Powerlifting training involves a series of calculated risks. You lift weights that are heavy and challenging, over and over, in order to be able to lift heavier and more challenging weights over time. Lift too light and you won’t make progress. Lift too heavy too often and you’ll burn out. It’s a tightrope walk with hundreds of pounds on your back or in your hands.
Sometimes, this involves failed attempts at lifting those weights. However, not all failed reps are created equal. The costs and benefits of failed reps differ depending on the circumstance and application.
You’ll hear coaches preach on either side of the continuum: one side saying you should NEVER miss reps in training, and the other saying that you need to train to failure in order to maximize gains.
To be clear, these arguments are often about two different things: missing reps on heavy competition lifts and failing reps on bodybuilding-style accessory exercises. These two types of failure are not the same. The risks and rewards are entirely different. However, many people train with the goal of getting as strong AND jacked as possible, so it’s worth diving into the opposing philosophies.
Let’s examine the two arguments.
“You Should Never Fail Reps in Training!”
The non-failure side argues that failing reps in training is too taxing on the central nervous system and leads to overtraining. This very well may be true, as evidenced by the way you feel after a powerlifting meet if you’ve gone anything but 9-for-9. Failing a heavy single feels akin to getting hit by a bus that didn’t even TRY to slow down as you brazenly strolled across the street without looking both ways.
Speaking specifically about the competition squat, bench press and deadlift, in my experience, the physical recovery cost of missing reps during a heavy, low-rep set is significant. The acute nervous system fatigue is often robust enough that the remainder of the current training session and even the next few training sessions become less productive, which can throw off a lifter’s overall training plan.
Perhaps more importantly, failing reps in training can wreak havoc on one’s confidence. Missed reps often beget more missed reps. It’s shockingly easy to dig yourself into a hole of negative self-talk and convince yourself that you’re going to fail every heavy set if that’s what’s happened in the recent past. This is why using autoregulation and practicing disciplined weight selection is so important for building confidence under the bar.
But even experienced lifters with a track record of accurate weight selection miss reps on occasion. The key is to react and adjust accordingly. You may occasionally miss a rep in training due to a lapse in concentration and/or technique, but you have to be smart and humble enough to avoid missing again within the same training session. As a coach, I tell my lifters to either take weight off the bar to ensure you don’t miss again, or, if you absolutely insist on reattempting that same weight you missed, you’d better be 100 percent certain you’re going to successfully lift the weight if you bring your A-game in terms of focus and technique.
“You NEED to Go to Failure to Make Gains!”
There’s a side that argues that you MUST go to muscular failure in order to make gains in size and strength. To be clear, these people are often not talking about training for maximal strength in powerlifting, but rather for hypertrophy. However, if we can agree that hypertrophy training is beneficial for powerlifters, it’s worth examining this argument in the context of a powerlifter’s training.
The pro-failure crowd often cites the fact that reaching muscular failure is the only objective way to measure effort. If you leave reps “in the tank,” you can’t be certain exactly how many reps you had left and therefore, using RIR (reps in reserve) to quantify intensity is too subjective and non-specific. After all, a recent meta-analysis indicates that many lifters chronically overestimate how hard they actually train and lift way too light to make meaningful progress.
While it may be true that assessing one’s non-failure RIR is an educated guess, research seems to indicate that you DON’T need to train to failure to get bigger and stronger. A 2021 meta-analysis of 13 studies that compared the effects of training to failure versus stopping shy of failure on strength, hypertrophy and power output found:
- GREATER gains in strength and power for the non-failure groups
- NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE in hypertrophy between the two groups
That means stopping shy of failure is just as beneficial as going to failure, but perhaps with less fatigue and faster recovery between sets and training sessions. Sounds like a better return on investment by leaving reps in the tank.
Apples to Oranges
Again, these two arguments are about different types of failure. It’s important to understand the nuances between them.
In my professional opinion, it is far worse to miss on a heavy, low-rep set than on a lighter, high-rep set. For example, missing the second rep of a planned set of 3 on a heavy bench press versus missing rep 12 of a lighter backdown (or “burnout”) set. The missed rep on the heavy set is likely due to a combination of ego-driven weight selection and poor technique, while the missed rep on the AMRAP (as many reps as possible) is probably due to muscular fatigue which is exactly the goal of the exercise.
Ultimately, you have to adjust your mindset toward failure based on the task at hand. You can’t be scared of failing when you lift heavy weights or it’s likely that fear will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You can overcome this fear by using intelligent weight selection and being intentional about your technique no matter what weight is on the bar. When doing accessory exercises to build muscle, you don’t HAVE to go to failure all the time, but you should flirt with it most of the time, leaving 1-3 reps in the tank on the majority of your sets.
