🏋️‍♂️ stop training to failure! here's why

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Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

• Why failure is overrated

• Expert-reviewed workout splits

• 10 super-jacked movie villains

Training Tips

Failure Is Not an Option

Training to failure has long been purported to be the ultimate way to completely drain a muscle and force it to grow to your desired size under the most extreme duress. But you might not want to rely on it too much.

Dr. Eric Helms, both a competitive bodybuilder and a PhD, is here to let you off the hook when it comes to training to failure. According to him and the mighty power of science he wields, this action is completely unnecessary for maximal muscle growth.

To help, Dr. Helms tags in PhD candidate Josh Pelland, co-author of a recent study, to examine other factors besides muscle failure that had an equal or greater impact on hypertrophy. If you absolutely will not accept failure, this is the article to lean on to help you cross the finish line.

A Message From Animal

Are You Up for a Challenge?

We’re excited to announce that we're getting behind Animal’s Strength Challenge and we want YOU to participate!

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Click here for all the information you need and to sign up. The submission deadline is 10/31/2024, so hurry up! Don't miss out on the chance of a lifetime. Open to U.S. residents only. 

Workouts

Develop a Split Personality

Should you focus on strength or building muscle? It’s a predicament lifters — especially gym veterans who are lightyears past the newbie gains phase — find ourselves in at the start of a fresh programming phase. And for a good reason: It is easier to get results by solely focusing on increasing strength and forging chiseled muscle, but you absolutely can achieve both goals. It just takes smart programming.

BarBend is here to cut through the confusion by providing you with the perfect workout splits designed to hit all your muscles and help you get bigger and stronger while maintaining recovery.

While it is true that splits can be as complex as you want, sometimes simpler is better, and, as with all things in life, time will always be your greatest mitigating factor. Whether you have time for two, three, or four days a week of serious lifting, this how-to guide will walk you through the basics of setting up the perfect split for your lifestyle.

Pop Culture

Muscle Meanies

Top action movies are full of oiled-up pretty boys sardonically smirking at the camera, flashing a set of abs, and saving the world. Luckily for meatheads and anybody who roots for the perfectly logical villains, movie producers love to give their favorite hunks a muscle-bound antagonist to foil. These 10 movie villains are among the most jacked in film history.

Not all villains are flesh and blood. Gaston’s bulking regimen from Beauty and the Beast — where he ate four dozen eggs every day to get those gainz — might be the best dietary advice ever saved to film. 

The ultimate muscle villain, though, may still be young Arnold from the original Terminator. While his promise to be back was kept with endless sequels, his physique was never quite as impressive as in the original.

Take a trip through cinematic history with this list of muscle-bound heels bent on taking over the world.

Everything Else

Inclination Prognostication

• Many people think the incline press is a better muscle-builder than the flat bench. Similarly, many people think dumbbells are a better hypertrophic bench-pressing tool than the barbell. Combine these popular opinions together with the muscle-inciting incline dumbbell bench press.

• Adjustable dumbbells save space while still offering the flexibility of an entire dumbbell rack. This review of Flybird Dumbbells highlights a top brand in the oeuvre.

• The pendulum is swinging back away from long steady cardio sessions back toward short bursts of high intensity, at least according to scientists working at a lab in Switzerland.