Pushing yourself harder during weightlifting by stopping later (more than 25% slower than your fastest rep) doesn’t help you build more muscle than stopping a bit earlier (20–25% slower)—the difference is so tiny it doesn’t really matter.

Lifting weights until you can't do another rep doesn't help you build more muscle than stopping before you hit total exhaustion—so you don't need to push yourself to the absolute limit to get the best results.

You don’t need to push your muscles to absolute exhaustion to grow them—working them pretty hard (but not all the way to failure) might give you just as much muscle growth as going all out.

If you're already experienced with weightlifting, pushing your muscles to failure might help them grow bigger—but if you're new to lifting, doing the same thing doesn't seem to give you the same benefit. Your experience level changes how effective this technique is.

If you're someone who already lifts weights regularly, pushing your muscles until they can't do another rep might help you grow slightly bigger muscles than if you stop before reaching failure.

Doing varied weight workouts might hurt your muscles a little less than doing the same routine over and over—but you still gain just as much muscle, meaning you don’t need to feel wrecked to get stronger.