This bullet point does seem slightly dogmatic. But it’s somewhat more easily to comprehend than
- If you’re not training to failure when appropriate you are leaving a lot of gains on the table
Also, I don’t really know the target audience for the article. There’s always going to be some people on a bell-curve to wit the main sentiment doesn’t apply as cleanly. Personally, I love training to failure for a multitude of reasons but without double-checking it’s my gut feeling from having read through and running (or attempting to run) a few programs that very often when an exercise is programmed to failure it is programmed to failure and using a somewhat heavy load as gauged by the associated rep-range. To be honest, I see this more in CTs work than anyone elses. Meadows will program to failure, and beyond, but employ slightly higher rep ranges.
Where I imagine this goes to hell is in people with a genetic pre-disposition towards injury. Now, I’m not sure entirely what that means, but I do happen to know that heavy weight moved by a muscle under tension causes muscle damage and that muscle damage as a means for hypertrophy is the one with the highest recovery demands as it necessitates an actual healing process. Then, if recovery is poor, and you go back at it, and you see a performance increase that’s not a guarantee that the muscle has healed fully and certainly not a guarantee that the tendons and ligaments have healed fully. Repeat every week for however how long and eventually something might snap.
You’ll enjoy this,