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

[nathan2018]

@maggie123 Hmm, I’m not sure this works as a blanket statement. If you are so focused on good form that you lift well below your ability, you’ll likely see slower/fewer gains.

What “perfect form” is also has some nuance to it. For a strength, the best form in their competition lifts is whatever gives them the best biomechanical advantage to get the weight up (that is within comp standards). But for accessories, it might be whatever targets the muscle of interest best. So squat form might look different if you are trying to maximize your squat 1RM vs trying to build your quads.

It’s also really exercise dependent - something like a Kroc row might just look like a dumbbell row with “bad form” to someone not familiar with the exercise, but is generally renowned as a great exercise for building back muscles.

Injury risk is a lot more complex than that, too, and has a lot to do with overall training loads.

 

[debbie8800]

@nathan2018 Exactly.

There is no such thing as perfect form.

 

[pakalolo]

@nathan2018 For me personally, technical failure also includes: the point at which I'm still able to lift the weight with apparent correct form, but other muscles than the muscle that I'm targeting are suddenly doing much more of the work (because the targeted muscle is spent).

 

[nathan2018]

@pakalolo For me personally, I don’t love this for compounds since what muscles you “feel” doing the work isn’t necessarily reflective of reality.

In regular training I usually treat “failure” compound sets as 1-2 RIR sets and use bar speed/grind to assess how close I am to failure (and every so often go to muscular failure to make sure my judgement is well calibrated). For isolation movements I usually go to true muscular failure.

 

[meritfromgrace]

@nathan2018 It’s interesting how I feel all this but just got to mnow they have specific terminology