What does "working your muscle until failure" mean???

[Hoeboy]

Is it when you feel so sore and beaten up that you can't literally use the muscle without feeling pain?

 

[mryellow2]

I believe it means doing reps in one set until you *cannot* force yourself to do any more.

 

[Novgrod]

You're commonly told to do three sets to failure.

This means a) you need to have someone spotting you.

b) it means you lift the weights until you absolutely cannot lift the weight again. Then the person spotting you helps you. You do this three times it it's three sets to failure.

It's really an excellent idea if you have someone there to spot you, or it's worked for me at any rate.

 

[kru]

what mryellow2 said.

 

[Scootin159]

So this feeling that I can't move after baseball practice is really helping me?

 

[Novgrod]

The feeling that you can't move comes from lactic acid. When your muscles run out of oxygen (and i learned about cellular respiration a number of years ago, so pardon me if i'm fuzzy), for that extra bit of energy they'll use a form of fermentation, the byproduct of which is lactic acid.

This is what makes your muscles burn. When you work out consistently, your blood flow to those muscles improves, and you don't get the burn. You're still helping yourself.

If you feel like you can't move and it's not the post-workout burn, then yes you're still helping yourself and you'll be much better off aerobically in the future.

Then again, I could be entirely wrong.

 

[tcsenter]

So this feeling that I can't move after baseball practice is really helping me?

Well, the "feeling" isn't helping you, but the workout did. ;-)

As someone stated earlier, working until failure means you literally cannot lift the weight another rep because your muscle is spent. You must use caution here, working until failure is not for the novice.

Pushing yourself this hard can greatly increase the risk of injury if you do not 'know' your limits or if you are not familiar enough with working out to pay attention to the signals your body is telling you. Novices may often confuse a burning sensation as the 'good' type of burn, when the burn they are feeling is actually that they've strained or pulled a muscle. There IS such a thing as pushing yourself TOO far or hard, and the consequences can be serious.

Its better to work very gradually and progress to a work-out of this intensity over several months.

Corrected a poor word choice, which seems worse than usual tonight.

 

[hardass]

true failure is different than the "3 sets to failure". True failure is when you cant lift anything period, that means after you take your set break and go to lift another set your not gonna move it. I never go to true failure, its to easy to over train, and does not allow room for muscle recovery.

 

[Stratum9]

And here I thought "working your muscle until failure" meant fapping so vigorously that you lose your stiffy!

 

[Renob]

And here I thought "working your muscle until failure" meant fapping so vigorously that you lose your stiffy

Sometimes I do that till I lose my renob

 

[phatcow]

And here I thought "working your muscle until failure" meant fapping so vigorously that you lose your stiffy

is that even possible?

oh god.. NOT a point i want to be in my life.

 

[GermyBoy]

Originally posted by: hardass
true failure is different than the "3 sets to failure". True failure is when you cant lift anything period, that means after you take your set break and go to lift another set your not gonna move it. I never go to true failure, its to easy to over train, and does not allow room for muscle recovery.

That is very true. The feeling you have after baseball practice (not being able to move) is good if you allow your body to rest, and you really want to work your body that hard. It is all up to you really.

Peace,
GermyBoy