But now it’s time to move past that nonsense, as I said last time I won’t waste any more time addressing of Mike’s bullshit.    To my knowledge he hasn’t brought anymore of it. Even if he had, I no longer give a shit about it.  Facts talk and bullshit walks, buddy.  So start walking.

Instead, I am going to followup on the original series on muscular failure and look at people who succeeded at failing. … Keep Reading

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The post Succeeding to Fail: Part 2 appeared first on Bodyrecomposition.

A fair number of them were of me showing what training to true failure is in terms of how rep speeds change and the effort involved.  In a few cases a set that started with a roughly 1 second or less rep ended with a final grinder at 4-7 seconds or thereabouts.

I put up videos of some other folks as well.  Vicky Mirceta, my powerlifter Sumi Singh.   And some random guy back squatting to failure to show what that looks like.  Since I doubt most of the people training have ever seen it done deliberately and they sure as shit haven’t done it themselves.… Keep Reading

The post Failing to Fail Part 2 appeared first on Bodyrecomposition.

So having addressed Layne Norton’s ad hominem, strawman, deflection guru hatrick regarding the “debate” over failure between Mike and I, I want to move on to what will be my final comments on Mike’s similar guru-tastic nonsense.

Mike has failed to bring a single FACT to this debate, relying instead of misdirections, deflections, appeals to authority and ad hominems. It may be typical guru behavior but that doesn’t make it any less intellectually honest. But that’s Mike Israetel for you. Hell, that’s most of the supposed “evidence based” fitness industry these days.

When the science supports them, they argue science. When it doesn’t, they bring nothing but excuses, anecdotes, deflections, misdirections and logical fallacies.  The kind that they would NEVER use in an actual scientific debate but think is ok on social media. Because they are hypocritical gurus.

For the majority of this video I address Mike’s attempts to dismiss me in detail.… Keep Reading

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You can’t know what an RPE 9 is if you haven’t experienced a true 10.  And you can’t know that you have 2 reps to failure/2 reps in reserve if you’ve never reached true physiological muscular failure which I define as:

The inability to complete another full repetition despite providing a maximum effort.

Muscular failure isn’t when you stop pushing.  It’s not when you decide it hurts to much.  It’s when you can’t complete a rep despite giving a maximal effort.  Yes, yes, form failure in free weight exercises adds another wrinkle.  We’ve been over this.

I finished that part by asserting that most people training have never experienced a true 10 RPE or a true set to actual physiological muscular failure.… Keep Reading

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Last time, I finally got to the point in terms of defining actual muscular failure, stating:

Muscular failure occurs when the trainee is unable to perform another repetition despite a maximal effort being given.

With the bolded bit being what’s important.  Yes, adding the rider of “maintaining proper form” should be added to that. Bringing up the differences between complex compound exercises and machines, the issue of training status, focus, etc.   I won’t repeat that here.

Your Muscles Don’t Care About Any Other Definition

But truly the above is the only definition of actual physiological muscular task failure that can be accurate. … Keep Reading

The post What is Muscular Failure: The Weight Room Part 4 appeared first on Bodyrecomposition.

That led into actual definitions of muscular failure.  I started with the strictest physiological definition which is the point at which muscular force output falls below muscular force requirements (noting again that this is not synonymous with exhaustion).   Once again I present my lovingly drawn image.

But, as always, in the weight room this is more complicated.  Because now we have exercise form to be considered.  I mean, yes, we could define failure as the most repetitions performed no matter what the trainee does.… Keep Reading

The post What is Muscular Failure: The Weight Room Part 3 appeared first on Bodyrecomposition.

In this part I want to continue that discussion and look at some of the actual definitions of muscular failure that have been used in the weight room over the decades.  As importantly I’ll look at what the implications of each might be in both a practical and research sense.    However, as promised in Part 2, I want to start by looking at the concept of the Repetition Maximum or RM.

Repetition Maximums (RMs)

The concept of the Repetition Maximum or RM is similar but not truly synonymous with that of muscular failure, even if many (incorrectly) use the terms interchangeably.   … Keep Reading

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Here’s the image from Part 1 again illustrating this.

So if a given task requires 100 units of force and you can generate 120 units of force, you can accomplish the task.  Once you can only generate 99 units of force, you cannot accomplish the task.  You have achieved momentary muscular failure. By which I mean that if you rested for some time so that muscular force could recover, you could once again achieve the task.  You have only failed at that moment.

In a lot of activities, determining when task failure has occurred is relatively simply. … Keep Reading

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