Do You Really Need to Train to Failure? / Smart Training
You don’t need hours in the gym.
If you've ever pushed through the burning pain of a last rep and the weight suddenly feels twice as heavy. Your brain is telling you to stop it. But you grind out one more rep anyway, wondering: Was that actually necessary?
Then this email is for you.
A research published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (Hermann et al., 2025) set out to answer that exact question. Researchers recruited 42 resistance-trained adults and split them into two groups for eight weeks.
Both groups followed the same program:
9 exercises
1 set each
2 sessions per week
~ 30 minutes per workout
Both groups achieved real, meaningful results in muscle size, strength, and endurance from just two 30-minute sessions per week. That alone is amazing and worth sharing with others, especially for anyone who thinks they need to spend hours in the gym to see results. The study shows you can make progress without training to failure, but that’s usually in programs with multiple sets.
At Salus Strength, we perform one set per exercise to momentary muscular failure. When volume is low, intensity becomes important. Training to momentary muscular failure ensures the muscle receives a strong enough stimulus for strength and muscle growth. It also removes the guesswork as many people think they have “2 reps left,” but in reality they may have 4–5 reps left, which can reduce the training effect.
Because our sessions are:
Supervised
Machine-based
Slow and controlled
Only one set
Resistance training to failure is safe, time-efficient, and effective. The key message shows you don’t need hours in the gym. Just brief, focused, high-effort training.