Training to failure gets constantly recycled in the fitness niche. We went from bro science “train all out, reach complete failure” (read this with Tom Platz voice), to “leave reps in reserve”, to “train to technical failure”…

You hear all these words still being thrown around. Everyone tells you to train hard. Others say you only need to train shy to failure and they love ‘Reps in Reserve’.

Marcel @345marcel Easy to blind fitness beginners by speaking of ’failure training‘. Your body isn’t even equipped to do so. It’s the last thing you need to stress about. You should focus on increasingly becoming better. Growing into a master of training. Gain muscle control to reach real failure. Marcel @345marcel Training to failure builds muscle. Everyone knows and says it. But this skill needs to be learned. Linear progression is your tool to do so. Start out easy in training, focus on movement and control. Increase intensity steadily and watch yourself reach the true state of failure. 8:14 PM • Nov 4, 2025 0 Retweets 4 Likes Read 1 replies

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One big truth is definitely that people mostly train too soft. I mean, it’s their character — majority of people are softies. It just carries over to the training.

Really missing out on this training effect. Not knowing what the body is capable of, what training loads need to be pushed to look amazing.

But what does this all mean for you? What should you follow? How can you avoid the soft character type? How do you get to sculpt your physique to look like a greek god?

Worry no more! I got you. Even if you weren’t confused, there’s still nuance to be explained. Let's start with an overview.

TYPES OF FAILURE TRAINING

Technical Failure — is the earliest form of failure and happens before total muscular exhaustion. Right before your form breaks down. You can’t push or pull the weight anymore while keeping control, good form. It’s the safest type of failure and very much how far you ever want to push it on compound lifts. It’s your biggest focus point. More on that further down.

Muscular Failure — or also absolute failure. Tom Platz/Mike Mentzer style. This is what you see happen on a regular bench press often, visiting commercial gyms. When one guy spots another guy benching. Until the very end where the spotter starts mostly rowing the weight, instead of the other guy benching it. A total state of exhaustion, reached with forced and negative reps (what happens when you as a spotter not only help the guy bench the weight up, but help him lower it too). Leading to a lot of muscle damage.

Metabolic Failure — is something you might have experienced on a leg extension, doing 15+ reps, or going for short rest time. Generally when reps are high you feel this burning sensation in the muscle. It’s the lactate build up, plus other metabolic processes. You don’t reach your mechanical limit here, meaning your muscle hasn’t lost its real energy. You stop because of the burning sensation, the pain caused by metabolic stress.

Neural Failure — not a focus if we want to discuss hypertrophy, in other words effective muscle building. Your central nervous system (CNS) fatigues, making it hard for the brain and muscle to communicate. You lose strength and power. Some neural fatigue is always accumulated when training hard. With enough recovery adding to strength gains. And overtraining is the extreme form of this.
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But this should not be your concern. The level of strength and body control to reach overtraining takes total mastery, years of work. The majority of people, even at high level, will only experience under recovery, before they ever experience real overtraining. Up until this point just learn to cope with systemic fatigue after training.

These types (except for neural) link to the different ways you can achieve HYPERTROPHY (muscle growth). In fact, we call it the Three Way Model of Hypertrophy in traditional strength training.

Science based lifting has different takes on this, and even that community is unsure about exact details. So fuck that tbh, let’s follow intuition and what is proven to work.

1. Metabolic Stress — I’ve already mentioned, linked to metabolic failure. The burning and tingling sensation of the muscle leading to cell swelling and systemic hormone release (like growth hormone). Without full muscular exhaustion, the pump becoming unbearable. Mostly achieved with high reps (15+), drop sets and rest pause sets. The concept behind BFR training (blood flow restriction) too for injuries. Allowing you to train with lighter loads, yet get a good training stimulus and growth out of it. Keep that in mind if you ever happen to be hurt. Lighter training is better than none.

2. Mechanical Tension — achieved from technical failure, training with a moderate rep range (6-10), focusing on intensity and overload from weight. It’s the MOST IMPORTANT driver of hypertrophy. Recruiting all motor units of the muscle which activates signaling pathways like mTOR for protein synthesis (muscle growth). Total motor unit recruiting is the fancy word for all your muscle fibers firing. Being a master in grinding out hard reps.

3. Muscle Damage — or so called micro tears of muscle fiber from muscular failure training. You feel soreness (DOMS) as a result and acutely a good pump in training. It leads to satellite cell activation for long term growth. Pretty much what steroids do at a larger scale, why abusers get these huge delts. Complete muscular failure training (YOU CAN’T MOVE THE WEIGHT IN ANY DIRECTION ANYMORE) puts you in a high inflammatory state (that’s why you feel sore), initiating a recovery process that adds in new proteins to the muscle. Makes the muscle blow up, become big in simple terms.

This is a lot to consume. Much of which is not even relevant if you’re a beginner. Why decided to put this into an article. To let you know what you should focus on first, and how you climb up the hierarchy of TRAINING MASTERY. Finally make progress in the gym.

Because as I mentioned in my tweet, failure training is a skill. All types of them. Without good muscle fiber requirement — aka good form and total control of your body — you don’t reach real failure. Knowing this it’s easy to work out what to focus on first, and how to keep growing in training…

The easiest and arguably MOST IMPORTANT TYPE OF HYPERTROPHY you can and should reach IS MECHANICAL TENSION. It’s the concept behind progressive overload, adding a rep or 5 lbs every training to an exercise.

Follow the linear- and double progression protocol. Example for double progression is sticking to a rep range of 6-8, increasing reps first before you add weight. So first +1 rep every training, then +2-5 lbs.

The growth from it is substantial and in turn you get to reach all other states. Keeping it consistent and steady makes it possible for you to master movements. Be able to reach a state of total failure. Patience is rewarded, keep that in mind.

As you dumb yourself down and stupidly follow the given progression protocol, you will reach the other 2 states of hypertrophy. VERY EFFECTIVE EVEN! And get to max out on the mechanical tension, transforming your body into Adonis. That’s the compounding effect applied to training. Make use of it.

Rely on your own strength and control for failure training, use appropriate equipment. Unless you have a good and reliable training buddy. I never needed one to push myself to absolute limits. Being self-sufficient is a guarantee to gains.

Play it safe on compound lifts. On machines, cables and bodyweight exercises you can push it. Use a bit of body English to help yourself too. But never overdo it. There’s a point of diminishing returns. You will learn it.

Over time you transform more and more by sticking to the progression protocols. Enhance your aesthetics and get to combine all three ways of hypertrophy. HYPERTROPHY MAXXING.
But!! here’s the kicker…

That’s why I program even for a beginner a wider variety of exercises. That’s why you should start your workouts with 2 heavy exercises, compound lifts, low to moderate reps… before you go into machines and isolations, hit higher reps and include something like drop sets.

This exact workout setup, call it powerbuilding (fusion of powerlifting and bodybuilding) combines it all. Lets you master typical hypertrophy exercises, like a lat-pulldown very early on. First applying mechanical tension through the progression protocol, until you progress for so long that you actually reach true muscular failure for the first time.

Then it really hits and you get the most out of it. Because you build up to it. You took the time. Mastered the movements. Gained control of every single muscle fiber of yours, over your breathing, over whole body tension… that you can destroy your body effectively in the gym. True elite status reached.

Never fail to follow the protocol. Don’t self sabotage, don’t want too much too fast. Muscle growth can’t be rushed, even if you were to inject roids. It pays off BIG applying the compounding effect to strength training.

Keep sculpting,
Marcel

P.S.: I have a few 1on1 coaching spots available again. If you want to make 2026 your shredtopia year, show off next summer, REACH OUT.