Technical Failure vs Absolute Failure

This will be my first ‘behind-the-scenes’ share of video content clients have access to when they sign up for coaching.

I filmed this because a lot of clients wanted more clarity on how to optimally resistance train and what I meant by ‘technical failure.’

It helps to first know what absolute failure is.

Absolute Failure

AKA: Momentary Muscle Failure. AKA Failure.

This is pretty much what it sounds like. It refers to lifting weights to a point where your muscles can no longer lift the weight through the same range of motion regardless of how much effort you put into the task.

More specifically to a point where you can no longer move a weight concentrically and you must stop.

Concentrically meaning the lifting phase of a resistance exercise or shortening the main muscles involved in creating the force. In the example below it’s lifting the dumbbells towards the ceiling.

Eccentrically is the opposite. It means the lowering or accepting phase of a resistance exercise. So lowering the weights in the example below towards the floor.

We’re stronger eccentrically, so if you had help on the concentric you could keep lowering the weight under control for a few more reps through the range of motion past momentary muscle failure. That’s a whole other discussion and is often referred to as eccentric overload training.

I prefer the simple term "failure" in this context, but “absolute failure” is a little more descript in the separation with "technical failure" and technical failure is really what I want to talk about in this article.

But note that momentary muscle failure is the term you're more likely to find in the research papers. It’s a fancy way to say the muscles experience a momentary failure and the inability to perform another repetition.

Tomato-Tomatoe

In the video below you’ll see that I reach absolute failure on rep 13 after 8-9 seconds of trying to grind the rep out. Sure, I may have embellished a little to make a point but I want you to see what it looks like.

It’s key to understand this because almost all research into muscle growth (AKA muscle hypertrophy) supposedly uses absolute failure to determine when a set should end. Rep 13 below.

Meaning almost every time you conclude a piece of research, you have to consider if those sets were taken to absolute failure under the supervision of someone like me.

Although if I'm being honest I question if that's happening in some research. Especially research where subjects are supposedly taking movements like barbell squats or bench presses to failure (2 exercises that do not lend themselves well to training to failure).

Picture me standing over you yelling at you to keep pushing until you can’t finish another rep. Then I help you finish that last rep, or help you lower the weights safely so you don’t hurt yourself.

Do you train like this?

Obviously, not everyone has a trainer looking over their shoulders at all times.

Should you train like this?

That’s the question I’ll answer below.

Technical Failure

Technical failure on the other hand is a little more subjective.

It’s the point at which technique noticeably falters. Or to the trainee when it feels like it’s starting to falter. In the video below you can see I hold a pretty steady pace for the first 9 reps. None of those 9 reps could or should be called "technical failure."

Then you can see me slow down a bit on rep 10. I wouldn’t stop here, nor do I think it’s a technical failure but that's the moment I (the trainer), start paying much closer attention in the set. It’s when the weight looks like it's getting challenging or at least starting to feel challenging.

What this looks like in practice …

At rep 12 I slow down dramatically about halfway up. This rep takes almost an extra 2 seconds to complete versus any of the previous repetitions. What I might call a “hitch.”

A hitch should almost always terminate a set in my experience. This is likely the last full rep you’ll complete anyway. A hitch can be considered by some as one rep beyond technical failure. However, with a little time and practice, you may discover you are capable of getting one more depending on the lift and how you feel that day.

Based on that, I think technical failure is more of a range. I could have terminated this set on rep 11 if I wasn’t trying to show you what technical and absolute failure looks like. But going for 12 isn't a bad idea necessarily either.

Had I not just set up a camera, and deliberately grabbed some weights I though I could do for about 10-12 ish reps in an exercise that was not in my existing routine at the time (on purpose) I may have been able to grind out that 13th rep and then quit.

Giving you a range of reps 11-13 on a good day.

Rep 11 is when the weight started to feel heavy. I slowed down noticeably, despite the intent to lift the same weight at the same speed. It’s about .2 seconds slower than all previous reps, which might not be that noticeable to your untrained eye but immediately jumped out at me while reviewing the video, and before timing it.

I knew I would hitch on the next rep or two and then likely hit absolute failure. That knowledge comes with practice.

Is Absolute Failure Critical to Muscle Strength or Growth?

Based on personal experience and coaching experience I’d say no. I’d even be inclined to say it’s detrimental to both provided you’re not doing high-rep, low-intensity training.

That’s why I typically tell all my clients to lift to technical failure unless otherwise instructed.

Training to failure is reserved for periodic testing so that trainees can understand what training to failure is and what it looks like. Or it's reserved (because it's necessary) for high-rep, low-intensity work, like callisthenics. And while I don't recommend anyone looking to gain mass should prioritize that type of training, sometimes the people I consult with cannot escape it do to equipment limitations.

It’s a bit complicated.

I’ve only been able to find three papers that looked at this question specifically.

One, on young males from 2016, found that it didn’t matter. Another from 2017 on young women found that it also didn’t matter. More recently a paper from 2018, also found that it didn’t matter for elderly men.

Why did I say it was complicated then? Across a variety of populations, doesn’t all that research suggest that training for momentary muscle failure doesn’t matter?

Well, it does. But…

There is a Possible Caveat

That caveat is that the first paper was at 85% of the trainee's one repetition maximum or weight they could lift about 5 times.

The second paper was with loads equal to about 80% 1RM or a weight they could lift about 7 times.

For the last paper, the reps completed fluctuated between 4-10 reps. Despite starting with a much lower 50% of 1RM and working up to 80% 1RM. What older men could actually do rep-wise ended up being much lower. Likely due to age/detraining.

For those that don’t know 1RM = 1 Repetition Maximum. Or the weight a person can theoretically only lift once. It’s how we rate the intensity of lifting.

Meaning all of these papers are at a pretty moderate to high intensity.

The results might not carry over to very high-intensity lifting (<5 reps or higher than 85% 1RM). Though I believe they will.

It also means that they might not carry over the really low-intensity lifting (>10 reps in this case but likely >12 reps or even >15 reps, we don’t really know). Where I believe they won’t.

We’ve likely long known that going to absolute failure is not critical for strength improvements. This is how strength athletes have been successfully training for decades.

Grinding out reps has long proved to be ineffective for long-term strength gains. That’s what you see me doing on rep 12 & 13; grinding.

Muscle growth may be another story. Plenty of new research has suggested that high and low loads can create near-equal amounts of muscle growth.

However, the key to all that research is that all the training was taken to absolute failure.

Based on experience and my interpretation of other literature, I’d hypothesize that the lower the load and the greater the reps, the closer to absolute failure a person has to train to get muscle growth.

You still likely need to be in the range of failure or an involuntary slowdown, except if the rep range is higher.

Conversely the higher the load relative to ability and the lower the reps, the less absolute failure is required for muscle growth. The more muscle activation exists here on rep 1.

No one to date has researched this extensively, so it’s just my idea but I think it holds water.

My theory for this is heavily based off the effective reps concept I discuss in this article:

It explains to me why so many regular people struggle to use callisthenics to build substantial amounts of muscle. Especially compared to external load weight lifting.

It's hard for the average person to maintain that level of exertion (proximity to failure) over a lot of training sets. Very hard.

Yes, everyone makes the "but what about gymnasts!" argument. The same gymnasts who do a ton of training, hours of training (and many of whom still lift external weights I might add!) can build an appreciable amount of muscle even with bodyweight-only training.

But their training volumes (and motivation to train) will trump the average person's by a significant margin. They spend hours a day training much harder exercises than push-ups and very often hit failure in that training taking long breaks between efforts.

This is likely the only "optimal" way to build muscle with callisthenics and frankly most people simply don't have the time or the inclination. That and you have to do this for 5-6 years, to accomplish what you could with external resistance in 1-2 years.

I know ... it's not fair ...

This is why I occasionally tell clients to take things that far (to failure). It's usually for high-repetition callisthenics exercises like push-ups, chin-ups, single-leg skater squats or inverted rows. Even then, I often have concerns about recovery, so I usually limit the application or I have to limit the training frequency in a given week, which just slows things down further.

It’s complicated because if muscle growth is your objective, it appears likely you need to train closer to absolute failure with high reps.

Or ...

You could use more moderate to high loads and train considerably less.

Ultimately up to you but I know what method I'd lean towards for that goal.

Practicality

If you looked at most of the literature on strength you’d know failure doesn’t matter. It likely hinders strength gains to some extent.

If you looked at most of the literature on muscle gains, you’d assume that hitting absolute failure was a requirement. The vast majority of it takes every resistance training exercise to absolute failure.

But as you can see, the literature that looks specifically at training to failure at least with loads ≤10 reps indicates that isn’t the case.

We should also question the practical application of training to absolute failure even in the face of all that other research.

Training to absolute failure is hard. Not only hard work, but it puts you at risk of dropping a weight and injury. You likely need a spotter (or two) to do it properly.

It also causes more muscle damage than other forms of lifting. More muscle damage means you’ll need more time to recover between training sessions.

That means fitting in fewer productive training sessions per week. Arguably this is not ideal for most. Some ideal frequency and total volume are required but so is adding reps or load to each movement. i.e. progressive overload.

The risk in my mind just isn’t worth it (especially in beginners) save in special circumstances (mentioned below).

Not to mention that rep 13 in the video above obviously wouldn’t count because I didn’t complete it. Why bother putting that extra effort into a rep you’re not going to complete?

If you experience a hitch, stop. That’s a good rule of thumb. Ideally, you stop one rep shy of that hitch or at the hitch or at best the last rough rep after it, all of which are definitely technical failure.

I simply can’t in good conscience expect people to train like this most of the time, let alone on their own. I don’t subscribe to the “no pain, no gain” philosophy. After a dozen years of coaching, I can’t expect the majority of people to push themselves this hard. Nor should they.

Sometimes the risk isn’t worth the reward.

Technical failure, though more subjective, eliminates all the risks without dramatically sacrificing the result. You will have to work and practice to find your sweet spot.

It ensures you can finish every rep but that you still hit an appropriate amount of fatigue to get a result.

If you want to build strength, lift ≤8 reps to technical failure, or possibly even a rep shy of technical failure. I have an article on the back burner about that too.

If you want to build muscle, lift ≤12 reps to technical failure too.

I’ve yet to see specific data on this, but it’s incredibly likely that absolute failure is most important if you want to build a muscle using low-load, high-repetition lifts. For example push-ups or inverted rows.

I suspect absolute failure is only necessary once you get beyond 12-15 repetitions. The higher you go, the more necessary it is.

If you want to build muscle, do the majority of your lifts to ≤12 reps to technical failure too.

If you want to build muscle using high-rep callisthenics (>12-15 reps), you will likely need to train to absolute failure.

Special Circumstances

While I recommend people train for technical failure more often than not, it’s most applicable to beginners and people who don’t have mass-specific goals.

There are some other good reasons to train to absolute failure periodically:

• Testing True Ability (sometimes people end up too far away from absolute so technical failure isn’t even achieved — testing this sometimes makes sense)
• Over-reaching (if you don’t know what this is, you’re not ready for it)
• You have good spotters or the right equipment to do it while lowering injury risk (i.e. not back squats/barbell bench press).

The reason to do it sometimes or periodically in my mind (with intermediates) is to help people figure out where their limits are periodically.

I’ve found that people struggling to build mass, aren’t training close enough to failure. It’s uncomfortable and I get that.

So I might tell intermediate mass desiring clients to do it in the last set for each exercise after a 1-2 week lead-in period of technical failure work so they can adjust to the exercise.

It’s a delicate balance between too much muscle damage, a good enough stressor, recovery and not enough.

Other suggestions for people building mass include alternating phases of training to absolute failure, with phases that don’t train to absolute failure.

After an adjustment period, maybe do the third or fourth week onward in a phase of failure just to push a client a little out of their comfort zone.

There are other special scenarios like autoregulatory progressive exercise (AKA APRE – a new blog post someday).

Maybe I program a phase (~1 month) of it every other month, or a few times a year.

However, more often than not, I’m starting people with technical failure.