I can vividly remember the walking into into the weight room for summer football weight training camps. There was one particular session every once in a while where the coaches would measure our progress by doing “Max Out” sessions where we would perform the circuit and increase the weight for each repetition until we could no longer complete a full rep. The approach back then was to keep adding plates to the bar until you couldn’t finish. While this approach was meant to measure you breaking point capabilities, it wasn’t effective at measuring actual progress. In reality, while I may be able to do a single squat with 200+ pounds on my back, 200 was not my number if someone were to ever ask “how much do you squat?”.

I have a mixed bag of thoughts when it comes to failure sets. There are several approaches to reaching failure. The first approach, described above, is to add weight to a single rep. This approach only demonstrates one’s ability to perform a single motion. Oddly enough, this is the approach we see when watching Olympic weight lifting. The athletes are given 3 attempts to perform a single rep. I would never question their methods, these athletes are absolute animals. The training time they put in to perform these feats of strength is incredible.

The second approach to failure is to continue performing the same exercise with the same weight until you can no longer continue. This is an endurance approach where you are taking a weight you thought you were comfortable with and continuing to iterate until it becomes impossible. This method is pushing the threshold of your abilities. For those who perform endurance sports, this is probably the more common approach. The goal is not to increase the amount of weight, but to increase the amount of repetitions.

A third approach is a bit of a hybrid between the two. Rather than increasing the weight for each rep, or continuing reps until failure, the third method is to decrease your weight between sets as your form likely deteriorates between repetitions. You would start with your comfortable weight, go until failure, then decrease; repeating this process until you’ve depleted you glycogen stores.

Is there any value in performing max out or failure sessions? While failure demonstrates our ability to push past our breaking point, what are we really proving in the process? Some might argue that failure sets increase the risk of injury because as you reach your threshold, the quality of your repetitions is diminished. Others would say you’ve reached failure when you can’t safely complete a quality rep even if you are able to push through a few more. I would argue that failure sets are a measurement tool; only meant to visualize your upper threshold in a meaningful way.

The Dumb Fitness Challenge is a kind of failure set at its core. The purpose of the challenge is to reach your maximum potential over the long and slow course of the year. At some point we will reach that upper limit, that might be in 3 months, 9 months, or over a year later. The point here isn’t to go as hard and fast as you can until you fail every single workout, but to reach that failure set naturally while building strength and endurance in the process.

We often approach our goals like failure sets. We simply push until we can’t. The mindset behind the DFC is a slow burn approach to reaching your upper limit. In the process you are building better form through repetition and practice when the number is small so you can effectively complete those harder days as the repetitions increase. Like I said, I have mixed feelings on failure sets. I don’t necessarily think they provide a good indicator or your overall strength, but they do help measure stamina, which is a key aspect of any challenge. Moral of the story: reach your failure set slowly and with meticulous focus on the quality of your chosen exercise. You will be much better off in the long run.

Whatever number you’re on today, do them with conviction! Happy Thursday.