular exercise, but, instead of using perfect form, using the momentum of the weight or body sway to help move the poundage. For instance, rather than keeping your torso rigid during barbell curls, you can sway backward and then forward as you curl the weight upward. Despite admonitions throughout your life not to cheat, there is nothing wrong with cheating when weight training, if it's kept to a minimum and done under the right circumstances.

Remember that cheating should be a way of extending a set when failure to perform a full rep kicks in, not merely a way of moving more weight during a set. Let's say you reach failure on the sixth rep of a set; at that point, you can implement controlled cheating and do two or three cheat reps. (If you can do more, you didn't really reach failure to do a full rep at the sixth rep.) Keep momentum in check. Merely swinging the weight up as though your arms are pendulums will have little effect on your muscles and greatly increase the risk of injury.

Best movements for usinq this principle: barbell and dumbbell curls, barbell shoulder presses, lateral raises and rear-delt flyes Don't use this principle for these exercises: compound movements such as deadlifts, barbell rows, squats and bench presses

BEYOND FAILURE

2: Weider Partial Reps Principle

After performing all the full reps you can muster, you can still invariably grind out several partial reps. This is when the Welder Partial Reps Training Principle comes into play. Returning to our barbell curl example, after reaching failure at 10 reps and still keeping perfect form intact, curl the weight up as far as you can. Perhaps you'll be able to curl it only halfway. That's fine. Your muscles are still working; that's the important thing. The next time, you may not even be able to make it halfway. For the next couple of reps, you may be able to complete only a quarter of the range of the movement.