You don’t have to push yourself to the absolute limit during strength training to get stronger—studies show you can make similar gains even if you stop a few reps short.

If you lift weights with different levels of effort—whether you stop just before failure or push almost to failure—you’ll still gain about the same amount of strength, as long as you’re doing the same total amount of work and using the same weight.

Lifting weights close to failure helps build more muscle the closer you get, but it doesn’t seem to matter as much for getting stronger—so the best way to grow muscles might not be the best way to get stronger.

When people lift weights without pushing to their absolute limit, they actually get stronger faster than if they push to failure, as long as the total amount of lifting isn't the same. This comes from a big review of studies on adults.

This claim says that how well people can guess how many more reps they have left in a workout doesn't depend on whether they're male or female, how long they've been training, or how strong they are at bench pressing relative to their body weight.

If you lift weights and push your muscles closer to total exhaustion, you’ll likely gain more muscle size than if you stop earlier — even when doing the same number of sets and reps.