Training to failure has been a subject discussed and debated by fitness professionals for a very long time. Some experts will tell you that the only way to increase muscle mass is to go to failure on each set of your exercise. Yet others will tell you that exercising to failure should be avoided. preworkout

I am sure you have been told to go to failure while exercising if you want to reach your goal of increasing muscle mass, and if you want major improvements in size and strength, you need to work hard, and at a high intensity. This actually works great for low volume workouts.

What about high volume workouts? Here is where the cause of the debate stems from. You cannot train at a high intensity when doing a high volume workout. If your workout involves a large number of sets, you are going to completely burn yourself out if you take each set to failure.

So let's cut to the chase, what do you need to do?

I think you would agree that the majority of people who are determined to train for fast muscle growth and muscle mass are going to train hard. When you train, you train to get results, you don't want to sit there trying to calculate how when to hold back from going to failure or not, right?

Because so many people love to train hard and will always train hard it makes sense then, if you're the same, the best thing for you and your muscles, is to lower your training volume and try to keep it around 12 reps per set.

Doing this will allow you to keep training hard, safely, train to failure on all sets, and you won't over train or burn yourself out. You will be able to enjoy your work outs this way and your workouts will be shorter. Who isn't looking for more time in their day anymore?

The only thing you'll need to adjust is the amount of weight you lift as you get stronger to make sure you reach failure around the 12 rep mark for each set you do.

If you are wondering what going to failure on each set means, it means that you should end the set when you are not able to perform another rep while keeping good or proper form. Now don't work out until the weights fall, this can be potentially dangerous especially if you are working out on your own or don't have a spotter with you.

What this means is that, that one last rep you push out should take every last bit of power you have for that set. This is the rep you stop at, and it's the one before your eyeballs pop out, but on a more serious note, you should not attempt another rep as you can burn yourself out, over train, or most seriously injure yourself.