Welcome to the Get Fit Guys' quick and dirty tips to get moving and shape up. My name is Brock Armstrong,

and I'm the Get Fit Guy. If you're a bit of a gym rat or you're interested in putting on muscle,

or you've been just listening to this podcast for a while, you've likely encountered the term lift to failure.

But just in case it's new to you, let me explain.

All right, close your eyes and pretend you're lying on a weightlifting bench, about to do a set

of bench presses, let's say. If you have enough weight on the bar and you do enough reps, you will eventually not be

able to complete the bench press movement. Panic will set in. Your eyes might bug out a little bit,

and you might have to grunt and groan and contort your body to get that bar safely back on the rack.

Well, that is lifting to failure.

And for years now, it's been a bit of a known fact that if you want to gain strength and

muscle size, you need to lift to failure. No matter how much weight is involved or how many

reps you want to do, you must reach that point where you can't successfully do another rep if your goal is to get the maximum benefit from that workout.

Now, this is an important point that I don't want you to miss.

The weight doesn't have to be heavy for this protocol to be effective. You can reach

failure by lifting heavy weights, or you can reach failure by doing a whole lot of reps. Either

way is effective. In fact, Dr. David Bem, a Memorial University of Newfoundland researcher,

who studies resistance training protocols told

the Globe and Mail a few years ago, and I quote,

To get stronger, you need to stress both the muscles and the neuromuscular signaling pathways

between the brain and the muscle. Whether you do this by lifting heavy weights a few times or lightweights,

many times, the important part is that the individual must go to failure.

Well, hold on to your sweatband because a new study has thrown a bit of a monkey wrench

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