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-: So we've covered the types of failure,
but in order to look at everything that is shy of failure,
we have to look at qualifiers of failure.
So if we define those, we're gonna have RPE
which is basically, you know, rate of perceived exertion
or relative perceived exertion.
And then we have RIR, which is reps in reserve,
which essentially is how many reps until you reach failure.
There's reps at percent weight max, right?
So this could be a percentage of your one RM
or it could be X amount of reps at your six rep max
or whatever, so you could say okay,
you're gonna do six reps of your eight RM
or you could say you're gonna do X percentage
of your one RM for this many reps.
Those are ways of using kind of
those one RM based intensity scales
to predict how close to failure you are getting
by just assigning the loads,
rather than using the subjective measure of RPE or RIR.
And then there's velocity, which is just gonna
be comparing the velocity of your one RM
to basically, whatever you're doing at you're one RM,
that's the speed of your last rep
because you will see the velocities
of your set to failure versus your one RM.
Move at about the same speed, because you are
at the maximum, we'll say tension threshold
of whatever fibers are contributing
at that point in time, so you see similar velocity.
Velocity can also be used to look at a measurement
of drop off between the beginning and end of the set.
Lots of different ways that velocity can be used
and to be honest right now, the research on that
for, we'll say for hypertrophy purposes,
it is limited but the correlation to that
and what we kinda see with that whole effect
of reps thing is a very, very nice correlation.
And so I think one of the best predictors
of mechanical tension is probably going to be velocity.
Or, I should say, a quantifiable measure of proximity
to failure, and therefore what we're assuming
is higher mechanical tension is velocity.
In terms of having a device that can actually measure it,
the limitation is, the majority of the devices out there
are one, expensive and two, most things are designed simply
for barbell work, which I mean, if folks have hypertrophy,
you may not even touch a barbell.
So it's one of those areas where we need some innovation
and technology and devices, and just
'cause I don't think I said it,
RPE is basically rated on a zero to 10 scale,
is what's typically used in the industry.
The original Borg RPE thing, I think below was a one
to 16 scale, it was infinitely more complex
than just simply focusing on a zero to 10 scale.
If you look at reactive training systems,
they kind of were some of the people
that worked on that RPE zero to 10 scale.
I know Eric Helms and he has also put in a lot of work
on bringing the usage of RPE around and RIR as well.
So a lot of people have been implementing these things.
The percent RM things have been around forever,
so a lot of these things have been used
for quite some time, but velocity is fairly new.
And so I don't have a lot of hard numbers and whatnot
to give you, but I think that's the direction
to be going, especially on the research end.
And there's simply, you know, as a coach you have eyes.
This is your velocity measure and that's actually one
of the things that I learned early,
was being able to look at speed of the bar
as one of the things for determining when to call a set.
So when I'm looking at me coaching somebody
and me trying to evaluate their proximity to failure,
I'm looking for that form based failure.
That right there, that's immediately a cutoff.
And then I'm constantly collecting data
as I watch that person do reps and whatnot
to see okay, what does form breakdown look like
for that person, what does change in velocity look like
for that person at the particular rep range or whatever.
And simply just paying attention.
I shouldn't have to say that, but as a coach
or even just as somebody that's training,
just simply being mindful of the speed of your reps
and the change in your technique as you change
in loads and you work at different proximity
to failures and whatnot, you can become a very good...
Internal measurement tool, a very good barometer
of your own performance or the performance of your clients
if you are just simply really paying attention
to these things.
So for percent one RM or some sort of weight max,
those things are gonna be data intensive,
so basically they're gonna have limited application
because one, you have to test and they're very limited
to basically only linear sets.
So if I'm doing super sets or incomplete rest
or any sort of specialty technique other than linear sets
with full rest, then RPE or RIR get
to be much more applicable, because as soon
as you're not fully recovering,
then all of the sudden it's like well okay,
I can't apply these things because they're
in different conditions than what I tested them in.
And so now a percent is like, well you should be able
to do this many percent of your one RM for this many reps
and it's like well, not if I'm super setting
on this exercise, or not if I'm not quite resting enough
or not if it's the third exercise in my program,
or whatever the hell it may be.
So those things get harder to use and they're data intensive
and you have to take a break from your programming
for your goal to just focus on programming
or just focus on testing so that you can
then program based off of that test.
It's a hard sell for anything
outside the power lifting world, I would say
because essentially, a lot of their work
can be the data that you use to continue to prescribe.
And even in those cases,
you're kind of working on... (sighs)
You're working on a moving target,
but you're kind of making planned overload at that point
in time, for a very specific goal
which does happen to be moving load.
So that's the one instance where
that method probably shines.
Everything else, your subjective matters are probably going
to outperform it and just the simplicity
and efficiency of it is gonna be better.
Velocity requires constant voluntary effort,
which is one thing, meaning that in order for us
to measure whether or not your velocity is dropping,
that means you have to be trying to move the weight
as fast as possible, which means you're setting
a specific condition to your training.
And that may not be what you want
and in reality, that's usually not the way it does.
So for instance, if I'm gonna go do a set of 10,
I'm not gonna throw the first rep
up as explosively as I can.
Likely, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use
kind of a, not intentionally slow,
but I'm gonna use a controlled press
and what'll happen is reps one through seven
or something will be about the same speed
and then it will start to drop off.
So depending on what I'm using,
if I'm using a scale of like, okay...
I've measured my one RM velocity and again now I get back
to the testing thing, I have to test what my velocity is
for that specific exercise at a one RM.
Okay, well then it doesn't matter
because I don't have to be maximally going, you know?
As long as I make sure that I'm going faster than my one RM
until I get to my one RM, which, that should happen.
You know, unless you're just being really lazy
and intentionally slow for some reason.
But if you're using the drop off method,
then you have to then be pigeon holed
into putting maximal voluntary effort into each one
so that we can track, okay, based off of your maximum
and let's see how much you drop
and then that's the end point.
That makes it unrealistic for high repetitions.
And the other thing with high repetitions is,
you are gonna have more reps closer
to your failure based velocity because basically,
when you're doing high loads,
your prep speed's gonna drop fast.
When you're doing low loads, your rep speed's
gonna drop slower and so you may have more slow-ish reps
that are close but not there.
So if you just didn't quite push hard enough,
you may end up stopping yourself two reps shy
because you just kinda didn't put the pedal to the floor
on the third rep from failure or whatever.
So then they're just gonna say, well you're at failure now.
So what you should get from this is none
of these are perfect, right? (chuckles)
They all have pros and cons
and what I'm gonna do here, is I'm gonna pull up a table
and so just to kinda compare these
so you guys have this as the reference.
So if we're looking at qualifying these,
this is using a 10 set or 10 rep, I'm sorry, method.
So in this case, well a 10 rep max would be failure, right?
So it would use a percentage one RM scale.
That's probably gonna be 75 percent of your one RM.
If we're going completely to failure,
that's a zero RIR or a 10 out of 10 RPE.
So this is the failure equivalent
of all of those at 10 reps.
If we take that to okay, what would eight reps
or I'm sorry, what would an eight RPE look like?
Well okay, that would be doing a set of 10
with a load that feels like an eight.
Doing a set of 10 with a load that feels like you
have two left in the tank, which should be equivalent
to your 12 rep max, which is gonna
be about 68 percent of your one RM.
I'm not gonna read through the entire chart for you.
But so this is locked in with a net scale
and as soon we would leave the 10s
and go to say, five reps or go to, say 20 reps,
none of these would be very comparable.
It would be very hard to relate them to each other.
It would be very hard to relate them
to different rep ranges, so the one that's gonna
be the most consistent across broad rep ranges,
like I said is gonna be RPE.
The one that's gonna be most accurate
as long as you're going close to failure
in a constricted rep range is gonna be RIR.
The ones that are gonna be a pain in the ass
because of testing are gonna be percent
of our one RM or rep max based things,
or velocity which is not shown,
'cause I just don't have the data to give to you
and that's gonna be individual dependent.
Much like these are, but I can give you a percentages here.
But I can't give you like, here's the average velocity
of this, whatever, and maybe it exists
but I haven't found it, I don't have it.
But what do I know?
Okay, so moral of the story,
there's no perfect fail measure.
Use what can be consistently measured
in a comparative matter that is relative
to the program variables that you're working on.
So by all means, if you're working in a system
where you're able to get percent one RMs
or rep max weights because you're consistently working
to max sets to failure or whatever
and you're gonna use those things,
by all means take advantage of having that data and use it.
It's more tangible than the subjective data,
especially if you're programming online or whatever.
If you have that, by all means use it,
but it just has to be something
that you consistently measure.
You can compare it across the variables
and the conditions of your programming.
So if you have a tight rep range across exercises
and stuff like that, then you can get by
with using different qualifiers,
than if you have a broad range, right?
And then you have to take into account the client as well.
Which one of these, and this is
where the consistently things, which one
of these is gonna be easier for them to do
and to report back to you accurately?
What are you the most confident in?
Are you confident they can do a scale of one to 10?
Because for somebody that has never trained before,
a scale of one to 10 is something
that they can relate more to than they can relate to,
well how many reps did you have left?
They're like, well I don't know
because I've never went 'til I had no reps left.
So I have no idea, and if I did go,
the point that I decide I have no reps left
may be completely different than
where you decide that I have no reps left.
So again, you just have to figure
out what's gonna give you the best data
and then use it to progress.
It's not about, okay, we're gonna analyze
and see how close you actually were on you RIR data here,
whatever, and that's what's gonna affect whether
or not somebody gains or not.
Not the case, the case is,
are you able to make intelligent decisions off of that data,
which means it's gotta be consistently comparative
and relevant to what you're doing.
And then we got intelligently use failure sets
to keep a barometer, so and (sighs)
I think, you know, doing occasional,
maybe the last set of an exercise to failure
or very close to failure or using an AMRAP set or something,
is not only probably, in my opinion,
effective for a lot of stimulus.
Especially for programming the right exercises
and stuff like that, because I do think that there
may be some benefits in certain exercises
of going completely to failure.
Especially if there's some exercises where we know
that failure point's gonna become further away
from muscular failure, the task failure
is just gonna happen earlier because
of the mechanics of the exercises and loading profile.
But using those allows you to keep in context
what a 10 out of 10 RPE is or what a zero RIR is,
or what a relative max under those conditions is.
And so by doing that, you decrease the subjective nature.
So you don't need to go to failure on every set.
We'll get into how I do that when we go through all
of the adding the RPE to the workload volume,
or the volume of work.
But you should, I think, if you wanna be accurate
with this stuff, include those.
And I don't think that taking one set,
if the problem for your person is well,
we can't take one set to failure on a very safe,
predictable, easy to perform exercise.
I mean, I think that's gonna be a rare case
where you have somebody that you can't.
And I think that there's something to be said
about self educating yourself as well,
in terms of character and whatnot,
of occasionally taking a set there.
You know, so that you kind of know where that point is.
Because as we train, these metrics change a lot.
And so what we once perceived to be difficult may not.
Or we may have developed a really,
really good pain tolerance
and we might be working way closer
to failure than we think we are.
So there's a lot of things from a psychology standpoint,
from just a training end standpoint,
that can make it hard to know where these moving targets are
if we don't occasionally hit a bullseye every now and then.
So if we look at some reference ranges for stimulus
that we typically see in the industry
or the research, the RPE tends to be at six.
I would say my preference is closer
to the seven to eight threshold.
I think at six, we're probably still not that efficient.
So we're talking about this on a set,
in an individual set, we will look at the summation
or average over a workout when we plot it out.
When we look at RIR, it's five.
Again, I think if you aim for the minimum,
like the minimum stimulus threshold,
just know that that's the worst stimulus to work ratio
of all of these options in terms of intensity, right?
And then we have your percentage max.
You know, it can go as low as 40.
I prefer not more than, greater or equal to 60 percent
of your one RM for a set of 10.
Your 14 rep max for a set of 10 would be the minimum,
according to the weight rep max scale.
And again, those only apply to linear sets
with full recovery for these last two here.
Right, once we get into specialty sets,
you're gonna have to use either velocity
or one of the subjective tools.
So if we look at, quick recap.
What we know about failure so far,
reps closer to failure, that's gonna
be a greater stimulus to work ratio.
If we're following this effective reps, effective volume,
our mechanical transduction there,
going closer to failure increases the magnitude
of volume of your sets and reps.
So in terms of you know, the impact your volume
is gonna have, right, going closer
to failure basically means that work matters more.
If you don't go close to failure, it's not.
So we get more stimulus and our volume
becomes more efficient, because it just matters more,
meaning that we probably don't need as much of it.
And that doesn't mean, don't take that as like,
well you should just always go to failure.
Again, you know, there needs to be a sweet spot
that we're looking for, right?
So not too little, not too much of failure or volume.
There's gonna be kinda that sweet spot.
And that's gonna be the overall goal, right?
Not necessarily, 'cause there will be times
that you do take a set to complete failure
and there will be times when you take sets
that you don't go that close to failure on.
But your overall goal of the workout will be
to accomplish enough of these effective reps,
effective volume and that's where we can look
at using ascending load protocols
and all sorts of different things
to make sure that we, for that individual,
find a way to get them to the point
where they are getting the most effective reps
and the most effective way that
is producing the type of stimulus that you happen
to be wanting at that particular time.
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