RPE/RIR is mental masturbation — Transcript

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1. 0:00If you train primarily to improve your physique, then using ratings
2. 0:03of perceived exertion or reps in reserve is needless over
3. 0:06complication in your training programs for two main reasons.
4. 0:10First, you probably shouldn't be leaving reps in reserve to begin with,
5. 0:14at least not intentionally.
6. 0:15And second, your ratings are not that accurate.
7. 0:19Two new studies support these two arguments.
8. 0:24The first new study was
9. 0:25a randomized control trial of 46 well-trained men
10. 0:28that were squatting around 1.3x bodyweight, on average.
11. 0:31Did it a squat specialization program with different proximities to failure.
12. 0:35They did not use RPE or RIR values in this case to measure proximity to failure.
13. 0:40They used velocity loss, which is very accurate, but a massive pain
14. 0:44to set up in practice.
15. 0:45Their velocity loss was either 0%, 10%, 20% or 40%.
16. 0:500% basically was a control group
17. 0:52doing only a single repetition, and 40% is training quite hard.
18. 0:56After eight weeks, the data were quite noisy,
19. 0:58but they fit with the general trend of multiple recent studies,
20. 1:01including multiple by the same Spanish research group:
21. 1:04the closer they trained to failure, the more muscle growth they got.
22. 1:08Strength gains, on the other hand,
23. 1:09were not clearly affected by proximity to failure and seem to peak around 20%
24. 1:13velocity loss
25. 1:14with a trend for worse gains actually when going to a 40% velocity loss.
26. 1:19The latest large scale meta analysis that looked at
27. 1:21how close to failure to train came to similar conclusions.
28. 1:24As people
29. 1:24trained closer to failure, muscle growth improved quite linearly. In this graph
30. 1:28you can see that as they stayed
31. 1:29further away from failure, so they left more reps in reserve,
32. 1:32muscle growth decreased quite linearly. For strength,
33. 1:35however, there was no clear relationship between proximity to failure and strength
34. 1:39gains. For strength development
35. 1:41a very important caveat is that most of these are very short term studies.
36. 1:45In the short term
37. 1:46strength development is largely a neural phenomenon.
38. 1:48Most strength gains in the short term are not due to muscle growth,
39. 1:51but due to improved intramuscular coordination.
40. 1:54So your body learns to recruit the existing muscle fibers
41. 1:58in a more efficient manner,
42. 1:59rather than that it actually becomes better at producing more total raw force.
43. 2:04Engine for muscle growth, if you will, which is muscle mass,
44. 2:07still limits long term strength development.
45. 2:10So in the long run, the correlations between strength and muscle hypertrophy
46. 2:14increase substantially. In the short term they are almost zero,
47. 2:17in the long term they become very significant.
48. 2:19So a good case can be made that these data underestimate the benefit of training
49. 2:23closer to failure for strength development,
50. 2:25as it's clearly beneficial for muscle growth, which drives long
51. 2:28term strength development.
52. 2:29Speaking of muscle growth, as you can see in the data, the effect is quite linear.
53. 2:34In contrast to the effective reps model, the idea that only the last five
54. 2:37repetitions of a set really contribute to effective muscle growth,
55. 2:41the data show that many people, many studies, still have
56. 2:45appreciable muscle growth when training more than five reps away from failure.
57. 2:50However, in practice, if you train very far away from failure,
58. 2:52you need to do a whole lot of sets to get a robust stimulus for muscle growth.
59. 2:56If you train closer to failure you need to do fewer sets.
60. 2:59And this also explains the entire mechanism of proximity to failure,
61. 3:02the effect is entirely mediated by training volume.
62. 3:05Meaning, if we equate for repetition volume, so one group trains closer to failure,
63. 3:09but they do fewer sets,
64. 3:11one group trains further away from failure,
65. 3:13but does more sets and ends up with the same total repetition volume
66. 3:16- the gains are the same.
67. 3:18Even though the effect of training harder and closer to failure is driven
68. 3:21by volume, and not by inherently being closer to failure, it's
69. 3:25still the most efficient to do as many reps as possible within every set.
70. 3:29At the very least, it is the most time efficient.
71. 3:32In theory, you could leave some reps in reserve
72. 3:34and just do more sets, but, you know...
73. 3:36Ain't nobody got time for that.
74. 3:37The second major argument in favor of just doing as many reps as possible
75. 3:41with good form is that it's more reliable.
76. 3:44These days, many people think that RPE ratings, ratings of perceived
77. 3:48exertion, are the same as RIR ratings, just inverse.
78. 3:51So if you have 1 rep in reserve that is the same as an RPE of 9.
79. 3:55This is how most people use the scales these days. However,
80. 3:58originally RPE was literally a rating of perceived exertion,
81. 4:02as the name implies, and it was measured often on a BORG scale of 6 to 20,
82. 4:06don't ask me why
83. 4:07they had an absurd scale like that, but that was the idea, and people quickly
84. 4:11recognized that a rating of perceived exertion is highly subjective.
85. 4:15What some people perceive as high effort is a warm up for others.
86. 4:19Look, you stupid bastard! You've got no arms left.
87. 4:22- Yes I have.
88. 4:22- Look!
89. 4:23- Just a flesh wound.
90. 4:26The solution to the subjectivity of RPE
91. 4:28ratings was to invert the scale and basically
92. 4:30just make it the inverse of reps in reserve.
93. 4:32Reps in reserve are an objective scale
94. 4:34but is this scale actually reliable because it's still an internal estimate
95. 4:38that we have to make?
96. 4:39A new study
97. 4:40found that even well trained lifters with an average of six years of training
98. 4:43experience were systematically off in their estimates of reps in reserve.
99. 4:48Even when training with only 1 rep in reserve,
100. 4:50supposedly, during a set with 70% of their 1RM on squats,
101. 4:54they were systematically off by at least 1 repetition.
102. 4:57On average, they were pretty good.
103. 4:59Most lifters were only off by 1 repetition, but basically everyone
104. 5:03underestimated how much more they could do.
105. 5:05And interestingly, the group of trained
106. 5:07lifters was no better than a group of untrained lifters doing the same test.
107. 5:11Many lifters think that they get better at lifting in general with experience.
108. 5:15Unfortunately, this is not true.
109. 5:17You get better at doing something with experience and feedback.
110. 5:20If you don't have feedback, you don't learn.
111. 5:23When we estimate a given proximity to failure
112. 5:25and we don't fact check ourselves by intentionally trying to go past it,
113. 5:28we don't actually learn.
114. 5:30We just think it's five reps away from failure,
115. 5:32we assume that we are correct, and that's what we know down in our logbook.
116. 5:35But we don't actually learn because we never fact check ourselves.
117. 5:38The new studies findings are supported by a large scale meta analysis on studies
118. 5:42on the effect of training proximity to failure.
119. 5:45Trained lifters, on average, are no more accurate than untrained lifters.
120. 5:49The reason that most people think that they get better
121. 5:51is probably because they just know how many reps they're supposed to do.
122. 5:54If you have a bench press workout coming up with a 100kg
123. 5:57and you know that last time with 100kg you got 8,
124. 6:00of course, this knowledge helps you with your RIR estimate.
125. 6:04However, you don't actually become better at feeling it.
126. 6:06You just have the literal knowledge in this case.
127. 6:08That's why we see in studies
128. 6:09when people do a new exercise that they're not as familiar with,
129. 6:12or they do an exercise with a weight that they're not familiar with,
130. 6:15they're much worse than we are when looking at their own logbook.
131. 6:19Overall, motivated lifters aren't that bad at estimating their proximity to failure.
132. 6:23I'm not going to tell you that
133. 6:24it's just a horrible estimate and it doesn't correspond with reality at all.
134. 6:28However, the problem is that it
135. 6:29gets systematically worse as you get further away from failure.
136. 6:32So if you leave one rep in reserve, most people are off by about one repetition.
137. 6:36However, when you do a higher rep set, when you do new exercises
138. 6:39where you have less information, and in general,
139. 6:41when you have more repetitions away
140. 6:43from failure, which is exactly when you're supposed to be using the scale.
141. 6:47Otherwise you could just do as many reps as possible again,
142. 6:49it gets progressively worse in accuracy.
143. 6:52This is a problem because we see in these studies that the average gym
144. 6:55goer leaves some 6 to 7 reps in reserve.
145. 6:58If you think that you're leaving
146. 7:00six reps in reserve, in reality that could easily be 10+.
147. 7:04I acknowledge that as you get closer to failure,
148. 7:05the stimulus to fatigue ratio deteriorates.
149. 7:08However, based on these data, I think it's very clear that the majority of people
150. 7:11benefit much more from being empowered and just doing as many reps as possible,
151. 7:16rather than worrying about overtraining and worrying
152. 7:18about reps in reserve and being accurate, and all of these things.
153. 7:21Most people, I think, are best off just training as hard as possible.
154. 7:25It is the most time efficient, it is the most reliable,
155. 7:29and it is the most simple.
156. 7:31Occasionally training to failure,
157. 7:32whether intentional or not, also has the big benefit that it actually
158. 7:36allows you to become better at estimating how close to failure you are.
159. 7:39You need to fact check yourself, and you need to check that your
160. 7:42“as many reps as possible” is actually as many reps as possible,
161. 7:46even if you're not intentionally leaving reps in reserve.
162. 7:48There is one big caveat,
163. 7:50and that is lifters that are primarily interested in strength.
164. 7:53So powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters, and other pure strength athletes.
165. 7:57If you're training primarily for strength
166. 7:59the data are clear that at least in the short term,
167. 8:01proximity to failure, going closer to failure specifically doesn't improve
168. 8:05strength development much, if at all, and it does induce more fatigue.
169. 8:08So the stimulus to fatigue ratio is clearly worse,
170. 8:11and a good case can be made to leave a few reps in reserve.
171. 8:14However, beware that if you leave more than 2 to 3 reps in reserve,
172. 8:17your estimate becomes progressively worse and most people can do more reps
173. 8:21than they think. So your five reps to failure
174. 8:23might actually be more like 7 or 8 reps to failure.
175. 8:26Moreover, because strength in the long term is still capped by your muscle
176. 8:30mass, it's still a good idea to just do as many reps as possible,
177. 8:33because if it doesn't hurt strength development
178. 8:35and it does improve muscle growth and it is more time efficient,
179. 8:38then that's still a good default argument.
180. 8:40There are also certainly some other niche cases where stimulus to fatigue
181. 8:44ratio actually becomes really important, in particular when someone is injured or
182. 8:48if someone is doing a really high volume training
183. 8:50and they really have
184. 8:50to optimize the stimulus to fatigue ratio to even tolerate their volume to begin with.
185. 8:54However, as a general rule of thumb, for most people,
186. 8:57which is what I recommend, and also what my MH Physique App does
187. 9:00is just do as many reps as possible with good form and full range of motion,
188. 9:05assuming that you're using full range of motion in the set to begin with.
189. 9:08Doing as many reps as possible and not leaving any reps in reserve is the most simple,
190. 9:13the most reliable, and the most time efficient method to gain muscle.
191. 9:17I would argue that for serious lifters, tracking accuracy is massively underrated,
192. 9:21while for less serious lifters effort trumps everything.
193. 9:24The average gym-goer is better off with simple advice that tells them to do
194. 9:28as many reps as possible, as opposed to worrying
195. 9:30about reps in reserve, overtraining and other complexities.
196. 9:33If you're interested in a no bullshit, evidence based training and nutrition app,
197. 9:37check out the link in the description for the MH Physique App.
198. 9:40The link should also be popping up on the screen right about now.
199. 9:45See you next time.