C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

To fail or not to fail... that is the question. We're talking training to failure, of course. On one side of the spectrum, you have strength coaches such as Chad Waterbury and Charles Staley (and I suppose myself in recent years) who seem to never recommend training to failure. On the other side of the spectrum, you have the great strength coach Charles Poliquin, and bodybuilding writers/trainers such as Steve Holman, Eric Broser (and whoever the hell invented that Doggcrapp—yes, that's the actual name of the training system for those of you who don't know— crap) who seem to always recommend training to failure. The million dollar question: Who's right? I think the answer is both—as long as certain criteria are adhered to for the most part. I haven't always felt that way. If you read my early writing for Iron Man magazine and MuscleMag International —I used to write quite a bit for those magazines 10 to 15 years ago—then you would have assumed I was a training