Attend any local fitness club and you’re likely to observe people shortchanging their progress by not training with adequate intensity. Reps in reserve versus training to failure has been a popular debate for a few years in the fitness community. Personally, we think the average lifter needs to worry more about performing a lift with ENOUGH intensity rather than too much.
Does this mean you have to take every set of every exercise to failure? Certainly not! However, it is important to recognise what hard training feels like. Stopping a set 6-8 reps shy of failure will undoubtedly compromise your progress in the long run. Just like other aspects of exercise science, consistently and accurately training with 0-3 reps in reserve (or going to failure) is a SKILL, and needs to be practiced.
How can you get better at this?
One technique we have used with ourselves and clients are AMRAP sets. Turn on your favourite song, grab a spotter, and psyche yourself up before attempting as many reps as possible for your usual weight in a given exercise! If you perform significantly more reps than usual, it’s an obvious giveaway that you could probably train harder throughout your “normal” sets.
What’s your consensus around training to failure versus reps in reserve?