Confusion on 'not going to failure', CNS fatigue, etc within principles

[rickcr]

Been reading over the the FAQs and various HST posts. It 'seems' like that rationale for not going to failure on exercises is not due to over-training the muscle per se, but that it will cause overtraining in the sense of CNS fatigue? Am I accurately interpreting this?

If so, it would seem that going to failure occasionally (where you strain for a second or two on a rep you are stuck on), wouldn't necessarily be counter-productive assuming your overall work load was light enough so as to not trigger CNS fatigue?

I'm on week 7/8 cycle where I'm keeping my 5rpm constant for each exercise but then throw in a high rep (10-15) set right after my second set of the exercise (read this in one FAQ that this is a good approach?) Right now I'm cutting all reps one short of complete failure, but wondering how counterproductive it would be to 'push it' a bit into the failure stage?

 

[_tim]

It really is all about CNS fatigue, rickcr. I think if you dig a bit more into the articles (and certainly through other online sources) you'll find arguments against working to failure when training for size, even though it's been veritably proven that muscular damage is a contributing factor to growth. How much damage is the question.

For hypertrophy, I believe that Brian has proven that regular, failure-based training is counterproductive in the context of hypertrophy-specific training. That said - to your point about every so often pushing through to failure - from my perspective, it wouldn't hurt, nor would it be counterproductive if you're smart about it. Realize that when you push through, you are subjecting yourself to a possible CNS response that will take more rest than usual to quell, and may in fact end your cycle. There are risks and rewards all over the place in all forms of training - and in the end, it's you who are doing the training and if you want to take the risk, take the risk. Push through. At the end of the day, it will either work - or it won't. The obvious follow-up to that is that it may work for a while. So - that's my $0.02. Hope it helps.

 

[Totentanz]

Rather than doing a burnout set like you seem to be suggesting, the time I find value in going to failure is pushing for new RMs. Especially where you are at. During the tail end of a cycle, I push the weights up beyond my old RMs each workout and often end up hitting failure on at least a couple lifts each workout.