Evidence Based Fitness

Table of Contents Introduction Slightly more progress, much more fatigue Easier sets means more sets Training to failure has its place Key takeaway Introduction A common question when it comes to resistance training is whether or not you should take your sets to failure. Should every set be an all out set where you go until your muscles can't go anymore, or do you stop just before this point? While training all out may seem like the common sense answer to making fast progress, the truth is that going to failure too often is a sure fire way to prevent progress by...

If you plan on going on a muscle building phase and you're afraid that you'll put on too much body fat, here are a few tips to help you build muscle while adding minimal body fat to your frame. As long as you focus on these five tips and make them a priority, you should have no issue with staying relatively lean while packing on muscle.   #1 Moderate Your Surplus. Make sure your calorie surplus is very moderate and not excessive. As a natural lifter your ability to build muscle is very limited and is much slower than what...

Even if you're not a strength athlete and your only goal is building muscle, making strength training one of the foundations of your exercise plan can provide enormous benefits. If you neglect strength work, you are leaving a ton of potential progress on the table and setting yourself up for plateaus. In order to make continual progress without stalling, you need both strength and muscle hypertrophy to take place, as each assists the other and both are forms of progressive overload. Progressive overload is key!So why is strength important to someone who only cares about building muscle? The simple answer is...

Too Long, Didn't Read Version There is a such thing as training TOO hard. If your training generates enough fatigue to surpass your capacity to recover, you will not progress and may even regress until you dial it down. The more volume you do, the more progress you can stimulate, but the more fatigue you generate as well. You must properly manage volume to ensure proper recovery. The amount of sets you perform, how close to failure you get and how heavy you train will all affect recovery and must be properly managed. You should always train within your ability to...