-: Now I'm gonna expand on those rep max calculations
that we were talking about
when we're looking at volume of stimulus
and look at how we can incorporate those and use those.
So we'll go a little bit deeper.
So hopefully this just built up the argument
of being able to use this as a tangible marker for effort
instead of using just the subjective markers of RPE or RIR.
So the first thing with rep max calculators is
there's a bunch of them out there.
So the one that we chose seems to be the one
that we see represents who we train the most
in terms of like intermediate populations and whatnot,
and from a research perspective or whatnot,
seems to be the most relevant.
But there's different options out there.
We'll put some resources in there
that will help you guys compare
and you'll have access to options of different formulas
that you would want to use 'cause some of them are going
to err on the lower sides, some are going
to err on the higher side.
And that may actually change depending on the ratio
of rep ranges that you're working within.
What I would say is when you're using these,
since one is, our goal isn't that we're trying
to accurately calculate your true one rep max from these,
especially 'cause we're not working
in testing-based conditions.
What we're really trying to do is just find something
that gives us a more physiological relevant calculation
than just reps and load, right?
So I should say than just the tonnage
that we get from reps and loads.
So we're using reps and load,
and we're putting it into a little algorithm
to maybe get a more physiological representation
of how taxing that is on our body versus just the tonnage,
because there isn't this linear correlation
from tonnage to what we could actually do,
and we'll go through that, right?
So it's not limited to one rep max, is we can use this
as just a tangible tool of estimating relative intensity
across work, it can be done in fatigue states or whatever,
as long as we're not trying to in any way, shape or form,
relate that to one rep max, but we're just trying
to compare two similar situations to each other.
That's essentially what we're looking at, right?
It's trying to compare two similar situations
and get a tangible number that is gonna help us
essentially put a tangible aspect
on the subjective aspect of using RPE or RIR.
And that can be good for just educating people
to be better, understanding what their RPE or RIR is,
but also will show how these two things can trend,
the tangible versus the subjective
can be very good information
on terms of what's actually going on
with a person's performance and recovery.
So without further ado,
let's start putting some numbers behind this.
So for using these rep max formulas
as tangible intensity progression qualifiers,
what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create a baseline up here
of 10 times a hundred pounds.
And what that would be based off of the formula
that we're using would give a theoretical rep max
of 133 pounds as a one-RM.
Okay, so let's say that we're actually doing this
for rep max testing, what we were doing is I was trying
to get somebody to do a set of a relative eight RPE.
Okay, and so what that ended up being
for them was 10 times a hundred pounds.
That's what's there.
And the equivalent rep max calculation
for that is this 133 pounds.
Okay, so it's this guy right here.
So that gives us a thousand pounds of tonnage.
Now what I wanna do is look at everything
below this blue line here as examples of progressions
from that and how that correlates
to the intensity versus the tonnage.
So this is very similar to an example
that we covered in the volume of stimulus,
because that's essentially what we're looking at here
is because we're focusing on effective reps.
We wanna somehow progress or maintain that.
So if I were to decrease reps but add load,
I could get a increase right here
in relative intensity, right?
Which in this case should be like an RPE of nine,
maybe be for this scenario,
and that is gonna be a drop in tonnage.
So again, we're just illustrating
that whole concept of tonnage doesn't necessarily correlate.
This tends to correlate well with RPE,
whereas tonnage may not necessarily correlate to RPE.
Tonnage gives us work volume, rep max is a way
for us to get a tangible stimulus estimate, right?
Or at least help us estimate the stimulus better
by knowing the relative intensity of the set.
So can help us qualify the volume of work
where the tonnage only provides quantity.
And it can also, like it allows us to look at a variety
of variable changes like adding load, decreasing reps.
And if I know that this right here
should be an increased intensity,
if I felt that this was my eight,
and then I do this eight times 110,
and then I'm, whatever I say that,
oh, that was a 10 or whatever,
I can look at the tangible number,
compared to the subjective number
and maybe get an idea of, well, how accurate am I being
with one of these.
Like if there's a discrepancy between the two,
if RPE goes up fast, low, or whatever, we're gonna look at
what those different scenarios would mean.
So if I want to look at this as a volume qualifier,
not just an intensity qualifier,
what I can do then is I can say, all right,
what if I total up my rep max intensity ranges
over the course of four sets.
So for example, I just put it in,
all right, we're doing four sets,
in this case we lose a couple of reps if we're trying
to maintain that RPE there, right?
So we've got a eight, then a nine, nine, nine RPE.
And so what we would expect to see
in that case scenario, right?
Is that we probably would lose a rep or two
on the last few sets.
So if I total the rep max equivalent
of all these reps times weights, I get those obviously
as the work goes down, the rep max goes down
even though the RPE stays high, which is what I would expect
is because I would expect my performance to go down
as I started to fatigue.
So in order to get the same effort, it would take less work.
That's exactly what I would expect to see
in a real world situation.
Okay, now this would be
my baseline representation over here.
I have this 523 pounds.
It's just a number, it's just quantifying the sum of that.
I have what my RPE average was
over the course of those four sets at 8.75.
And then have my total tonnage.
So now we're gonna look at the same example that we did
in the prior slide where we showed this example
of going down in reps but up in load.
Okay, so here we are.
We're going to go up to that 110 pounds,
but now we can only do,
say maybe nine reps, eight, seven, seven.
So essentially we're losing three or so,
three reps I think across the entire group of sets here.
And because of that, if we were to look
at the tonnage going from 3,700 pounds to 3,520,
you would say, well, that's a decrease
in volume via tonnage, but because I maintain the same RPE
over across the same number of sets
without a drastic change in rep range,
it's likely about the same volume of stimulus.
So these two things are conflicting.
One saying it's like the same, one saying it's a regression.
So having this rep max over here and saying, well, okay,
because we're actually using higher loads,
we were working at higher intensities,
we did make a progression
because what if we didn't have this?
Okay, and I'm jumping ahead to the way
that we're gonna look at these things.
If I perceived the same relative RPE,
but I did that at what I thought was a reduction in volume.
What I would assume is that I'm under-recovering
because less is harder, right?
Or equally as hard.
So if what I do this week, and then next week I go
and via my calculation of volume
and tonnage says I've done less, but it felt just as hard.
That would be a negative implication
on my adaptation and my recovery.
I would think, well, crap, I'm working backwards
at this point, I'm not progressing.
I thought I was progressing the way I chose,
I went up in weight or whatever,
but actually it looks like I'm regressing.
Like what the heck is going on.
So if we didn't have this rep max number in there,
we would maybe think that we were actually regressing
because we worked at the same relative effort,
but we did less work in terms of total tonnage.
Intuitively you might just be like,
"Well, but I went up in weight,
"so it must have been a progression."
But if you're somebody that actually tracks tonnage,
you would have been like facepalming,
like why, why is this, why is this happening?
What am I doing wrong?
Did I not take enough into a workout?
HMB and super pumper or whatever.
Like, no, it's okay, you've progressed.
It's just that our physiology in terms of intensity
and effort doesn't necessarily correlate to tonnage, right?
We are not just a volume of work machine.
Okay, we have a complex biochemistry,
so that's why we can't just use the tonnage equation
to estimate what our rep max is.
We need a more refined algorithm
to understand if we do eight reps at 110 pounds.
What does that actually mean
to my force production capabilities?
Because tonnage doesn't help us relate to that very well.
So having this calculation in there.
And again, as it starts to tax,
as this stuff starts to take up,
you'll see how we can use less of these variables,
more of these variables.
I just wanna give you where these things become valuable.
And this is a situation where this becomes valuable
because it helps you understand that in this scenario,
you still were making a progression, right?
Because what happened is your performance-based intensity,
like the actual work that we did
from a physiologic perspective went up,
even though our tonnage dropped a little bit,
simply because we're multiplying reps times load
to get this equation that doesn't necessarily align
with the physiological
or stimulus-based work that we're doing.
So bottom line is we progressed in stimulus
even though we've regressed in tonnage in this scenario.
And so this is an example of looking at that
over the course of that several sets.
So I think we'll...
The big takeaways from this are
the more fine-tuned you want to be, the more it's nice
to have these things, but also as you can see here,
so we start taxing on this stuff.
If you're gonna wanna have a system
that makes this stuff calculate for you,
you're not gonna want to do this by hand.
And the other thing is that, if we were working
in the opposite scenario where we were going up in reps,
the rep max thing would still calculate it out, right?
So I can just do that for you guys right here, right?
So say that instead, let's go ahead
and actually just do this example for you guys.
So I'm gonna take, and we're gonna
put the same loads down here.
And then when instead what I'm gonna say we did 11,
and then we'll say we did 10, nine, eight, right?
So we've progressed in reps.
Okay, and in this case scenario,
because we've progressed in reps,
we progressed in tonnage at the same RPE.
So in this case, I would say, well, volume went up in this
and that went down or whatever.
Cool, awesome.
Then this was not needed
to say that you were making a progression there,
but there are scenarios
where it's a really good double check to have.
So like this is probably not something
that most of you guys have even considered
in terms of tracking volume.
But if you are tracking tonnage, I think it's very important
that if you're using that as a model
of how you're progressing or whatever,
if you're actually using that number to make decisions,
it is important to have checks and balances.
And so it doesn't take really anything
to throw an extra row in your spreadsheet or whatever.
Again, we're working on something
that'll do all this for you guys eventually,
but if it definitely helps to make sure
that you have that kind of like proof checker algorithm
in there for when you do change variables
in a way that don't correlate to just one of the things
that you happen to be looking at.
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