New research finds that if you’re aiming for muscle growth, training closer to failure might be more effective. For strength, how close you push to failure doesn’t seem to matter as much. When performing resistance training such as lifting weights, there’s a lot of interest in how close you push yourself to failure - the point where you can’t do another rep - and how it affects your results. While research has looked at this concept in different ways, to date, no meta-analysis has explored the pattern (i.e., linear or non-linear) of how the distance from failure (measured by repetitions in reserve) affects changes in muscle strength and size. As such, it’s still unclear how close to failure one needs to go to maximize muscle growth and strength. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University and collaborators analyzed how training close to failure or not impacts muscle growth and strength. The study primarily looked at how training close to failure affects muscle growth in the main muscles used in an exercise.