When your main goal is to gain as much muscle weight as possible, you have to know exactly which of the two "factors" you are training for, either to "fatigue" the muscle, closely related to "pumping" and "burning" it, or to use "power", meaning lifting as much weight as possible, regardless of getting a pump or not.

There is a major difference between taking a set to failure (which you should be doing on your "real sets") because of fatigue, or reaching failure because of having no more strength, or power, in the muscle to continue to lift the weight.

I'm sure you have experienced doing a high-rep set and quitting because the pain and burning ("fatigue") just got too much to support.

However, deep down inside you knew that you still had enough strength to actually complete another 2 or 3 reps.

On the other hand, I'm sure you've also done sets that no matter how much effort you put into it, no matter if every vein in your body was popping out because of the strain, you just could not complete one more rep because you simply had no more strength left.

If it's fatigue that causes you to stop a set, all you are going to be building is muscle endurance.

That's fine and dandy if you're training to climb mountains or chop logs for 8 hours straight.

All fatiguing a muscle does is fill it with stale blood, without any oxygen, and forms lactic acid and other waste products??.all of which do nothing for building muscle mass and gaining weight!

But if you want to build and gain muscle mass, what should stop you from continuing a set is that you have no more stength / power in the muscle.

That will build strength, and as a result, forces more fibers to come into play, to work, and is what will cause overload in the muscle............all factors that lead to bigger and stronger muscles.

Period.

You can go on ahead and get all the pump and burn you want, but if it's big muscles you're after, you need to train for stronger muscles.

To illustrate: you can do 100 push ups and get a real good pump and burn, fatiguing the muscle in the chest.

But what do you think is going to give you a bigger chest......100 push ups, or lifting 315 pounds for 13 reps??

Remember, if you want to gain muscle weight, train for power, not fatigue.

Copyright 2006 Jonathan Perez