-: Okay, so let's talk about
some of the principle differences
in some of these progression strategies
and these tools that we have available,
and how they're gonna impact the volume of work
that we're doing, the volume of stimulus,
and how those are related with one another.
So, things we're gonna discuss...
What's the best proxy for volume of work?
Understanding the relationship
between absolute load, or %1RM, reps and effort.
And then how can we best describe the volume of stimulus?
How does that differ from the volume of work,
and how do the progressions
and the different training variables impact the
volume of stimulus compared to
how they impact the volume of work,
and what is the stimulus to work ratio,
and when is that going to be worth considering?
So, first thing, volume.
The best proxy we have for this,
in a practical sense is gonna be tonnage.
So sets times reps, times load,
and volume of work, technically that's...
Work is going to account for distance by definition.
So this is probably not the right...
Technically not the right word to use here,
but you get the point.
It's, all else equal, volume of work is
going to be, for a given exercise,
sets times reps, times load.
So example here, three sets of eight, 150 pounds,
like 3,600 pounds of volume, and you see this a lot.
It's not a useless metric by any means,
but it misses the boat
because it doesn't account for effort.
It doesn't account for that...
When we looked at how tension kind of breaks down
on the fiber level and the magnitude
versus the duration of exposure.
It's sort of, it gives us no insight.
3,600 pounds, it gives us no insight
into magnitude of tension necessarily.
If we knew where an individual's max is,
like, you can kind of estimate, "Okay,"
or you should have a general idea
of where you can work backwards
and sort of figure out, "Okay,
"this is how hard each set probably was,"
but for planning purposes,
using just the outcome measure of tonnage,
unless you're in a metabolic phase where you're
trying to just increase volume of work and expenditure,
It's not the most reliable or insightful metric to use,
but the main thing to mention here is,
the smaller the variables,
we look at sets, reps, and load,
the smaller the variable that's increased
in relation to the others,
the larger the relative increase in tonnage.
So in this case, increasing sets is
going to increase the volume of work
considerably more than reps,
which is gonna be more than increasing in load.
So if you are in a phase where you're
trying to emphasize overall volume of work
or build work capacity, assuming you're
training at a point that's metabolically demanding,
that's going to...
Yeah, it's going to matter there a bit more than
if you're looking at, okay,
the stimulus on a set to set basis is...
That's more related to volume of actual stimulus
than the volume of work.
All right, so what's the relationship
between %1RM reps and effort.
This is a chart that's been adapted
from Reactive Training Systems, Mike Tuchscherer,
has really, he's probably one of the first ones
to really bring the RPE scale over to resistance training.
Usually it's used, with regards to cardiovascular exercise,
doing things like Wingate tests
or estimating proximity to max effort on a graded scale,
but to use it, to bring it over to resistance training
really helps kind of tie all of these variables together.
So you can see here on the left, RPE on the right,
corresponding RIR, and for the sake of this,
we're just gonna pretend that they're
the inverse of one another.
So 10 RPE is max effort, zero RIR.
We're not gonna necessarily talk about, "Okay,
"what type of failure are we referring to here?"
But just note that these,
RPE and RIR are similar, but different.
(laughing)
They're essentially the inverse of one another,
but getting at the same thing in practice.
So this table, basically,
it helps if you do program with percentages
or you're trying to know someone,
their profile relatively well,
their strength profile across different rep ranges.
You can create these custom charts.
I won't get into that, but you can say like, "Okay,
"I want this person's set of eight to be about a seven RPE."
So you'd be roughly around this
71-ish percent plus or minus,
and this is based off of like a large population average.
So on an individual basis,
this number could be significantly different.
You can start here and then you can tinker with it
and adjust it based on the individual,
but you can program a load that's from 71%
and it should get them relatively close to this.
If not, then you'll need to adjust,
but point being is load on the bar,
%1RM ties in with proximity to failure
for a given rep range.
So you can use these in conjunction with another,
you can also use this table if you use a model that
progresses RPE across the mesocycle, which I know, Cass...
Or even across like different sets.
I know, Cass, you probably use this
a little bit more than I do,
but even if you're not comparing apples to apples,
like, "Okay, well, we're not in an eight RPE this week,
"we're at a, or yeah, we're at nine RPE."
Like, how do I compare that?
You can sort of look and estimate your like,
estimated one rep max, which obviously we don't care about
for a bicep curl, but when you look at like,
okay, over time, you can do some calculations here
and say like, "Okay, is my 1RM increasing
"based off of the load that I'm using,
"and the RIR that I'm performing with that load."
So it can be a useful table outside of just power lifting
for body builders who use variable RPEs across a mesocycle
to look at broad performance over time.
Okay, so shout out Mike Tuchscherer.
Volume of stimulus,
so this is what we really care about.
Volume of stimulus, it's the work that's
contributing to subsequent adaptations.
So it's anything that's above that stimulus threshold
that's going to be causing these increases
and gonna be tipping the scales
in favor of protein synthesis over time.
It's like a focused way to think about it
on the physiological level.
So the relationship between volume of work
and volume of stimulus,
it's gonna be dependent on the exercise
and the goal at hand,
since effort and proximity to failure are good,
proxies for tension, reaching an adequate amount
of tension on the fiber level.
The volume, that's gonna relate more
to volume of stimulus, and it'll contribute
to volume of work for sure,
but depending on the exercise and the goal,
like I said, if you have like a metabolic phase
where your goal is to...
Like you're using resistance training
to really drive some additional expenditure,
the stimulus could be more related to the volume of work
than if you're focused on hypertrophy
and optimizing the volume of stimulus,
your volume of work may be more disassociated with that,
which we'll get into.
Do you have anything to add to that, Cass?
-: I mean, I think the lead into this,
based off of everything we've looked at, or whatever,
is that if you think back to what we're looking at
for magnitude and whatnot is just, you know...
And effort, like the closer to failure that you're training,
that's what drives sufficiency
in terms of being able to get more stimulus
out of less sets,
but then just simply number of sets can
get you to the same total volume of stimulus at
a lower relative effort,
and so, as we're getting into this
and we're talking about things,
it's really just trying to find that sweet spot,
because you can only manage so much volume
at a certain effort, right?
And you just start seeing performance breakdowns
and whatnot, but also it's like not in your interest
to just use a ton of volume at a very low effort,
because it's a very efficient way,
and that can come with its own fatigue
simply because of the extra work that you're doing
to get the volume of stimulus,
because it's an inefficient use of volume or whatever.
So what I try to look at is
this is that trying to find that sweet spot
between effort and traditional volume.
-: Cool. -: Yeah, good points there.
So like we talked about,
hypertrophy appears to require adequate volume
of tension on the fiber level.
Like you said, like proximity to failure is
gonna relate more to,
what can I get out of this set in terms of overall stimulus
and how is that going to,
if all that mattered was short term set to set efficiency,
we'd be training to failure every single set,
but what you'll find is,
and which is probably pretty obvious is
when performance starts to suffer
because of residual fatigue from prior sets,
then your ability to accrue tension
because of the lower performance is going to be lower.
So it is that sweet spot,
like finding a relative effort that is...
It's efficient from a perspective of per set basis
that's scaled to your ability to come back
and replicate it, and some of that could be
largely influenced by rest interval,
and like I work with a number of power lifters
and they'll end up,
like, they tend to have lower work capacities
than bodybuilders on average,
and a lot of times, they're going to require
seven minutes of rest between sets of a heavy compound,
whereas no one's really gonna
intentionally rest seven minutes
between sets of lat pull downs, you know?
So it's like the amount of musculature that's being worked,
the conditioning of the individual,
but yeah, the rest interval ties
into the efficiency as well, right?
So if you're trying to maximize the efficiency within a set,
but then you require twice as much rest,
that's not very efficient.
So I think, yeah, it's good to mention the rest interval
because it's related to all of this as well.
So hyper treats impacted by load proximity to failure
more than volume of work alone,
which should make sense by now.
So how can we estimate volume of stimulus?
So we have hard sets, this is probably the most,
probably the most common way to go about this.
It's not necessarily...
It's certainly not the end all be all.
Hard sets, okay, like the first question is, "how hard?"
So like sets that are
maybe within three to four reps of failure,
and on the earlier slide, I referenced a study that
showed like counting sets is
a reliable way to gauge a hypertrophy stimulus,
so long as sets are between, like over six reps on average
and within, I think it's like four RIR, if I'm not mistaken.
So, that, it's...
But when you look at it that way,
it's like, okay, well then on a per set basis,
like if it's within three or four RIR,
then what if I'm training at one RIR,
does that count as one and a half RIR?
So it's not looking at a set to set stimulus.
It's just looking at a broad scale,
which there's certainly a lot of advantages
to doing that rather than trying to micromanage,
like, okay, how many hard sets does this count for?
And like, I'll have people ask me, like, "Okay,
"if I'm doing mile reps, how many clusters of reps,
"if they're below six reps, do those count as a hard set?"
And at that point, it's sort of missing the overall,
it's using it as a hard rule rather than
a guiding principle, I think,
and that's what you want to avoid.
So then we also have effective or high stimulus reps,
which Cass and I have talked about.
Effective, I'm not a huge fan of that term.
So effective reps oftentimes are,
they're considered the reps that are at an adequate,
level of recruitment that are resulting
in a high degree of force output on a per fiber level,
but I think Chris Beardsley was one of the first people
to mention like, okay, things within five RIR,
like five RIR or less, can be considered effective.
Then I think he would...
I don't wanna put words in his mouth,
but I think he would agree,
like there's not a rigid line in the sand there,
but I think on a conceptual level, it can be useful.
Like you have to have some practical way to measure this
if you're gonna use this method,
and so five RIR is probably...
Like we're gonna use the term effective reps,
and I'm gonna use this in some of the examples,
but there isn't enough evidence
to suggest that there's a rigid cutoff,
and we know, in fact,
if it relates to motor unit recruitment,
which we know is a big part of it,
like you can reach a high level full motor unit recruitment
with a 12 RM in some people or an eight RM,
which both of those would fall outside of that range,
but it also has to do with contraction velocity as well.
So, but for planning purposes and illustration,
we're gonna use that cutoff.
So the term effective reps or more effective reps,
what needs to occur...
Let me move this.
So what needs to occur for a rep
to contribute to muscle growth?
As I just touched on, full motor unit recruitment tension
on these higher threshold motor units,
adequate duration of exposure within a set,
but on an individual rep basis,
it's high force output per rep.
So that goes back to the impulse model.
When lifting with max intent,
motor unit recruitment will still be relatively high
and high threshold motor units will
still contribute to total forced output.
So perhaps even reps early on,
like we talked about biometrics earlier,
how they're not going to result
in much if any muscle growth,
and that's largely because it's such a small amount,
even if you're putting tension
and creating force on these high threshold motor units,
it's for such a short period of time
that it's not gonna contribute much to the stimulus,
like the area under the curve,
but what I suspect is the case is
as you get closer to failure, each rep,
there's gonna be an exponentially greater contribution
to the stimulus, as the set goes on in contraction,
velocity starts to slow.
So then the question is where's the tipping point
for this exponential increase in effect,
and how do we manage that
with the efficiency side that Cass had mentioned?
So you need to understand too,
like that tipping point,
like if we want to get the maximal amount we need to,
of stimulus, we need to account for the fact that
fatigue is gonna exponentially increase
as we approach the RIR.
Like I know for me personally,
like I can replicate like a two or three RIR set.
As long as I'm not rushed
and I can have an ample rest interval,
but if I push to like one RIR,
it does seem to be much harder for me.
There does seem to be kind of a tipping point
between two to three RIR, where going past that,
I start to really...
Performance starts to suffer on subsequent sets.
So it's gonna be different for everyone.
Females on average are gonna be more fatigue resistant.
I've had females that are able to replicate one RIR
for the same amount of reps on a movement for five sets,
for one RIR close to failure,
because they're recovering well between the sets,
and then I'll have someone whose reps
will be cut in half for the same RIR.
So understand that fatigue, that exponential increase is
going to be dependent on the individual
in kind of the slope of that line.
So this is a chart from Cass's course.
You can see fatigue, the red line,
sees that exponential increase as you approach failure,
and then you can see stimulus starts
to really pick up, and then gains,
it'll eventually kind of plateau as you reach failure,
obviously, because you can't do anymore,
but there's a sweet spot for gains
where it's a balance between stimulus and fatigue,
and this can be looked at on a per set basis.
Like if you're only doing one set,
perhaps you know that this curve would be more right here,
but if you're doing, or peaking at the failure mark,
but if you're doing multiple sets across an exercise,
looking at it through a wide lens across the whole session,
then you need to balance that fatigue on a per set basis
to get the most tension area under the curve.
-: So one thing I just wanted to point out on this, guys,
is that this exists, as Brian said, on a individual set,
but also like overall for the entire session as well.
So when you're looking at this,
there's acute fatigue and then there's non-acute fatigue
that's gonna come, right?
So the acute fatigue of this is
gonna affect the later portion of the workout.
It's gonna, the sets that come after,
whereas it's gonna be the long term fatigue that's
gonna affect how well you progress into the next one
and what your net adaptation is.
So this is where I kind of look at this as like,
well, if you were gonna train closer to failure,
where would it be within the session?
Where would it be within, for a given exercise?
It'd be like, well,
if I wanna mitigate how acute fatigue affects the
session performance, then it would be like,
either the last set of an exercise
or later in the workout for that muscle group, et cetera.
So when you're looking at the acute fatigue,
that gives you, if you were going to use
what I use more generally,
like a descending RIR, which is where it's like,
all right, maybe we do have a set of failure,
but it's the last one or whatever,
is you definitely would wanna put that at the end.
I know some people that they take their first set
to like really close to failure, and then their next set,
like you see like this massive performance,
the drop or whatever, right?
Like the reps get cut significantly.
So I don't know anybody that's taken a set that's
like really legit, absolute failure,
and then being able to hit that performance again
in the same workout is extremely challenging,
like even if you give yourself a tremendous amount of rest.
So I would say when you guys are looking at this,
acutely, you could use this as a guide
to putting your higher effort sets later,
as well as managing your overall stimulus to fatigue
throughout the session.
-: Yeah, that's a good point,
and I think, to kind of piggyback off of that,
one of the arguments for people pushing those first sets
closer to failure is looking at
it's easier to gauge performance,
because you're hitting the movement fresh,
and so it's like, "Okay, is my performance better
"than the week prior on this movement?"
And I think that's true,
but that's also, pushing to a high RIR isn't...
If you're good at tracking or good at
estimating your proximity to failure,
you don't have to be even great at it,
but if you're close, you can still use,
like you don't have to empty the tank
in order to achieve that same piece of data.
Like you can use that chart,
for example, that I gave earlier.
You can push a set to two or three RIR shy of failure
and still know like, "Okay,
"how does this compare to my set the week prior?"
Or if you use like a descending RIR,
you can compare like estimated one RMS
that can give you insight into that
without emptying the tank on that initial set,
and I think a lot of the people that are
pushing to failure on those initial sets, it's more...
I think a lot of it is just a misunderstanding
of how this works, how the stimulus over time,
it's looking at things through just the narrow aspect of,
"Okay, I wanna maximize my effort per set,"
not realizing that it's compromising their stimulus,
just because a set to a zero RIR on your first set,
and then your second set's also to a zero RIR.
If you're doing half the load or half the reps,
like that's gonna be less stimulus than if you would've
just gone a little bit more sub maximal.
-: We talked about this at the live event
where we were discussing doing static RIR
versus having a top set versus the lead.
So basically the lead top set versus a finishing top set,
and I thought about it a little bit more
because the idea that like,
well, if we do the top set at the beginning
or we use the very first set as
our indicator per performance,
what I'm curious is if you think that measuring that
performance at the beginning of the session
or the beginning of an exercise,
is the same data point as measuring it at the end,
because then I'm thinking that that's
a measurement of performance that includes the effect
of capacity and tolerance to that volume,
which is probably important information knowing
going into progression
because you could theoretically come in
and just have a banger of a first set,
but then have your performance drop on the other sets,
and that might be more relevant to know what the cumulative,
what your performance is cumulatively in terms of,
well, how much am I gonna progress next week?
What am I gonna shoot for?
Versus just the, "Well, what was my performance like at
"the very beginning of this workout or the very first set?"
So, the more I thought about it,
the more I kind of lean towards,
I really think that you just get a better,
like more comprehensive data point with a final top set
or looking at the cumulative performance
than you do basing it just off of that lead set.
-: Yeah, I agree.
Especially if your performance is better on your last set,
I mean, especially if you're in a phase that's looking at
building some metabolic capacity like that,
that's gonna be much more insightful than your first.
So the goal matters for sure.
I think one thing, yeah,
it's a very interesting point and I'm not sure which one
in controlled conditions would correlate more,
but if using the last set,
like I think what's important is there's,
for a lot of people,
there's a pretty narrow range in terms of rest interval
where things can get much more favorable
or go south pretty quick,
depending on if you rest that extra 30 seconds to a minute.
So if you're using that lest to gauge things,
make sure you're comparing apples to apples as best you can.
Don't walk around the gym and have a 15 minute conversation,
and then go back and perform better,
and convince yourself that you're
making really good progress when it was just a result
of being a little bit more chatty between sets.
-: I agree there's that complexity,
but I look at that as that acutely could be valuable too,
in terms of just people helping manage their rest intervals,
maybe to know like, "Hey, maybe I should actually
"add another 15, 30 seconds or whatever to these,
"or whatnot, or I rested like longer,
"and it didn't make a difference
"in performance or whatever.
"So I'm just being inefficient with time, et cetera."
So that's the other thing I look at is that then they could,
I mean, yeah, you're adding more variables
to that because you have all of the work leading up to it,
but then also that gives you the information
on how you might manage that
or any adjustments in those variables.
-: Yeah, I think, yeah, that's a really good point.
Like behaviorally, if I know that that last set matters,
I'm gonna be more honest, and yeah,
I'm gonna be more on top of keeping those things consistent.
whereas like, if you're just relying on the first set,
it's a little bit easy then to get lax
and get rest much longer or shorter
than maybe you would have otherwise.
So yeah, good points.