Health Fitness

Training for positive failure versus absolute failure, what’s the difference?

Positive failure is an oxymoron term if there ever was one. When I talk about this with a new client, they look at me funny, since failure in most cases is seen as something negative. Only in the crazy world of bodybuilding can failure be a positive thing, sometimes I forget about it given how long I’ve been moving the plank.

But it’s true, failure in a work set lets you know where you are strength-wise, as well as letting you know you’ve worked your muscles to a point where they failed, temporarily being unable to do another rep, thus making inroads into in your existing. levels of strength, endurance, and the ability of your muscles to handle the work assigned to them. Muscles have two options, die under the oncoming attacks or grow and get stronger to handle the loads placed on them, trying to overcompensate because basically the body is lazy and more interested in preservation and conservation, resentful of being pushed beyond his comfort zone.

This can be a tricky balancing act that, if mishandled, can lead to overtraining, the body’s last line of defense to set you back. Training to positive failure depends on a combination of factors, number of sets, body part divisions, how often a given muscle is trained, and the definition of failure.

We hear the terms positive failure and absolute failure, these are not interchangeable and knowing the difference is vital for continued progress. As you may have guessed by now, Absolute Failure is much more taxing on your body and should be used sparingly.

Positive failure occurs when a point is reached during a set of reps where the muscles can’t do another rep without breaking good form, although slacking off form a bit would still be considered positive failure, but totally abandoning proper form and using excessive body language would not be. In most cases, this is enough to induce a response from the muscles, as the body does not see this as a threat, but simply as hard work within the body’s ability to recover and compensate the next time it is attached to him, ready to turn. a little bigger and stronger.

This relationship of training, recovery and compensation must be respected and not taken for granted or taken advantage of or like any relationship it will blow up in your face in the form of overtraining, a negative failure where only stagnation and regression reside.

Absolute failure, on the other hand, is like a lethal weapon that, in the wrong hands, can be disastrous, leading to chronic overuse injuries and terminal overtraining. Absolute failure occurs with the use of intensity principles that are added to a set at the end when another rep is not possible in reasonably good form and some means of trickery is employed to keep the muscle working in the form of forced reps, a few seconds, partial reps at the muscles’ strongest leverage point, etc.

The fallacy with the notion of absolute failure is that there is no such thing, let me repeat this so you don’t miss it, there is no such thing as absolute failure because with a little rest the muscles are capable of moving a workload, even if it is it’s about a reduced amount of workload and this is where people get into trouble, thinking they’ll get to a point where the muscles are totally unable to work and never find it, leading them to do a lot more work of the necessary and causing only damage.

You see the ignorance of this in every gym, someone will be doing a set and if it looks like the person is about to fail, they jump in encouraging them to do a few more reps, even grabbing the bar and forcing them to do it. numerous forced reps before allowing the person to finish the set.

I remember the time I was doing wide grip pulldowns and as I was nearing the end of the set, someone came up to me and pulled the bar down, yelling at me to do a few more reps, messing up the last rep and pissing me off. .

I informed him that it was inappropriate to jump onto someone’s set without being asked and without knowing the person’s current intensity tolerance level. He walked away looking dazed, thinking that one’s training tolerance has limitations and fluctuations that need to be monitored and modulated.

My own brother found this out the hard way. On the day of leg training, he decided to give his thighs a real look. He did set after set of non-lockout squats with a short rest in between. I lost count of how many sets he did, but never found a point where he couldn’t do another set, but an hour later he threw up every half hour to the half hour for the next twelve hours. By the time he was done it looked like death had heated up and he missed the next week of training and struggled through his training the following week, lesson learned.

To say we were tough would be accurate, but it takes more than the ability to push your body to the extreme, you need to understand how hard is hard enough, a lesson my brother will never forget.

Another example is the time much earlier in our training runs that I decided to put together the ultimate composite set workouts that operate on the theory of more is better. I put together the most effective list of exercises for each muscle group, at least ten exercises in a row. I laid out the master plan to my brother and we proceeded.

The intensity was unreal and the pump was unbelievable, leaving us sore for days. Now, in my experience, you shouldn’t have to wait to start seeing results from your training, this isn’t magic, but simple overload and compensation. The first week passed and nothing, the second week passed and still nothing. Even given my young age at the time, I knew that continuing would be foolhardy and, more importantly, a waste of effort.

I was amazed that the work given to the muscles had no effect. We were able to complete all the sets, the muscles seemed to be able to handle the work. It was here that I realized that the ability to get the job done was no guarantee of success and that there had to be a tipping point where more is not better, but rather more. I took a good look at the workouts and began reducing the number of exercises linked in a row, calculating different amounts for each muscle group based on their size and participation role in the workout as a whole.

After making these adjustments we started training again and immediately saw results even though the workouts compared to what we had been doing seemed soft and not that hard, learning that less is more or more accurately the right amount was enough to push muscles. without overwhelming them.

Therefore, your goal in training is to train to positive failure in good shape most of the time with short periods of time using the principles of intensity to bring out only the stubborn or difficult muscle groups, reserving the most intense training for a shocking effect to fuel new growth without abusing this and undoing the nice benefits of pushing to absolute failure, knowing when to end a set.

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