Failure is Not an Option

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 Pearl and the (at the time) reigning Mr. Olympia champion Lee Haney, believed in never training to failure.  Oh, they believed in training hard, don’t get me wrong.  But they often completed their top-end “work” sets with one or two reps left “in the tank” on each set.  I think it was Pearl who often said, “if you train to failure, you’re just training yourself to fail”—in building muscle but even in competition or just life itself.  Still others took more of an “in between” route where most of their sets were hard but not to complete failure, but then sometimes training to complete failure on one or two sets at the end of a workout.

     Early in my training, I drank the Kool-Aid of failure training.  Like many lifters to this day, I thought that, surely, the harder the workout the better.  This was probably because I read a lot of articles in Ironman magazine, the magazine that pushed the hard, heavy, and “briefer-is-better” mentality more than any of the others.  I was told by the authors of those articles that so-called “hardgainers”—skinny, scrawny dudes that weighed below a buck-fifty, which was most certainly me back then—wouldn’t make serious muscle gains unless they took this route.  The high-volume, high-frequency training was only for the genetically gifted or the steroid-user who also happened to have a lot of training time under his weightlifting belt.  But that hard, heavy, infrequent method just didn’t work for me.  On the flip side of that, I might add, neither did the high-set, high-volume, multi-bodypart-split approach of most of the pro bodybuilders of the day.

     I happened to notice something when I first started training.  One of the best-built, muscular, and definitely brawniest guys in the gym where I worked out, always looked as if he was taking it easy in his workouts.  He trained heavy, sure, and he trained with several sets (but not a lot) using all of the big, basic movements—squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, barbell rows, barbell curls, you name it—but he never looked as if he was training particularly “hard.”  He also trained his lifts quite frequently—certainly more so than I was doing back then.  Looking back on it now with years of bodybuilding and serious strength training experience, I realize that he was training with what I now call the “everything moderate” approach.  It was similar to the training that I (eventually) found works the best for me, along with other lifters that I’ve trained over the years.  And it just might be what you need to do to achieve your goals, whether that’s pure hypertrophy, nothing but strength, or a combination of both.  I think it’s fair to say that most of your average guys in your average gyms are seeking a combination of both size and strength—they just go about it in the wrong ways.

     Before I lay out some training plans and workout ideas that you might want to try, let me add something, just so we’re clear.  I don’t think there’s anything “wrong” with training to failure.  Sometimes, even if you do respond well to the high-volume, high-frequency models that I preach, you should spend some time training to muscular failure with brief, incredibly hard, and infrequent training.  Especially if you haven’t done so in quite some time.  I think that “HIT” training (the misnomer that is “high-intensity training” a la Arthur Jones or the admittedly great strength writer Ken Leistner) has its place at times.  In fact, when lifters try a HIT program for the first time after years of high-volume, high-frequency training, they often find that they gain an incredible amount of muscle.  It might be, to be honest, the best gains of their entire lives.  But it doesn’t last.  And it isn’t repeatable.  Not to the same extent.  But, again, it does have its place.  I don’t think it's the best method for the majority of lifters, either, but there are lifters who happen to respond very well to it.  It should, for most lifters, be a method that they use once, maybe twice, per year, in between high-volume and/or high-frequency methods where they don’t train to complete and total momentary muscular failure.

     The “everything moderate” route is exactly what it sounds (or reads) like.  You train with a moderate number of sets on a moderate number of lifts and use a moderate “intensity,” if intensity is defined the way it often is by American bodybuilders, as how “hard” they train.  You also train frequently.  Just how frequently should depend on both your work capacity and the volume that you use in a workout or for a lift.  If you train with 3 to 5 sets per lift, then you can train 3 days a week for that lift.  If you train with, say, 8 to 10 sets per lift, you can reduce it down to just 2 days a week per lift, maybe even slightly less.  Using something such as a “full-body split,” for instance, you might end up training each lift just 3 times in 2 weeks, though you might train the same muscles used in the lift more frequently.

     First, we’ll look at a full-body workout where you train 3 days a week, and train the same lifts at each session.  After that, I’ll outline the approach you might use for more voluminous, but less frequent training using the full-body split method.

     By the way, I had this essay rattling around in my head after penning my last article: Wu Wei Workouts.  In it, I mentioned that part of the “wu wei” approach is “going with the flow” in your workouts rather than using the “no pain, no gain” mentality that most lifters insist upon.  The first workout method here is based on a method I briefly discussed in that article.  (If you want to read more about wu wei, however, click on the above link.)

The Full-Body, 3-Days-a-Week “Easy Strength” Program

     Although this is a 3 days a week, full-body program, you won’t do the exact same lifts at each session.  Some lifts—the squats, overhead presses, the quick lifts—can be trained 3 days a week or even more; heck, you could train them 5 to 6 days a week using this same method, though that’s outside of the scope of what I want to present here.  Other lifts, such as the deadlift, are best trained just once weekly, even when using this “everything moderate” approach to training.  And others—the bench press, for example—do well when training them twice per week.  Nonetheless, you will train each muscle group, either directly or indirectly, 3 days a week on this routine.  First, I’ll lay out the program, then I’ll explain the finer points that make it work.

Monday:

Squats: 3x5 (3 sets of 5 reps)

Deadlifts: 3x5

Bench presses: 3x5

Weighted chins: 3x5

Barbell curls: 3x5

Wednesday:

Squats: 3x5

Power snatches: 3x5

Military presses: 3x5

Friday:

Squats: 3x5

Power cleans: 3x5

Bench presses: 3x5

Weighed chins: 3x5

Barbell curls: 3x5

• For the 1st week, on each lift, start by using a weight on all of your work sets that is your 10-rep max.  That’s right.  The first week should be easy.  In fact, all of the workouts will be relatively easy.  This program works by letting the frequency and the total workload steadily “add up” over the weeks that you train it.  Do 2 to 3 warmup sets, whatever is needed based on your strength level, before doing your 3 sets of 5 rep “work” sets.

• Stick with the same weight at each session until the weight feels very easy and then, and only then, add weight at the next session.

• Some lifts, such as the squats, might increase quicker than others, but that might not be the case.  You might find your deadlifts, for instance, are going up just as quickly as your squats, for the simple fact that they respond well to less frequent training and you’re still working the muscles that you deadlift with frequently through the squatting and the quick lifts and chins.

• Don’t scream, get psyched up, eat chalk, take a pre-workout, or anything of the like.  Again, just let the frequency of the training, the workload, the full-body training itself take care of your muscle and strength gains.  Simply training your full-body at each session will promote gains as there is something “anabolic” about full-body training that promotes quick muscle growth.

• If you’re a “hardgainer” who has struggled to gain muscle, or just weight in general, then make sure that you are eating plenty of calories and getting plenty of protein each and every day of the week.  You might want to try the “gomad” method—that’s a gallon-of-milk-a-day, if you’re not aware.  Drink glasses of milk in between each meal, and consume 3 to 5 “solid” meals every day, and the hardgainer moniker should soon be a thing of the past.

The High-Volume, Full-Body “Split” Program

     This routine takes a similar but higher volume route.  You will train your lifts less frequently but with more sets.  Again, I’ll lay out the program first followed by the all-important details.

Workout A:

Squats: 8x5 (8 sets of 5 reps)

Bench presses: 8x5

Weighted chins: 8x5

Barbell curls: 8x5

Workout B

Deadlifts: 8x5

Military presses: 8x5

Power cleans: 8x5

Alternate dumbbell curls: 8x5 (each arm)

• As with the first program, start by training each lift with your 10-rep maximum.  This will make the program a bit harder than the first, since, by the last couple of sets, your muscles will be fatigued.  You may even struggle with your last couple sets on each lift, but you should still get all of your sets.  Stick with that weight at each workout until you manage 8 sets of 5 reps with ease and then, and only then, add weight at your next session.

• Train 3 days per week, such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, rotating back and forth between the A and B session.  This means that each workout, and each lift, will get trained 3 times in 2 weeks.

• OPTIONAL: If you know that your deadlift responds well to less frequent training, you can train it at every other “B” session, meaning that it only gets trained every 10 days at the most.

• And again, if you’re a hardgainer, follow my eating suggestions for the first program.

     Stick with either of the above programs for 8 to 12 weeks.  Although for most of the programs that I create, I usually write that they “run their course” about the 8-week mark, the more I train and work with others, the more I think that, when it comes to “easy strength” and “everything moderate” styles of training, you should run the program for a little bit longer.  Since you’re starting with lighter weights to begin with on these programs, you don’t “burn out” as quickly.  In fact, when training with incredibly hard or highly voluminous programs, 6 weeks is about the longest you should run the program before you need to “cycle down” with a different routine.  But with programs similar to the ones here, you might be able to run them—or even need to run them—for as long as 16 weeks.

     Some lifters, even when they do make great gains from easy strength/muscle workout routines, don’t train with them because they enjoy harder workouts.  They like the feel of a train-as-hard-as-you-can workout.  They enjoy workouts filled with “intensity techniques” such as strip sets, supersets, tri-sets, giant sets, and the like.  If this describes you, consider training with a mix of hard and “easy” programs.  You can do both within the same training cycle or you can follow different, longer programs throughout the year.

     If you train on a full-body routine, such as the first one above, you can simply replace one of the workouts each week with a hard session.  If you like training to failure, then only do 1 (maybe 2) hard, all-out set(s) of 5 reps on each exercise at one of your weekly workouts.  Now, if you do this, you might have to train even lighter at the next session before returning to a moderate, or medium, workout at the 3rd one.  This means that you might naturally fall into a heavy-light-medium rotation.

     On a routine such as the full-body split workout above, do a “hard” session at, say, every 3rd workout for the “A” and “B” workouts by doing your hard session at every Monday workout.  For those workouts, you can still utilize 8 sets of 5 reps, but use a heavier weight and take each set close to momentary muscular failure.  You might have to reduce the weights used as the sets increase.  So, you might start the workout by using your 7-rep maximum on each lift.  Do that for 2 or 3 sets, then reduce weight on the following sets if you find it hard to reach 5 reps on each set.  Your schedule would look like this:

Week One:

Monday: Hard “A” workout

Wednesday: Regular “B” workout

Friday: Regular “A” workout

Week Two:

Monday: Hard “B” workout

Wednesday: Regular “A” workout

Friday: Regular “B” workout

     My personal preference is to rotate between “easy” and “hard” training cycles rather than periodic workouts.  This is a long-term approach that looks at your yearly training and beyond.  You might follow something such as this over the course of more than a year:

Months 1-4:

Full-Body “Easy Strength” 3x5 Program Above

Months 5-7:

A/B Full-Body “Split” Program Above

Months 8-10:

My Lift Big, Eat Big, Rest Big, Grow Big Program.  This one is an old-school “briefer-is-better” routine inspired by the classic powerlifter Hugh Cassidy.  It’s an intense but voluminous full-body powerlifting program.  Click on the link for details.

Months 11-14:

The Pure Power Split Program.  This program would be perfect after the previous one as it rotates between heavy, light, and medium workouts.  The “medium” sessions utilize the “dynamic effort” method, as well, which you might need by this point after the previous 3 months of super-heavy training.

     For the months that follow, you could return to another few months of the “easy strength” workouts or you could do something completely different such as a high-volume, high-frequency hypertrophy-centric program or even a multi-split routine more commonly used by today’s bodybuilders.  You don’t have to follow the above exactly but it does give you an idea of the kind of workouts that you should do, rotating back and forth between “everything moderate” workouts and ones that go the train-to-failure route.

     If you want even more workout ideas, then scour the blog, as I have a plethoric smorgasbord of different training programs.  You can also purchase one, or all, of my books, as they all contain a great many routines for building size, strength, and power.  Don’t get overwhelmed by the number of workouts, however, or have workout ADD and simply jump from one workout to another every few weeks.  Get on a program and stay on it for continued gains.  That’s the key, whether you use a workout that prioritizes training to failure or not.  As the legendary Vince Gironda said, “Are you on a training program or are you just working out?”  Get on a program and reap the results of proper training.

     As always, if you have any comments or questions, then leave them in the “comments” section below.  You can also send me an email if you prefer private correspondence.  And if you’re interested in finding out more information about my books, be sure you click on the link above.