How difficult do you have to push yourself to become stronger?

You are sweaty and painful, and just hip your sports bag on your shoulder, let yourself be moaned. The training was tiring, but was it effective?

Many trainers and athletes have long believed that lifting to failure – the moment you cannot complete another repetition of an exercise – is the best way to build muscles. But recently research has challenged that idea, suggesting that training with a slightly lower intensity can yield comparable results.

“The question I ask people is:” Are we getting better or are we getting tired? “Said David Frost, associate professor in the Kinesiology department at the University of Toronto.

If you are new to lifting, it can be difficult to know how difficult your training should feel. Learning how failure feels – and understanding when you have to push so far – you can help build a sustainable strength training routine and enable you to make safe progress as you get stronger.

What is training for failure?

There are two types of failure in strength training. “Technical failure” is when you cannot repeat other repetition with the correct shape and control, so you may need to trust other muscles and joints to increase the weight. “Muscle failure” happens when your muscles are so tired that you cannot lift the weight at all.

Although you can build muscle mass by training into failure, some experts say that the risks can outweigh the benefits. “If you push yourself to failure and damage your muscles in a single training in a single training, it will affect what you can do the next day and the next day,” said Mr. Frost. Pushing yourself to lift with poor form can also increase your risk of injury.

What more matters is that you are work hard Every time you board the gym. Challenging your muscles creates micro-damage in the tissue, causing them to change. When you rest, grow, grow and become stronger.

“You don’t necessarily have to fail, but a high level of effort is required over time,” said Brad Schoenfeld, a professor in the practice science program at the Lehman College in New York, who studies how different methods for resistance training influence muscle growth.

How much do you have to lift?

When you start with strength training, you first perform new exercises with only your body weight, so that you can learn the right shape, said Elizabeth Davies, a power coach in Kent, England, who mainly works with women who are relatively new in lifting.

As soon as you are ready to add weight, you start picking up a weight that light feels before you. Focus on moving with a good shape instead of doing as many repetitions as possible.

You can use what is known if the Reps in reserveOr rir, scale to find out how much weight you can handle for a full set. When you perform an exercise, estimate how often you can increase the weight – your “repetitions in reserve” – ​​before you maximize. You want to choose a weight where you have the feeling that you have a few repetitions in the tank at the end of your set.

With the RIR method you can adjust your training for how you feel – which can vary based on everything, from sleep and diet to hormonal changes and stress – instead of sticking to a fixed amount of weight.

How difficult do you have to work to build muscles?

As a new lifter, your muscle tissue will generally Soon to trainingSo you can stop if you feel that you have five or six repetitions in reserve and still see progress, said Mrs. Davies.

As you get stronger, research suggests that Stopping two or three repetitions for failure Can be ideal for maximizing muscle growth. As soon as you can complete the same number of repetitions in a certain set for two or three weeks in a row, add a little more weight and look at how that changes your sense of effort, Mr. Frost suggested.

If you are familiar with an exercise and you can practice it consistently with a good shape, it may be worth training occasionally to not refine your feeling of how hard you should work. After all: “If you don’t train for failure, you don’t know how far away you are,” said Dr. Shoe.

When your body is pushed past its limits, it will also try to adapt to make that challenge more easily next time, Dr. Shoe.

If you really enjoy the feeling of making your maximum effort, failure can occasionally have a place in your training sessions. Mrs. Davies gives her customers that chance of single-Joint movements such as biceps curls that will not leave them too exhausted and hinder their progress, she said.

The key to the maximum out of strength training is hard work over time, Mr. said. Frost. On most days this means that you push yourself a little more than the day before.

Alyssa Ages is a journalist in Toronto and the author of “Secrets of Giants: a journey to undover the true meaning of power.”