One of the goals of last week’s column was to entice you to lift or keep lifting weights by dispelling an inaccurate notion. That for a weightlifting workout to be productive, you need to lift until total fatigue occurs, until you can’t do another rep in proper form.

But a number of studies show that isn’t so, including one performed by researchers led by Natalia Santanielo at Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil and published in the December 2020 issue of Biology of Sport. In it, researchers had 14 experienced lifters who had already been performing two common leg exercises, the leg press and the knee extension, continue to do so twice a week for 10 weeks — but added an ingenious twist.

They would now do both exercises one-legged and train each leg differently.

One leg would be trained to muscular failure and the other to a point just shy of that, what the paper calls “non-failure.” To insure non-failure occurred, the researchers “familiarized [participants] with the criteria for muscular failure” and instructed them to stop the non-failure sets “according to each’s own perception of fatigue, before reaching that known point of muscular failure.”

At the study’s conclusion, both legs were measured and compared to measurements taken prior to it.

On average, the size of the legs taken to muscular failure increased 13.5 percent, an impressive increase considering these lifters were not newbies. For perspective, that’s an increase of 3.5 inches of muscle on a thigh that measured 21.5 inches beforehand.

Yet the average increase in the size of the legs taken to a point that stopped just shy of failure was even greater, a jump of 18.1 percent. That’s an additional 34 percent increase over the legs taken to failure.

Moreover, the average number of reps the participants needed when stopping shy of failure on both lifts was 11, one fewer than the number they needed to reach failure. This is just another indicator that it may do you well to keep, as Dr. Mike Israetel explains in a 2020 video for Juggernaut Training, reps in reserve.

To explain why, Israetel — who holds a PhD in Sport Physiology and has been competitive bodybuilder and professional Brazilian Jiu Jitsu grappler — coined the term stimulus-to-fatigue ratio.

Israetel believes, despite Santanielo’s study, that the best way to build muscle is indeed going to failure — but issues a pretty significant caveat about it. That it can easily become counterproductive since it’s extremely fatiguing.

That fatigue makes your muscles more susceptible to injury, often creates pain in your joints, and the sort of mental drain that leads to burn out and you no longer working out.

So to reduce the odds of all that, Israetel suggests you stop most of your sets two repetitions short of failure.

That effort still provokes nearly the same amount of muscle stimulus, but with far less fatigue. Hence the term strength-to-fatigue ratio and a strategy that provides more bang for your weightlifting buck, so to speak.

Employ that strategy, Israetel believes, and there’s less wear and tear on your body. Maybe you won’t gain quite as much strength and muscle as you would by taking all of your efforts to the max (though the Santanielo study says otherwise), but for most maximizing strength and muscle shouldn’t be the No. 1 priority anyway.

And less wear and tear on your body allows you to lift consistently, a key in achieving what should be your No. 1 priority, improving or maintaining your overall health and fitness.

It needs to be said at this time that Israetel has much more to say on keeping reps in reserve and the strength-to-fatigue ratio and that I’m simply summarizing what’s most pertinent to you. It also needs to be said that it’s finally time to do what last week’s article claimed this week’s article would do: Share my recent weightlifting experimentations.

Now bear in mind I’m 63 and think age is a state of mind, so I spend nearly as much time exercising as I did when I was 43. Only the results are not nearly as good — and I’m far more likely to experience the sort of fatigue that diminishes the quality of the workouts and whatever else I do afterwards.

So after three weeks where 85 percent of my weightlifting sets have ended about two reps shy of failure, I’m pleased to report that just about every workout in that time — be it in the weight room or on the bicycle — has met or exceeded expectations. Moreover, I don’t feel as beat up doing around-the-house work later, and it doesn’t seem to take me quite as long to get my next workout started.

The biggest benefit, though, is a bit more nebulous — albeit a bit more important. I guess you’d call it an improvement in my outlook.

Anyway, I seem to be putting more of a positive spin on things, and not just while I’m exercising.