Thoughts on Training to Failure, the “Everything Moderate” Approach to Lifting, and Some “Easy” Size and Strength Programs When it comes to achieving goals, winning in competitions, or being our very best in whatever domain, “winners” often take the view that “failure is not an option.” But when it comes to building muscle, a lot of bodybuilders, personal trainers, and now “fitness influencers” take the view that failure—or training to complete momentary muscular failure—is the best, or even only, option for surefire hypertrophy gains. This view isn’t anything new. When I first started reading bodybuilding magazines back in the 1980s, the debate was already swirling around whether or not bodybuilders should train to total muscular failure on their sets. Some—the most obvious being Arthur Jones and then later Mike Mentzer—believed that you should only train to failure, using minimal sets for each muscle. Others, such as Bill Pe...
Thoughts on “Instinctive” Training, Creative Workouts, and Using the Taoist Principle of Wu Wei for Achieving Your Goals Last month, at the end of my article The Three Day Russian Power Volume Training Program , I mentioned that I might not post as many upcoming articles because of other projects that I’m working on, a book that I’m (still) editing and assembling for publication, and additional issues in my daily life that have kept me busy and away from writing as much. But since I wrote those words, my output here on the blog hasn’t slowed down any. And yet , since October 13th—when I posted that article—I haven’t spent as much time working on articles. Despite that lack of time, I’ve managed to write and post just as many essays as before. How? Through the process of the philosophical concept known as wu wei . Wu wei is usually translated as something along the lines of “effortless action,” “no...