Should every set be to failure?

One of the most common questions about program creation: “Should I do every set to failure?”.

To answer this question, we first need to define what we mean by “failure”.

I define failure as the non-voluntary inability to perform more repetitions with a desired technique.

What’s “desired technique”?

And what does it have to do with training to failure?

Technique essentially creates a roadmap for how you should perform an exercise - it tells you where, how, and how far you should move your body in relation to a resistance challenge. Technique is therefore defined by the individual according to their goals.

Only when you define your goal technique can you accurately assess what failure is and should look like.

For example, if you’re doing a traditional lat pull-down, you could define the appropriate technique as:

• Pulling the bar down to touch your chest.

• Pulling the bar down to eye level.

• Pulling the bar down to your chest, but allowing for reduced range on subsequent repetitions after you can no longer pull to your chest (where failure would be defined as not being able to move out of the top, arm-straightened position).

In these examples, altering just one aspect of the technique (range of motion) changed how we defined failure across three variations.

If we’re using “full ROM” - pulling down to the chest - we could define failure as no longer being able to pull down to that point. Once we can’t, the set ends.

If we’re using “partial ROM”, failure arrives at a different, higher bar position, where we stop once we can’t pull to eye level.

If we’re using “full ROM” but then allowing for the rest of the range to fatigue afterward - completing multiple “partial reps” - we stop when we can’t move out of the top position (where the arms can’t pull down from overhead).

None of these pull-down variants is “better” than the others without context for individual goals and abilities.

A completely beginner trainee likely shouldn’t be attempting to go to failure at all.

An advanced trainee likely should be doing more sets to failure rather than fewer.

Technique and failure should therefore reflect each other in their mutual contribution to the same goal outcome.

So…

“Should you do every set to failure"?”

Which essentially asks:

“Should you do every set with as much effort as possible within the defined constraints of the exercise?”

The framing of the question proposes a binary that we need not accept.

There are plenty of options that fall between doing every set to failure and doing zero sets to failure.

Spoiler alert: there isn’t a “correct” answer.

And because failure falls along a spectrum unique to each exercise - and each technique - failure should be exercise-defined, not program-defined.

Each exercise proposes a specific set of properties that, in relationship to failure training, should be addressed on a case-by-case basis and not a general one.

Once you’ve identified those properties, however, you must come to a somewhat arbitrary decision about how much effort you want to put into a set.

It’s at this point that one must consider how much total volume should be done.

Why?

Individual sets exist in relationship to the total amount of sets one performs within a week (otherwise known as weekly volume).

And, in general, there exists a wide spectrum of possible “correct” answers when it comes to volume selection.

If you’re a beginner trainee, you likely won’t need very much volume at all - 4-6 sets for a muscle group within a week is typically sufficient to see progress.

Throughout a training career, however, more total effort becomes necessary to continue making progress.

So, if you’re an advanced trainee, it’s likely you’ll need more volume to continue to adapt.

That additional stimulus, however, can come through training more (adding sets) or training harder (training closer to or at failure more often). As an aside: it eventually must be both training harder AND adding more volume!

In principle, though, where this effort comes from seems to be a matter of asking whether you want to perform:

• More total sets or

• The same amount of sets with a higher degree of effort (and therefore stimulus) on a per-set basis

It is this volume-effort relationship - in addition to individual-specific details and goals - that I believe provides the clearest roadmap to answering the original question.

In other words…if you’re someone who likes to do a lot of sets, be in the gym for long periods, and prefers not to make every set a grueling journey into hell, then doing more total sets - each with lower relative efforts - is not a bad starting point for you.

If you’re someone who likes to get in and out of the gym while going to a sadistic, dark, life-questioning place on every set, then using fewer sets over a training week - each with higher efforts at or “beyond” failure - is likely a good option.

At either extreme, your results are created via a combination of volume and effort, which exist inversely from one another.

The more total sets you’re doing, the more each of those sets can’t be ridiculously hard.

The fewer total sets you’re doing, the more each of those sets needs to be difficult.

Keep in mind that this is a spectrum rather than a black-or-white scenario.

There are plenty of viable programming strategies that fall between these extremes (for example, maybe you perform 3 sets across every exercise you’re doing, but the last is at failure, while the first two are a few reps shy of it).

I briefly mentioned that there are several important “individual-specific details” one should consider in addition to the volume-effort relationship.

While this article won’t deep-dive into all of the variables that could contribute to making these decisions, here are a few of the most relevant:

• Training experience (skill): the more experienced an individual is with a given exercise or gross pattern, the more competently that sets to failure can accumulate with lower overall fatigue cost.

• Exercise selection: exercises that are more appropriately anchored and stabilized - and therefore create stronger local effects and weaker global ones - can likely be done with higher volumes as compared to exercises that are less constrained and that allow more wiggle room for error and technical deviation (a comparison: doing a chest-supported row versus a bent-over barbell row).

• Exercise novelty: the newer an exercise and the more de-trained you are from a specific pattern, the less likely it is that the exercise in question should be taken to high effort immediately. Even if you are a highly-skilled bodybuilder, the initial periods of exercise introduction should be taken as a skill-acquisition phase, which may lend well toward more sets with lower relative efforts.

So, what’s the takeaway?

• What we call “failure” falls along a spectrum that is determined by exercise selection and our intent in execution.

• If you’re doing more total sets, fewer of those sets should likely be taken to failure.

• If you’re doing fewer total sets, more of those sets should likely be taken to failure.

• If you fall along the middle of the bell curve in volume, you should likely do the same with the volume of failure you choose to use.

• This all assumes no current injury or other rate-limiter not related to training specifically.

Personally, my recommended starting point for the “average” person looking to grow muscle is to begin with 60-80 TOTAL sets per week across all muscle groups.

This averages out to be 6-10 sets per week per muscle group, wherein a starting point might be taking just the last set to complete failure (and taking the first 1 or 2 close to it). This is typically how I begin a program or new training phase.

From this starting point, you must assess progress across multiple months to get a gauge of how your diet, sleep, recovery, and lifestyle interact with your training and the volume/effort relationship you choose.

There are no simple, straightforward answers here, but this is my best attempt to suggest a starting place for those of you who are looking for one.

Want to learn more from me? Check out my online personal trainer community:

Click here to see my programs, eBooks, and online courses.