Working Til Failure

If you spend time in the gym, you’ll know when it comes time to build muscle, the primary goal is to break down muscle fibers to induce hypertrophy and have your muscles rebuild larger.

This is a result of volume (weight x reps x sets).

The best way to really induce hypertrophy is to work your muscles to failure.

This means literally bench pressing until you can’t lift the bar off of your chest.

Failure = Gains

Well, this also applies to mental work. With a caveat.

The best growth professionally comes from pushing yourself past your limit.

Working the 12 hour days. Spending hours solving a problem. Staying up late on phone calls to fix a customers problem or plan out your Q4 strategy in the last hour.

People grow from working to failure

But here’s the difference –

You only have 1 brain.

If you trained chest to failure every day, you’d be showing up to the gym EVERY day with low intensity. Unable to perform the tasks that were simple yesterday.

That’s why people have workout splits (Chest & Tris, Back & Bis, Legs, Shoulders & Arms, etc.)

The splits give the muscle group a break.

So while I do believe hard work is necessary to push you professionally, remember to avoid going to failure every day. Occasionally skipping that last 1-2 hours of work can help you show up fresher the next day.