Newbie question: why does 'to failure' feel different for different muscles?

[countrygirl011]

I'm a novice with weights at the gym, so have started out with the machines. I'm still kinda figuring out what the right weight setting is for me. I have strong legs but lack strength in my upper body, especially shoulders.

For some exercises, 'to failure' is obvious. E.g. on the leg press, I set a weight where i can do 6 reps, and the 7th is just too hard. (I'm training for strength not hypertrophy).
But then other machines (e.g. leg curl, reverse fly) its harder to know what 'to failure really is, because I always feel i can do one more but the limiting factor is that it burns (lactic acid, I guess) like, the musxle is tired but not weak.

Is this normal and just a 'large muscles vs small muscle' difference? Or a sign I'm using too light a weight in the 'burn' exercises? Why does that fatigue/failure feel different? For leg press, chest press, lat pull down i never ever feel it burn. Just weakness.

 

[hupomone]

@countrygirl011 I don’t think you are training to failure if you can do one more. Lactic acid wears off pretty quickly.

Try increasing the weight on the leg curls and see what happens.

 

[dragonlord35]

@countrygirl011 This is an excellent video about training to failure. Don’t let the click bait title turn you off, there’s some really good information here:

 

[leticia]

@countrygirl011 Hey there, congrats on getting started at the gym!

Firstly, I never recommend beginners to train at or near failure. Take 3-4 weeks to just get comfortable with new movements before increasing intensity.

Secondly, the 'burn' is not actually caused by lactate. Lactate actually helps at the muscular level in preventing fatigue!! Hydrogen ions are what causes that burn. Not something to worry about at all. The differences you feel from one exercise to the next could be due to weight selection. As you keep getting more experience, you'll start to see marked differences in what weights you are able to use on each machine

Finally, if you're training for strength, I would recommend transitioning to free weights vs machines as soon as you are comfortable. If you follow a good training program, pay attention to technique, and maybe even work with a coach, free weights are perfectly safe for beginners!

 

[shnn18]

@countrygirl011 I think it's because you're doing a lot of isolation machines. Where the machine kind of forces you to only use one muscle group in a specific way, so the weights involved are lighter, but you use that one muscle in a certain way until you tire it out.

But if you're doing a larger compound movement (like squats, bench press, or pullups, but to a lesser extent leg press, chest press, and lat pull down) you need to recruit many muscles in a chain all at once. So instead of, like, your quads getting progressively more tired until you can't lift more, you keep moving up in weight on the whole movement, until one muscle in the chain is too weak or fires at the wrong time (which could be your hamstrings, glutes, stabilizers, whatever) and you just straight up can't move the weight.

 

[jwazzi]

@countrygirl011 I've had this exact question before so thank you for asking it. It was answered pretty well by Renaissance Periodization when he explains how to tell when you have 2-3 RIR. Basically says when the weight starts slowing down, and you do a rep and the weight essentially stops at some point in the rep and starts going back down without help ("the weight starts 'pushing back')

 

[ladymo]

@countrygirl011 It’s till you can’t without hurting yourself, like collapsing.

 

[jesusismysavior2012]

@countrygirl011 Firstly if your goal is strength rather than hypertrophy then there is no real need to train to failure. Training to failure is said to be best for muscle gain but you can grow stronger without it.

To answer your question, when it comes to not feeling like you're close to failure, it's possible that you need to increase the weight to get closer to failure. For instance, you say you can't get to failure on the leg curl machine but I've definitely reached failure on that one before. The weight simply no longer moves.

As the other commenter points out, another thing is that there's different types of failure. I find that for some exercises it's more technical failure, which for me often looks like not being able to do the exercise with the same ROM I started with indicating that my form is suffering due to fatigue. This happens to me when I'm doing lateral raises for example. I've never reached muscular failure (i.e. can't move the weight at all) but I've definitely been to the point where my last 1-2 reps look more like a half rep.

 

[threecrosses]

@jesusismysavior2012 This is accurate. Training to failure is more useful for hypertrophy training, though not required for any training. When strength training, think of it as a skill you are acquiring, the skill of being strong. One way of telling if you are close to failure is the speed of the weight. Did your rep slow down? It takes some time to figure out how many RIR ("reps in reserve") you have. For strength training, 1-3 RIR is a good number to shoot for--i.e. you COULD squeeze out that many more but you really don't want to.

Something you may notice is that you can get more reps in your first set than you can in consecutive sets. That's actually really good. So say you were on the leg press and felt like 7 reps left you with 2 more in the tank. But then after another set, you were really tired by 5 reps and felt you didn't have much more--stop at 5! It's REALLY GOOD if your sets look like 6, 5, 4 or similar.

 

[rackers1]

@threecrosses Your post is helpful for me, thanks!!

 

[nathan2018]

@countrygirl011 There are different definitions of failure.

Muscular failure is when you try a rep and literally fail - you can’t move the weight through the sticking point.

Technical failure is when you can no longer move the weight with “good” form. This is probably one of the most common approaches, but you need to be careful not to sandbag yourself - many people think that there form has fallen apart once the lift starts to feel hard, but to an outside observer (or if they video the lift) their form actually looks just fine.

Volitional failure is the point where you think you will fail the next rep (0RIR/10RPE) but you don’t actually attempt it.

Psychological failure is the “f this, it sucks” stopping point you describe when it burns.

All have a place in training, but if failure is an important feature in your program (e.g. main lift progression is based on AMRAP set performance) you should pick one definition and always use it for those sets.

 

[wpjo]

@nathan2018 This is so well written, for some reason I read it in. Jeff Nippard voice in my head haha.

 

[nathan2018]

@wpjo I’ll take that as a compliment

 

[kimx]

@nathan2018 I personally only ever train to what feels like technical failure. I'd rather miss a couple reps than accidentally injure myself

 

[anon103]

@kimx If you never go to true failure, there's no way to know if you're actually close to it. You could have 2 reps in the tank or 20. How would you tell?

In any case, there's not really a connection between failure and injury, so this isn't necessary.

 

[teatimebabe28]

@anon103

You could have 2 reps in the tank or 20. How would you tell?

High rep squats are so bad for this, do 15 reps, feel like it's impossible to do another, take some deep breaths and do 20 more reps before reaching muscular failure, and possibly having a spiritual experience after rep 30.

 

[maggie123]

@kimx 100% this. When you workout with good form, you get way better gains and reduce your risk of injury significantly.

 

[joelthen]

@maggie123 That risk of injury is very dependent on the specific exercise and what "form breaking" you do. If you're doing standing biceps curls and you can't get it up anymore, swinging your back slightly isn't going to cause any damage. But it will let you get it up one more time and you can do a really slow lowering (yes you could do a drop set instead but that's beside the point of injury).

If you're doing standing dumbbell lat raises, doing the last few reps with bad form such as not fully up isn't going to cause any injuries.

 

[patsy_cline_fan]

@joelthen Not sure why you got downvoted. Certain lifts require good technique to avoid injury, but certain lifts can be sloppy and you'll still get gains without risking injury.

 

[joelthen]

@patsy_cline_fan On the internet it's more popular to simplify everything into dogmatic black & white instead of looking at nuances and being practical.

I don't recommend sloppy form on barbell squats. I don't mind a bit sloppy form on the last period in plank (sagging back a bit).