[Soldier]

Another thing I've noticed that's frustrated the hell out of me is that training to failure also won't help you be able to do more reps before failure. In the Army we have to do a fitness test that involves push ups to failure, sit ups to failure and a 2 mile run. With all the sets of pushups we do to failure, my total push ups have actually gone DOWN. At my first test I did 62 push ups before failing, then 59, then 57 the other day. My run has gotten much better, but the training I was doing before I started doing pt with soldiers was much better for increasing my push ups.

The best way to do the most of something before failure is greasing the groove, which is doing tons of sets shrot of failure throughout the day. Back when I was doing that type of training my push up total was going up every time.