-: A great way to kind of walk through some
of these principles of this tonnage versus stimulus,
is gonna be to look at how low reps versus high reps
at the same intensity and different intensities
start to show different ratios
of the volume of work that we're doing,
versus the amount of stimulus that we're creating.
And in these examples,
we're talking about mechanical tension
as the stimulus that we are looking for.
And so what you'll see is we'll probably
create an argument for hypertrophy,
in terms of, you know, when you look
at kind of these patterns,
you'll kind of see like okay,
this generally tends to support what,
you know, over years and years and years
of coaches and bodybuilders or whatever,
have deemed like this is an ideal range for hypertrophy.
Now I'm not saying that that's the only range of change.
But you're probably gonna see some evidence
why that became such a popular rep range.
We'll look at to a pattern and show
that like when reps get too low,
the issue is is that we just can't
get enough volume of the stimulus.
Even though we're getting maybe a lot of stimulus per reps,
we're just not able to accumulate
enough of those reps to get as much stimulus,
despite that magnitude being very high.
And then conversely, you're gonna see,
as we get into very high reps,
the volume of the stimulus comes
with an excessive volume of work,
because the magnitude of the stimulus per rep.
We're just not stimulating enough fibers per rep
and we're having to do so much work.
So it becomes like this point of diminishing returns
of doing reps on reps on reps.
So let's bring up a visual example of this.
So in this case here,
what we've done on the vertical axis here
is we have the magnitude of the stimulus
and then we have the volume.
And in this case, that volume happens to be reps.
So we're looking at a single set scenario here.
And looking at like the total stimulus of that single set.
Comparing a low rep, moderate rep, and high rep.
And what these represents
is how the stimulus would progress
over the course of those reps.
Ultimately, the set ending at this point,
which is why there is a sharp drop off after each of these.
So, for instance, in this moderate rep range, okay?
I capped that out at 12.
And so what we'd be doing is if we were using a say a 12 RM,
this is what it would look like
as we're approaching that 12 RM.
So if we stopped here,
you would have, essentially, cut this line right here.
And then your volume would've been everything
to the left of that, and so on and so forth.
So if you stopped at 16, this would've gotten cut here,
if we were using a 20 RM load, in this case, right?
And we're talking about a completely,
basically, recovered scenario.
So this, again,
as I've tried to, you know, disclaim,
this is a visual representation.
I tried, you know, using all of the nuance factors
and algorithms that we use on the backend,
tried to make this as accurate as possible,
but also limited by my ability to make these visuals.
So just keep that in mind as we're going through here.
That my shapes my have like
a little tweak or something in them,
to try and best illustrate the concept.
So, as we move forward,
and we start adding some data to this,
what I want you to see is this is a great example
for us to look at how that RPE range changes
at different rep and load ranges.
So if we were to simply take and measure
the distance of that RPE range
versus the rep range that I'm working with,
we can see that as we get into the higher reps
that RPE scale gets stretched out really far, right?
So my sixth RPE is way out here
versus when you're doing low reps, right?
Like there's not a big rep difference
between a 10 RPE and a six.
But when you're doing high reps
there's a big rep difference between a 10 and a six.
And, obviously, our moderate rep range
is gonna be somewhere in the middle, okay?
And if you can't just tell visually
what we're kind of getting into,
if you were to just say,
which one of these has the greatest volume?
If you can't already tell yet, this red one here,
like that's a big chunk compared to these.
We'll make that more visually apparent in a minute.
But first, I wanna show you one other thing,
which is the RPE versus RIR.
How they essentially have
almost an inverse change in the window.
So when we look at RIR, it's reps in reserve.
And so what your gonna see is, you know,
at this high rep range,
like these scales kind of like
at a six RPE you're almost close to a six RIR.
You know, but when we get to like a low rep
at a six RPE, you might be a two or three RIR.
And that's because it's a much bigger jump
from a zero to a one, and a one to two,
at the the higher intensity lower rep range,
than it is at the high rep range.
So as the window
for the RPE gets narrow
at these super heavy loads, right?
The RIR proportionally stays wide.
So this, hopefully, like if you kind of look at this
can kind of help you understand
how maybe in this scenario,
you see these numbers are almost stacked
like pretty close to right on top of each other?
You know, actually, if I take
and I just lined that up a little bit better, right?
You'd see that, you know,
they're almost evenly spaced here, right?
Zero, one, two, three, four.
And that's kind of how that would look like,
you know, in this scenario.
If I would've chose a 10,
they probably would've been lined up almost perfectly.
So the closer we get to more moderate,
the more the RPE and RIR
kind of become equivalent to a very easy to,
you know, compare to one another.
As we get to very low rep ranges or very high rep ranges,
they start to really differentiate from each other.
So depending on how you wanna track,
this could affect which tool you may wanna use
based off of the rep range that you're working in.
And that may change,
like depending on the level of client you have.
If you have a very advanced client,
you may choose during certain phases
where you're doing a lot of high rep work,
to choose one method over an another,
versus doing something with a, you know,
you're going through a heavier phase,
a strength phase, or whatever, with a lot of low rep work.
You may switch which method you're using in those cases.
Obviously, if you're working with a general pop person,
and like, you know, just giving them to track anything,
then you try and go the simplest route.
You try and make it work with whatever's
gonna give you the most consistent data.
But once you start getting into those advanced cases,
you can start seeing that there's gonna be
an opportune scenario where you would
choose one or the other,
depending on the accuracy and proximity
to failure that you are working with, right?
So, you know, a really good example of this,
especially, down at the low rep ranges,
is, you know, you could be doing, you know,
we'll say that you're squatting, you know, 405 pounds.
You know, that's four plates a side.
So if, in that case, right?
So let's say that you could do
that for, you know, five reps.
That was your five RM, that's a zero RIR,
that's a 10 RPE, okay?
If you take like 10 pounds off of that,
you're not gonna get two reps, right?
So one RIR might be really far away,
even though if you dropped to say, you know,
385 or 390, or something like that.
You might then say okay, that was a 9 1/2 or a nine,
or whatever it may have been.
But you're still no where near a load
that you could do two reps of, right?
And that's gonna very based off the individual.
But the stronger you get and the more advanced you get,
the bigger the separation is
between, you know, your one and your two RM.
So, in those case scenarios,
it's like, well, okay, maybe the RPE scale
is gonna be much more advantageous here.
Because there's just such a gap
between a one RIR and a two RIR.
Okay, so RPE may be much more advantageous there.
And then just simply, you know,
obviously, if you're focusing on those goals,
you're probably really tracking
loads and percentages and stuff, too.
So keep that in mind.
Now the opposite scenario.
If you're doing a ton of reps,
the ability to distinguish between,
you know, six, seven and an eight RPE, in a high rep set,
becomes extremely hard and extremely subjective.
Whereas, getting like, okay,
how many reps did you have in the tank?
As you're working closer to failure,
those may be more ideal numbers, right?
Being able to know like, okay,
three, two, one or zero.
Because these have a smaller gap between them, right?
Whereas, now these have bigger gaps.
So now you have to make this like, okay,
was it an 8.5 an 8.2, or whatever?
Like that RPE scale is so stretched out
that's it's already subjective in nature,
and so now it it the less refined scale
to use, in that scenario.
So, hopefully, that example kind of gives you,
you know, why I would say
if I'm focusing on a lot of high rep stuff,
I might choose RIR if that's suitable for that client
to be able to make transition or use that.
Whereas, if I'm doing some very low rep stuff,
I might use the RPE scale.
And if I'm in the middle,
you know, they're both gonna work really, really well.
What you probably aren't gonna do
is have people use multiple within the same, you know,
the same workout.
But the way that we program,
we don't tend to have people do really low
and a bunch of really high rep stuff.
And in the case that you did,
because there are those scenarios,
there are those times where you're using
multiple rep ranges or a broad gain,
or you may be having a back-off set,
or whatever it may be, you just have to know,
where do I need the accuracy in my data?
Yeah, especially on the scale.
And then you choose the one that's gonna reflect
where you need that accuracy for progression.
'Cause if you have just like an AMRAP set
or something like that,
you don't wanna necessarily track
you know, 80% of your workout on one AMRAP set
that you're using for whatever reason
or something at the end.
You wanna track the majority of your workout precisely.
And then, you know, use a different way
of managing the progression of the AMRAP set
or the drop set, or the back-off set,
or whatever it may be.
Maybe that's simply just the number of reps
or whatever the tonnage becomes
a more valuable tool for that one outlier thing.
So this is why understanding how to use all of these tools,
whenever they're gonna provide
the highest amount of value or information,
then for you to be able to apply and adjust.
That's where it really comes
into being advantageous for you as a coach.
Is using the tool that gives you the most information
and allows you to make the best decisions.
So that's how RPE and RIR
are gonna be affected by these rep ranges.
And now we can just kind of look
at some visualizations of this total volume.
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