The Rundown

Lift to Failure for Muscle Growth. How does pushing yourself to failure during weight training impact your results? A new study from Florida Atlantic University says lifting until you can’t do another rep might be more effective for muscle growth than muscle strength.

The study looked at how training close to failure affects muscle growth in the main muscles used in an exercise. If a person was doing leg presses for example, the focus was on how training close to failure affects the quadriceps.

Collecting data from 55 studies, the researchers ran statistical analyses to see how different reps in reserve levels affected strength and muscle growth. (They estimated the number of repetitions in reserve, meaning how many more reps could have been done before reaching failure).

They found that how close you train to failure doesn’t have a clear impact on strength gains. Strength improvements appear to be similar whether you stop far from failure or close to it. But, the closer to failure you are when you stop your sets, the more muscle growth is impacted.

The team behind the study offers some guidelines, suggesting that if your aim is to build muscle, you should work within a range of 0-5 reps short of failure for optimized muscle growth (or while minimizing injury risk). For strength, they suggest working toward heavier loads instead of pushing to failure, stopping about 3-5 reps short of failure without applying additional strain on the body.

First author, Zac Robinson, gives some further insight, “When people estimate how many reps they have left, this perception influences the weights they choose. If the estimation is off, they might use lighter weights than needed, which could limit strength gains. On the flip side, our meta-analysis shows that training closer to failure also leads to greater muscle growth. So, for the average individual, training close to failure may be the best option—as it seems to improve the accuracy of our perception of effort as well as gains in muscle size.”

Digital Health Tools for the Win. A study out of the University of South Australia has found that digital health tools, including mobile apps, websites and text messages, can significantly improve your health and wellbeing.

Researchers looked at data from over 200,000 people across 47 studies. They discovered that electronic and mobile health interventions helped people achieve over 1300 more steps per day, 55 more minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week and 45 minutes more overall physical activity per week.

These interventions also resulted in 103 fewer calories consumed per day, 20% more fruits and vegetables consumed per day, improved sleep quality and less severe insomnia.

The findings were consistent across different age groups, health behaviors, interventions and health populations. Lead researcher, Dr. Ben Singh, notes that “making positive changes to your health and wellbeing can be a challenge…but by incorporating digital tools into your everyday life, you’re more likely to achieve positive outcomes.”

Preventing Type 2 Diabetes. According to the International Diabetes Federation, one in eleven adults worldwide has diabetes. Type 2 diabetes makes up 90% of these cases. Researchers have identified over 500 genetic variants that predispose individuals to type 2 diabetes but lifestyle factors also affect your risk, including being overweight, low intake of dietary fiber, high intake of saturated fats and lack of exercise.

Previous studies have demonstrated that lifestyle changes can prevent type 2 diabetes but until now, research has not examined whether the disease can be prevented in people who have genetic variants that predispose them.

New work from the University of Eastern Finland has shown that a healthy diet and regular exercise reduced the deterioration of glucose metabolism in a group of more than 600 men who were placed in a lifestyle intervention group, regardless of whether they had a low or a high genetic risk. The prevalence of type 2 diabetes was significantly lower in this lifestyle intervention group than in the control group.

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Receiver. With American football season around the corner, it might be a good time to check out this sports series, which follows the 2023 season of NFL receivers Davante Adams, Justin Jefferson, George Kittle, Deebo Samuel and Amon-Ra St. Brown. One critic gushed that the featured athletes were “greatly gifted, thoughtful, hardworking, interesting and likable.” Receiver is streaming on Netflix.

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Yoga Wake Up. A subscription-based app rather than a podcast, Yoga Wake Up is billed as a “yoga alarm clock” that offers audio-guided yoga and meditation sequences you can do from the warmth of your bed.

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How Accurate Are Wearable Fitness Trackers? Less Than You Might Think. If something isn’t logged, does it even count? The popularity of fitness wearables that monitor everything suggests the answer might be no. But, it’s a good news/bad news situation in this piece by Cailbhe Doherty, as he answers the question: “can wearable devices truly measure what they claim to?”