Similar muscle hypertrophy following eight weeks of resistance training to momentary muscular failure or with repetitions-in-reserve in resistance-trained individuals

Going all the way to exhaustion on every set probably doesn't build more muscle than stopping a few reps short — both seem to work about the same.

If you lift weights until your muscles can't do another rep, pushing fast on the way up and slowing down on the way back, it helps your muscles grow bigger.

If you lift weights until you're almost too tired to do another rep, you'll likely build bigger muscles—but your strength gains won't be any better than if you stopped earlier, as long as you're doing the same total amount of work and lifting the same weight.

When people gain muscle from resistance training, the amount of growth varies between muscles, and these differences are partly linked to how similar the responses are across muscles, but much of the variation comes from personal biological traits unrelated to the workout itself.

When people lift weights regularly, their muscles usually get about 5% bigger on average, no matter what kind of weight routine they follow.

You can still build muscle even if you don't push your sets to within five reps of total failure, which goes against the idea that only the last few tough reps really matter for growth.