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All right, now we can finally look at this whole failure
proximity to failure thing that is gonna be so important
when we talk about applying the autoregulation
to those work volumes that we were looking at.
So disclaimers up front this is a foundational look.
The details and nuances of failure
are a whole course themselves because they go
into all of the biochemical and neurological facets
of what's going on in terms of
that mechanical tension theorem.
Those nuances become more important
when we're looking at using different stimulus and training.
So we covered mechanical tension in the previous module
and we really kind of just use
hypertrophy stimulus as the example for that.
But I mean, it applies to everything else
in terms of the principles.
But just understand that we're looking at failure
in terms of how you can use it.
But just understand that the way you look at failure
may differ when you have different training goals.
But like I said that's a big portion outside of that
so if you're interested in our program design courses,
we focus a lot on looking at specific types of failure.
We will cover more on failure probably
than you've ever heard before in this course, for sure.
So we'll look at qualifying failure
and proximity to failure.
We're gonna have definitions like what is failure?
We will look at RPE, RIR, percent, rep max, velocity
and all of these different things.
I'm gonna look at defining failure.
We can look at just basically the simplest thing is
as well as just completing an exercise
until you can no longer complete it
in the manner that you intended to do it
but because it's in the manner that you intended,
that means that there's a flexible nature
to when have you actually reached failure?
So some people will use the term positive failure
and that just refers to the last rep
that you could perform before you would need a spot.
So the last rep before it would be forced reps essentially
or you could look at it as the last rep
before you had some sort of body English
or something that kinda bailed you out of that or whatever.
But it's the last rep that you can perform
on your own volitionally.
Now that can kinda be stacked on some
of these other ones below because the next one is
gonna be form failure so this is gonna be
the last rep before technique or form becomes altered.
So what you need to look at muscular failure
versus movement failure.
Some people will say oh yeah, there's a difference
between a task failure and muscular failure
and let's just, let's just be honest
that principle is there, meaning that
you always are gonna hit task failure
before muscular failure but it is an illusion
to think that for the most part
and that you're gonna hit true muscular failure
in the majority of these training conditions.
Because true muscular failure would be to the point
where you couldn't move your limb unloaded
and that's a hell of a drop set.
Or 18 million reps unloaded, whatever it may be
so I don't know, maybe the shake weight is gonna
make a comeback after this course.
But mostly what we're talking about is task failure
at a specific load and form.
So task failure means when I can no longer do the activity
and then when we constrain that activity
to being able to do that activity
with a specific form, we've now created
a stop for that task failure and obviously
by manipulating that task failure
I've manipulate how much fatigue
and what degree of failure I'm taking the muscle to.
So we discussed in the mechanical tension thing
how if we're using heavier loads
we're just simply going to rate task failure sooner
because we can't complete the movement
at that intensity any more than we would have
to decrease the load and then we would be able
to probably perform the task again
for a few more repetitions so lower loads are going
to result in a different task failure
than than higher loads but the form failure component
of that is going to say okay where are we looking at
in terms of the technique and execution.
So in really isolated environments
then it's pretty easy to maintain your form
but in compound movements like a squat,
it's very easy to start manipulating your form.
So how do you decide if somebody starts rounding
their back or tucking their butt
or shifting their hips back, or doing a variety of things.
Where is your line in the sand where you say
we're done that was the last one.
Maybe it's rep speed and we'll talk about
that when we get into velocity too.
So part of form could be just how fast you can perform
the concentric of that movement.
So all form failure is it's gonna encompass
all things technique and performance-based
of look the end of this set, failure
of this task is when you fail to be able to do
the task with the specific criteria.
It's not just, can you move the weight
from point A to point B and pretty much as a good coach
form failure should always be part of
how you're looking at failure.
You should definitely have a point
where you understand when reps are no longer
productive when you're starting
to get to that point where because a person is
changing their technique or they're changing
their tempo, or they're bouncing out of the bottom
or whatever that now they're increasing
their injury risk and likely not actually
increasing the stimulus to any significant degree
by continuing that task.
It's likely just lower stimulus
being spread across a lot more tissue
and a lot more joints and a lot more passive structures.
So form failure is pretty much probably gonna be a must
and positive failure is something
that you would only need to take
into account if you are looking at
adding assistance versus not adding assistance et cetera.
So basically positive failure just means like
no forced reps, form failure means
no shit reps if that makes sense.
Range of motion failure so basically
that's gonna be the last rep that can be completed
for a certain percentage of the range of motion.
Now this is only gonna apply to certain exercises
and those are typically exercises
where the challenge tends to be
in the short position and you can't pin yourself.
So for instance, this would be a terrible place
for a bench press unless you have a spotter
because basically if you get to the point
where you can only complete half of a rep
of your bench press, especially
with the barbell anyway, then what's gonna happen?
You are gonna be stuck under that barbell.
Same thing for a squat but if you were doing
a chest pressing machine that got harder
as you pressed out so you could literally work
until you got to the point where it's like
oh I could push here and then it's like
all right that was it they said I should go
until I can no longer do more
than half of a rep, got to that one
where it's just less than half now I'm done.
And that's what we're looking at
essentially being able to qualify
failure across different exercises.
Because you will reach failure in the shortest position
of a muscle before you reach muscular failure
and the other ranges of motion.
So when we have an exercise that takes you
to a very short position for that muscle
and has a significant amount of resistance there,
you're going to lose the ability to do full repetitions.
You're gonna lose the ability to do
that part of the task very early
and so therefore you're not going to be
at as much muscular failure and there's gonna be
different things when we talk about
mechanical tension versus biochemical stress et cetera
that go along with those things.
Again another cue for the program design course
but for this case, it's just understanding
that reaching failure in different
exercises is not always equal
and some of those exercises lend themselves
to be taken past full range of motion failure
to get greater muscular failure
and they're still good reps, even if
they aren't full reps they're still
very effective, very stimulating reps
if the movement and the resistance profile
happens to work in the favor for continuing partials
once you can no longer complete full reps.
And then we have extended set methods
where these are basically techniques allowing
a set to continue beyond its initial failure point.
So you could have an exercise where you reach
form failure at a given load and then
you take off load and then you're able to repeat
that task until you hit form failure again
and then take that off we call that a drop set.
There's lots of different things
that you could do to extend sets.
You could also look at rest pauses
things like that, all sorts of specialty sets.
This is where using super sets with no rest
in between, we're using two exercises back to back.
So even though you're doing two different exercises,
you're just extending the work of that target muscle.
You're just having to be using two exercises to do it.
So we kind of look at it as one set
and so those can be extended set techniques.
You can consider super sets in some cases
an extended set technique because if you go
from one exercise and then you go right to another one,
if that other one has a reduction of load
or a change in resistance something allows you
to continue the task and to a greater degree
of muscular failure than the original one,
that's a different situation.
You are extending beyond failure in the first exercise
and that's something that you should be aware of.
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