A standard principle in bodybuilding is to max out every set, working to (near) failure - essentially an RPE 10. This includes things like drop sets to failure. Working several exercises that hit the muscle groups in slightly different ways is also a thing. Would these be considered non-productive stress? Does soreness all the time indicate this as well?
There will be a component of productive and nonproductive stress inherent to all training stressors. We think the “balance” between the two is optimized (in other words, the most productive stress w/ the least fatigue) when applying the programming theory we have previously described.
Training all sets to failure can certainly stimulate some adaptation, but the “balance” here is off, and the amount of fatigue generated limits the total amount of training volume you can do (thus producing worse outcomes).
Soreness is not a particularly useful indicator of anything.
1 Like