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Strong Support

If you're a guy who lifts weights, you can get your leg muscles working just as hard by stopping a set a couple of reps before failure as you would by going all the way to failure.

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Pro
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Against

Evidence from Studies

Supporting (1)

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Effect of resistance training to muscle failure vs non-failure on strength, hypertrophy and muscle architecture in trained individuals

Randomized Controlled Trial
Human
2020 Dec

The study found that muscles were just as activated whether people trained to failure or stopped just short, so you don’t need to push to the absolute limit to get full muscle engagement.

Contradicting (0)

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No contradicting evidence found

Gold Standard Evidence Needed

According to GRADE and EBM methodology, here is what ideal scientific evidence would look like to definitively prove or disprove this specific claim, ordered from strongest to weakest evidence.

Source Study

Effect of resistance training to muscle failure vs non-failure on strength, hypertrophy and muscle architecture in trained individuals

Score: 54
DOI: 10.5114/biolsport.2020.96317

Similar Assertions

If you're a guy who lifts weights and gets close to failure—like stopping just 1 or 2 reps short—you'll get just as strong as if you pushed yourself to the absolute max. Over 10 weeks, both ways boost leg strength by 20–35%.

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80%

If you're a guy who lifts weights, going all the way to failure or stopping just short gives your muscles about the same kind of growth changes over 10 weeks.

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77%

The side muscle of your thigh doesn’t grow any more with drop sets than with regular sets—no matter where you measure it.

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75%

For guys who lift weights, the inner thigh muscle works just as hard during leg presses and knee extensions — these two exercises use that muscle in a similar way.

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75%

If you're new to lifting and using light weights, you need to push your muscles until they can't do another rep to grow them bigger—otherwise, even doing more reps won't help.

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75%