The gym is a place where we can revert to our cave man days and grunt and yell with no fuss from anyone. This usually happens when your muscles are crying failure.

This article will show you why training to failure is important and how to do it properly.

Every person in the gym that’s worth their salt has pushed their muscles to the limit.

I was lifting 85 lbs dumb bells yesterday on the incline bench when I reached failure on the down stroke. If it weren’t for my spotter, I would’ve been in serious trouble.

I knew I was done with chest for the day, and unlike so many other trainees, I moved on to another exercise after that.

When you train to complete muscle failure, you’ve recruited (just about) every fiber in that muscle to do a particular movement and they’ve ALL failed. The lactic acid build up from your muscles oxidizing themselves has reached a critical limit and they can’t move anymore.

This is important because you’ve now effectively torn that majority of the muscle. Giving you the maximum chance of recovery.

By damaging 60% of the muscle, only 60% will repair itself. But damaging 97% of the muscle will cause 97% to repair itself. The more muscle that repairs itself, the faster you’ll see significant growth. Greater repair means greater growth. The repair may take a little longer, but not significantly longer and you’ll see more muscle.

Keep your tempo steady throughout the lift while keeping your technique as good as possible. Make sure it’s your muscles failing and not your joints. Keep a positive attitude and push through the pain until you can’t perform the movement anymore.

This is a great strategy for maximum muscle growth but it is a little dangerous without a spotter. Always get someone to spot you on that last set or two when you know you’re going to give out.

You need to communicate with your spotter as to when you’re about to fail and they should be vigilant to look for signs of failure.

I would end with the cliche, No Pain, No Gain, but that’s not exactly true, lol. So I’ll just say, Train Hard and Train Smart.

Learn more about how to build muscle. Stop by Mitch Graves’s site where you can find out all about muscle building .