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By David Grisaffi
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Smart trainees know that progression
is the name of the game in fitness and strength training.
However, as you continually test your limits of accomplishment,
whether that’s reaching a new level of leanness, increasing
your muscle mass or obtaining a new strength maximum, you
often fall prey to the belief that you must push yourself
to the point of complete “failure.”
This is the point where you
reach a level of fatigue and exhaustion that causes your muscles
to literally give out (“fail”) and you can’t
complete another rep.
Training with progression and
intensity is important, but unless you’d like to trade
a nice set of abs for a bad lower back, I’d strongly
urge you to re-evaluate the concept of training to failure,
especially when it comes to core and abdominal workouts and
especially if you’re not a bodybuilder.
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Why do so many people
believe in failure training?
Training to “failure” became
popular in part, because of bodybuilding culture and bodybuilding
gurus such as Mike Mentzer and Arthur Jones, and then the information
filtered into the mainstream fitness world. Athletes, who tend to
be as competitive with themselves as they are with their opponents,
also sometimes push themselves as far as they possibly can in their
quest for sporting excellence.
This approach
may be misguided and possibly even dangerous.
There may be a small place for taking
some sets to the point of failure in low volume bodybuilding programs.
But even bodybuilders who train to failure too often may be gaining
less benefit than they think, while increasing their chances of
overtraining or even injury.
I believe strongly that the added
stress of training to failure or total fatigue can cause more problems
than it’s worth and the potential benefit is not worth the
risk. I have rehabilitated many back pain patients because of their
stubborn beliefs in “pushing it to the limit.”
Stimulate, Don’t Annihilate
Exercise places a stress on muscles,
joint structures and the entire body. Exercising to failure places
extreme stress on the muscles, body and the nervous system. There
is positive training stress and negative training stress. Properly
applied, training stress is “stimulation” which prompts
an adaptation in the muscle – strength, stamina, size, or power.
Improperly applied, training stress is damage beyond the point of
necessarily stimulation. Even some of the top bodybuilders understood
this, as former Mr. Olympia Lee Haney used to say, “Stimulate,
don’t annihilate.”
Out of all the muscles and movements
in particular, it is very important to stimulate your core and abdominals
and not “annihilate” them. Be very careful not to over-train
or over-stress your abs and core and this means, do not train your
abs to failure.
One of the biggest problems with training
the core and abs to failure is that the more fatigued you become,
the more your form begins to break down. When your form breaks
down, that is when injuries are most likely to occur. This is true
for any exercise, but it may be truer for abs and core than any
other type of exercise due to the susceptibility of the lower back.
Research by Dr. Laurence Morehouse
of University of California at Los Angles found that when doing
abdominal exercises, especially sit-ups, you over-work your hip
flexor muscles - the psoas and the iliacus. When the exercises are
performed quickly (form breaks) or all the way to failure (form
breaks), the hip flexor’s pull on the lower back is increased.
When performing your core exercises,
always be conscious about form, especially as you begin to get tired
toward the end of a set. You should terminate your set at or before
the point where you notice that your form breaks in the slightest,
and that is usually a couple of repetitions before reaching muscular
failure.
Progression Can Occur Without Failure
If you believe that stopping short
of failure will hold back your progress, think again. Progress is
a function of progression and progression can take place without
failure. You can continue to improve your workouts and thereby your
physique and performance by increasing repetitions and or resistance
or even density… without ever training to failure.
Don’t Teach Your Nervous System “Bad Habits”
One point about proper form that few
people realize is that if you train to the point of failure, which
leads to a breakdown in form, this can lead to the development of
poor motor engrams. Your nervous system can develop “bad habits”
so to speak, as your body tends to automatically revert to what
you practice the most. If the last repetitions of every set are
usually done with poor form, then repeating that motor pattern is
much more likely to occur in the future, leading to additional muscle
and joint damage.
I design core conditioning programs
in a specific way so you train smarter and avoid temptations that
lead to poor form and potential injury. And that leads us to…
The 3 Keys To Smarter Ab Training
First, I recommend that exercises are performed in a certain
order
By placing the more neurologically
demanding and form intensive exercises first in a carefully planned
sequence, I help my clients avoid a situation where fatigue and
form breakdown would be as damaging. If you attempt the opposite,
you increase the chance of over fatiguing the segmental stabilizers
of the spine and you produce poor motor engrams.
More details on exercise sequencing
are beyond the scope of this article, but you can learn more in
my Firm and Flatten Your Abs program and in my Six Weeks to Six
Pack abs report (click
here to learn more about both).
Second, I constantly emphasize form and control
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Nowhere is strict form more
important for your safety and results than in core and abdominal
training. The simple advice of slowing down the tempo and
focusing on form will increase results and help keep you out
of the doctor’s office.
There are times when you may
want to perform core exercises at a higher rate of speed with
more velocity or explosiveness. This is often the case with
athletic, sports-specific training. But speed and form are
not mutually exclusive and the same rules about fatigue and
failure still apply to explosive training.
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I train elite boxers and when they
first show up at my studio, they are often set in their old ways
of failure, fatigue and overtraining. I’ve seen it over and
over again: A new client’s routine consists of “workout
till you drop” and then 1000 flat board sit-ups. I simply ask:
“How is your lower back”? The answer usually is, “It’s
sore” at best, or “It’s injured” at worst. Even
if they’re simply experiencing unnecessary soreness, that gets
in the way of sport-specific training and their progress is slowed
all around or grinds to a halt.
Third, you must get clear about the desired outcome of your
training
Many strength trainers and bodybuilders
are convinced that the outcome of a workout should be “burn,”
fatigue and failure. If you think that aching muscles is the desired
outcome, then why even go to the gym? Come over to my garage and
I’ll whack you a few times with my sledgehammer then sit you
up on my barbecue grill. You’ll “ache” and “burn”
alright!
Joking aside,
you must get clarity about your real training objectives –
they’re NOT pain, fatigue and failure. If you begin
with the right end in mind, you’ll set about reaching that
end more intelligently.
Your training objective is to strengthen
your core region for support, stabilization and protection of your
spine and body organs, and your ultimate outcomes are to be healthier,
perform better and look better (perhaps in that order of priority!)
These objectives are best accomplished
by performing your exercises with strict, controlled form, and by
using movement patterns such as flexion, extension and rotation.
However, any one of those movement patterns taken to extremes can
eventually cause damage to joint structures, which can put you on
the sidelines and only take you further away from your true objectives.
Train hard, but also train smart
Progression and intensity are often
confused with the need to train to failure. From this day forward,
I suggest you re-evaluate the scientific facts as well as your mindset
towards your training. Get clear about your true objective and train
to succeed, not to “fail.”
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Click
here to learn about David's excellent abdominal training
book "Firm & Flatten Your Abs" |
About
The Author
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David Grisaffi majored
in physical education and holds multiple certifications
including 3 from the prestigious CHEK Institute: Level
II high Performance Exercise Kinesiologist, Golf Biomechanic,
and health and lifestyle counselor. He's also certified
by the ISSA as a personal trainer and specialist in
performance nutrition.
David has been a high
school wrestling and baseball coach and is currently
an independent trainer and strength coach. He has been
sought after by some of the top athletes in professional
sports including world champion boxer Greg Haugen and
professional golfer Michael Putnam.
David’s ebook, Firm
And Flatten Your Abs is an online best seller
which teaches you how develop “six pack abs"
while improving strength, function and athletic power
at the same time.
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