11 Signs Your Workouts Aren’t Hard Enough to Build Muscle
In a Nutshell
Train within 3 reps of failure—most people stop too early and miss maximum gains. Use an 11-item checklist (nervousness, muscle tension, slowing reps, breathlessness, post-workout wobble, systemic fatigue, etc.) to judge proximity to failure instead of relying on feel alone. Fix the problem with progressive overload: add weight or reps weekly while maintaining perfect technique and pushing your ego on the line; adjust loads the next mesocycle so you hit true failure within the planned 4–8 week progression window.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Are you missing gains because each one of your working sets is not hard enough? It's not close enough to failure for you to be getting your maximum gains. The video presents 11 ways to tell if each set is hard enough for making the best gains or if you can push harder. Also covered is exactly how to monitor results and what to do to push the hardest.
There are many reasons you might not be making the gains that you want to make: insufficient volume, insufficient frequency, poor program structure, bad exercise technique. Maybe it's because you're not listening to enough office wave music. And potentially, now this is speculative, those real nasty thoughts you have in your head before you go to sleep, God hears those thoughts, pimp, and he's punishing you with poor gains.
While all those things may very well be true, what you really don't want to be limited by as far as gains is how hard you're training in any given set. Literature calls these working sets. These are the sets done after your warm-ups and they have to be really hard for you to make the best gains. Within about three reps shy of failure all the way to failure itself.
Many people get this totally wrong. A recent literature review by Sebastião Barbosa Neto and colleagues pointed out that a lot of folks in the gym are stopping as many as six reps shy of failure. That's three reps before the three reps that are kind of the cutoff for what makes an effective set. So a lot of folks are going to the gym and they're not getting their best results because each set is not sufficiently hard enough on them.
How do you know you're not training hard enough? It's tough, right? Everyone thinks they're going hard enough. There's not some kind of magic machine we invented that tells you you're XYZ reps shy of failure. You can't really know until you go all the way to failure, and we already know going all the way to failure on every set for people that train a lot and want big muscle gains in the long term might not be the best way to train. A few reps shy of failure is really where it's at.
How do you know you're getting to within about three reps shy of failure? The solution is a massive checklist that lets you know if you're going close to failure or doing anything but. Go through every single one of these checklist items and put together a plan for you to figure out, am I going hard enough or am I playing too much?
None of these by themselves constitute a for sure you're not training hard enough or a for sure you're training hard enough if you check the box or if you don't. But as many of them as you can get lined up into the direction of I am training hard, the better. And the fewer of them that line up in that direction and actually line up in the direction of you not training hard enough, the worse. This is not a test we have to get all the questions correct. More of them you get lined up with you are training hard, the more assured you can be that while many other things may be keeping you from your absolute very best gains, probably isn't going hard enough in any given set of your workout.
Do you get nervous, especially for your big compound lifts sometimes? If you go real shy of failure on big compound lifts, there's kind of nothing to get nervous about cuz you're never pushing yourself. But if you're getting real nervous when there's lots of weight on the bar and you're expected to do a decent number of reps close to failure, you can probably be more assured than not that you're really are pushing the pace. Doesn't mean you have to get nervous every time, but at least on occasion some of your sets should leave you kind of sweating a little bit even before you start them.
Do you need a warm-up for your hard sets and do you typically take one? The thing with warming up is after you warm up, you can get many more reps of the same weight in that same set as you would have gotten compared to if you didn't warm up. So if you always or often hitting sets without a warm-up, the chances are that you're training your hardest are lower than if you're taking warm-up sets before you take your work sets because the warm-up sets can unlock a few extra reps at the end of every set. Those are the reps going close to a failure.
If you're not warming up, chances are your nervous system is stopping you by being not ready enough to lift super hard from even getting your muscles close to their muscular failure. So it feels like you're failing and you really kind of are if you don't warm up, but that means your failure is actually a few reps shy of what you would have been able to do had you warmed up. So if you never warm up for anything and just hit your work sets raw, the chances that you're going really hard enough are lower than if you're like, "Dude, I need a few warm-ups before I hit this set cuz it's a serious damn set."
Does the tension in the target muscle make it feel during especially the last few reps of a heavy set that your muscles are being physically pulled apart into pieces under that crazy high load? If you never feel like the muscles are being strained at all, you might not be training super hard. If you're feeling like on some exercises your biceps or your pecs or your triceps are getting torn to shreds, especially in that deep stretch with high tension, man, you're probably doing a pretty good job.
Do the last few reps, especially of sets over 10 reps, give you a nasty burn in the muscle? The nasty burn is from various metabolic products that skyrocket in your muscles and in the bloodstream around your muscles precisely when and the only when you're approaching failure. The burn at the end of sets greater than 10 is a very reliable indicator of the fact that you're getting close to failure. If you feel the burn at all, you're probably doing a good job. If you end lots of sets of 15 reps without ever feeling the burn, man, the chances you're training hard enough in any given set are low.
Do the weights slow down in the last few reps of your set? For some people, they're so fast twitch and their nervous systems are so explosive, this doesn't happen. But for most people, it does, at least to a subtle extent. If you can have identical rep speeds on every single one of your reps, it means one of three things. One, you're real fast twitch, which is possible but unlikely. Two, is you're capping your concentric velocity on purpose for safety and technique to begin with. No big deal. And the last one is you just aren't training hard enough. So in most cases, you should feel somewhat of a slow down, especially in the last several reps. And if you don't feel a slow down, our next point will cover the basis.
Do the weights feel heavier at the end of the set versus at the beginning? "Who Who turned the gravity up?" is what I like to say. No one ever says anything back to me because that's not really a funny joke. But on a serious note, if the weights feel identical from rep one to rep 10, man, you're probably not trying super hard. If your velocity doesn't fall off at all, the perceived weight in your hands has to be exponentially higher on your last rep than on your first. So, if the weights are getting real heavy towards the end of your sets, you're probably trying hard and you're probably getting a lot out of your training.
Especially on big compound lifts, are you getting noticeably out of breath at the end? This has partly to do with cardiovascular systems and pushing them really hard, but it has a lot to do with the various buffering systems your body has for high acidity. When big muscles like your quads and your glutes and your pecs and the muscles of your back get real close to failure, they put out a lot of metabolites. Many of those are acidic. They end up in the bloodstream and through various ways of buffering including what's called the carbonic buffering system, those acids are buffered out, but the cost of the buffering or rather the side effect is that you have to breathe out a lot of CO2, which means your respiration rate, the rate and depth even of your breathing gets real high towards the end of a set and especially a few seconds after you stop.
So, if you do a set of leg press, rack the weight, and then afterwards I you probably got closer to failure than if you rack a set of leg press at 15 and just kind of walk out of the machine and nothing happens. There is a chance you're going close to failure there if you have phenomenal aerobic conditioning, but it's not likely.
Your target muscle, for example, the triceps in skull crushers, is notably weaker after even just one set. Definitely after multiple sets. If you do four sets of skull crushers, your triceps are about as strong after those four sets as they would be fresh, you're just warming up, you're not training hard. But, even after one set, if your skull crusher reps go down in the next set, that is a real good sign you got close to failure.
I get a lot of questions on my Instagram about how I lift and every now and again I get the question of, "Hey, why are your reps falling on your hypertrophy app every single set? You start with 15 reps of skull crushers at the same weight and the next set you're only doing 10. What gives? My answer is kind of like this. This is cheeky and meant to be nice and fun. If you have to ask why reps go down, you're probably not going close to failure."
Now, that's not exactly true because some people that are not as strong, some people with excellent recovery time, people that take a long break between sets, and people with awesome aerobic conditioning or very slow twitch fibers, they can rebound and get just about the same number of reps set after set after set. But for most people, if you go real hard, especially to failure or very close on one set, you can't just reproduce that set a minute or 2 minutes later. Your reps will fall. So, if your reps are falling off between sets, even though you're trying damn hard, you're probably getting pretty close to failure.
Do you get wobbly after the entire workout for a given muscle, especially after just a few sets? So, if for example, you can do bunch of sets of curls and then just go right into the locker room at the gym and brush your teeth without a struggle, I don't know. Did you really push it? What's called perturbation seems to be low, and that probably means you're not going super close to failure. Another thing is, if you have a gym that has some stairs to get into it, and you do a leg workout, especially quads, and you can hop skip down the stairs after, that ain't it. If your legs are wobbly even when you get out of a machine and they're definitely wobbly when you go down the stairs, then man, you're probably getting close to failure.
Essentially, if stuff feels weird, if you train forms, then it's tough to grip the steering wheel, yeah, you're probably going pretty close. If everything feels just fine, like you didn't even train it, you probably didn't go super close to failure.
Do you feel systemically fatigued after your workouts? A real workout, very many sets, even just a few sets in some cases, close to failure can make you feel drained. A sort of pleasant tiredness, one in which you feel a little bit spacey. And here's the big test, the idea of doing another hard workout in the next 15 minutes has to sound damn near impossible to you. If you finish a workout and someone's like, "Hey, do you want to do another workout with me right now?" And they just got to the gym and you're like, "Well, yeah, sure." Then there's a chance you're just in psychotic shape or not super strong yet, probability you went close to failure is lower. You really drain it.
If you really push yourself and you go close to failure on a bunch of movements and someone's like, "Hey, can you train again?" Your first instinctual answer has got to be like, "I don't think I can ever train again in my entire life." That's often how it feels right after workout in which you went closer to failure often. If you didn't go super close to failure, it's just not going to feel very systemically, overall, nervous system and body very fatiguing. If you're really fatigued after workout, that's a very good sign.
If you can continue to progress in weight and reps for longer and longer and longer, the probability that you were going anywhere close to failure in those first few weeks is lower and lower and lower. What's the cutoff? There's no cutoff exactly, but I'll tell you this, if you can put 5 lb on the bar and add a rep to the bar to the every set that you're doing for more than about 6 to 8 weeks, you're either a rank beginner, which is totally cool, enjoy your gains, or I don't know, like you're just going to continue to get stronger and stronger forever? It seems unlikely.
If you really are able to put tons and tons of weight on the bar for weeks and weeks and weeks and add reps and reps and reps, the chances that you were very far from failure when you began the workout plan a few weeks back are very high. You're just getting closer and closer to failure the whole time, but if you started very close to failure and you progressed for 8 weeks straight in reps and load, man, the chances that you're like Kryptonian go up a lot. The chances that a human can do that go down substantially.
So, if I ever talk to anyone that's like, "Yeah, I do like 12 or 16-week meso cycles and I had reps and load the entire time." I get real skeptical as to how hard they're training early. If you go close to failure, three reps or less, and you're intermediate or advanced, and you properly progress, generally four to eight weeks, and eight's generous, is all you're going to be able to progress on until you go straight to failure without your consent and are unable to progress later. So, if you can really coast for months and months making progress, you're probably not training hard enough, and it's not real progress.
When myself and Jared Feather, IFBB Pro, lover of Latinas and Southeast Asians the world over, when we train hardcore bodybuilder athletes, these are all of the signs that we look for and talk with them about, but are they actually going close to failure? Every single time we see some of these signs, we can adjust the expectations for the next set. Folks show up to us often hardcore, and sometimes not so hardcore. We get everyone straightened out because we know what signs to look for, just like you can look for these signs in your own training.
If you suspect, based on these signs, that you might not be going close enough to failure, how do you fix it? Here is one almost sure-fire way to fix the failure training problem right here, right now. Here's the situation. You come in and you do whatever sets and whatever reps. Write it down in your RPE hypertrophy app, if you like. Come back next week. Here's what you do. Only ever with good technique, you either add a little bit of weight and keep the reps the same, or you add a rep and keep the weight the same. And you hit that goal target.
The RPE hypertrophy app figures out these targets for you, so you don't even have to think about it. You just do whatever the app says. After week after week, after week, the difficulty goes up. You're putting more weight on the bar or putting more reps on the bar. And you can even do either or one week or the other. So, it's weight and reps and weight and reps and weight and reps. At some point, one of two things is going to happen. You continue to get strong infinitely and then the army lays down its arms beneath you and you get to rule the world.
What's really going to happen is the ability to hit those higher and higher weight and rep targets is going to be less and less likely for you to do unless you're not sandbagging. And here's the critical feature. There are three critical features to this plan. One, continue to increase weight and reps. Two, never let your technique go. And three, put your ego on the line.
The only way to subvert the system from taking you to true failure and letting you see what that feels like, if you're progressing in weight and reps and if your technique is good, is that if you just give up and go, "Well, okay, that was failure." No, it wasn't. Put your pride on the line and push and push and push.
The vast majority of people that don't go close enough to failure are females. Why? Because females are excellent technicians. They're excellent at following programming rules, but they're not as egotistical as guys. Young men almost always go to failure because they're psychotic. Unfortunately, sometimes that means it's with bad technique. You got to combine the best of all the genders. It's going to be some kind of politically incorrect joke in there that could have made, but I won't. And you have to do those three core things. Continue to progress, always have good technique, put your ego on the line.
Last week, 15 reps with the 55-lb dumbbells was tough. This week it's 16 reps. Must do 16. Do or die, and by die I mean fail in style. Good technique only. Take the progression. Don't be like, "Well, maybe 15 again to clean up my technique." Your technique's good already. Finish all 16 reps. Either you get 16 and congratulations, you did it again, or you get 15 or 14 all the way to failure. You try your best. Ego on the line. The weights don't move anymore, and you can rest assured you know exactly how hard you're training.
When you come back around after that mesocycle to construct your next plan in the RP Hypertrophy app, then what you're going to know is how close to failure you got last time. And you're going to start at the appropriate amount. If you actually showed that last time you were like six reps in reserve at the beginning cuz it took you weeks and weeks to get to true failure, this time start with a more challenging set of reps and load so that you can get closer to failure within the four weeks allotted by your plan.
If you ever hit failure in a muscle group way before that whole mesocycle is over for all the other muscle groups and you haven't hit failure for them, super easy trick. For the next workout you have planned for that muscle, every single exercise do one half of the reps, one half of the sets, and one half of the weight. It's like the easiest warm-up in the world. Next workout after that, start with 2/3 the number of sets that you were going to do before, right? So if let's say you stopped at six sets last time, four sets this time, take the weight down just a little bit, set some reasonable rep targets that are challenging, maybe from the week before, and start slamming it again. Your fatigue will have come down, and you can get closer and closer to failure again to match where the other muscle groups are.
That's really how you're going to do it. Lastly, remember three reps in reserve, two reps in reserve, one rep in reserve, and failure are really really close to each other. Even the zero reps in reserve versus failure debate something we can get into. They're all super effective and for longer term programs an average of one to two reps shy of failure is for the best. So, don't go overboard on this. If you're going to cycle to failure all the time, that could work for you in a low volume program, but in higher volume more effective programs that work longer term, starting out at two or three reps shy of failure is really good. Know how close failure is with all of these signs. Start two or three reps shy of failure and eventually go to failure on most if not all movements at the end of your meso cycle.
Ladies, you especially could be training harder. Fellas, keep training hard and harder still. Make sure your technique never wavers. All right. Get out there and get to failing. See you next time.
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