I highly recommend that you watch this video of Dorian Yates training with Leroy Davis, Blood & Guts.
There is no such thing as “I can’t” when it comes to building muscle and strength. Whatever arena you choose to excel in, progress is motivated by one thing and one thing only—the catalyst that triggers a cascade of metabolic events leading to the result you seek: can’t.
What Is Training to Failure?
To improve, the objective must be reaching the point where you physically cannot do more. In other words, you must fail. Failure—true failure (more on that in a minute)—is the one and only message your brain understands in order to launch an extraordinarily complex, nutrient-dependent cascade of metabolic events resulting in muscular hypertrophy—the enlargement of existing muscle fibers—and, potentially, hyperplasia, the activation of satellite cells that create new muscle tissue. The end result being increased strength to combat the stress being imposed. Your workouts.
So, established fact No. 1: Muscle growth is stimulated by repeated progressive stress. An adaptive response. That adaptive response exists under the auspice of survival. Which means the stress being applied must seek the limits of the existing structure in order to force adaptation. In plain English, you have to give the muscle a reason to grow.
Why Most Lifters Quit Before the Growth Begins
And insofar as that is true, it cannot exist without established fact No.2: Intensity seeks failure. And herein lies the problem. Failure has a distant cousin—fatigue. Far too often we mistake fatigue for failure because the pain required to endure what you’re imposing in order to reach actual failure is searing. I’m talking about the point where you’re practically beseeching God Himself to intervene. It hurts badly enough that every instinct you possess is telling you to stop. But as long as you can still generate a contraction, despite the pain, you have not yet failed.
You fail the moment the electrical impulse from your brain to your muscle is interrupted. Your brain says contract… and the muscle says fuck you.
Now, most people will decry genetics as the limiting factor in muscular development. To an extent that’s true — but only in the sense that you must possess the psychological wiring capable of generating extreme intensity. Because history has repeatedly shown that intensity can overcome less-than-perfect genetics.
Look at the run Rich Gaspari made at genetically superior Lee Haney. Same thing happened when Dorian Yates began threatening Haney’s reign. Dorian simply outworked him plain and simple. Same goes for Mike Mentzer and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold clearly possessed superior genetics. But no man on Earth could generate the level of intensity Mike Mentzer could.
The Mental Side of High-Intensity Training
So how do you navigate the path to hypertrophic enlightenment? Frankly, I’d rather explain the meaning of life. Because the quest for true failure exists inside a very small niche occupied by elite athletes willing to go further than everyone else, regardless of stress, pain, emotion, or their own will to live.
It is not human nature to hurt yourself, although some cultures insist otherwise. Elite athletes are among them. In the early 1980s, sports physician Dr. Bob Goldman posed a famous question to elite athletes: If a drug guaranteed an Olympic gold medal but would kill you five years later, would you take it? Roughly half reportedly said they would. That’s the mindset we’re dealing with.
How Elite Bodybuilders Push Beyond Pain
So on a level far beyond simple self-flagellation, the elite athlete—particularly the Olympian—must train toward legitimate failure. Understand this: at that level, lifting involves far more mental strength than physical strength. Your goal is to drive effort to the point where failure is absolute. Imagine hanging by your hands from a steel bar 500 feet above a pile of rocks. Your grip begins failing. I can promise you this — you are not voluntarily letting go. You’re holding on until your muscles legitimately fail.
Now grab a fixed camber bar, walk over to the preacher bench, and start curling. A 500-foot freefall into a pile of rocks is the consequence if you drop that bar. That would be failure.
Sounds extreme, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. Mother Nature does not want you carrying excess muscle. Muscle tissue is metabolically expensive. Your body must constantly nourish it, support it, and sacrifice valuable nutrient stores in order to maintain it. Your body will only grow muscle and increase strength when it perceives a progressive need for it That need must be persistent and that need must be intense enough for the body to adapt. The greater the intensity you can generate, the greater your capacity for size and strength.
The question thus becomes, how bad do you want it?