Blood, sweat, & tears…
Start counting when it starts hurting..
“If you’re not sweating or sore, did you even train?”
Ideas or quotes such as these have been all the rage for decades within the fitness world.
The concept of pushing yourself to your limits and beyond as the best way to make progress.
Is it, though?
Now the truth is, intensity does matter. But how intense exactly should you be working out? Do you have to be puking or completely hitting failure on every set? And how can you properly measure “intensity”?
For one, the answer to the puking and always hitting failure question is no. You do not have to workout like a madman.
Allow me to break some of this down..
HITTING FAILURE
Here are some straight up FACTS about training to failure:
- You do not have to hit failure in order to make progress… BUT
- You do need to be close enough to failure in order to make progress (the muscles do need to be challenged)
- How close? Based on various studies, being around 5 reps away from failure can still yield results
- You can train to failure, it’s just not necessarily required, and there are some potential drawbacks to it
Some potential drawbacks to frequently training to failure:
- More fatiguing meaning you could lose performance and overall energy for other exercises & sets
- Potentially longer recovery time
- More taxing on joints & body
- Increased injury risk depending on the exercise (squats, for example, probably aren’t the best exercise to go to total failure with)
Another thing to consider is what exactly is failure?
The idea seems pretty straightforward, you attempt a rep during a set and physically can’t complete it. So you fail at the rep. Boom.
Others consider a few more factors to count as “failure” as well:
- Failure starts the moment proper form starts to breakdown
- “Mental” failure can occur – simply thinking the set is harder than it is and stopping a few reps short of what you could have done
- Cardiovascular failure – for example, squats (again), are a pretty taxing exercise, if someone was trying to push to failure they could become cardiovascularly fatigued before reaching actual muscular failure – this also can overlap with “mental” failure being that it would feel like hell
Either way, the bottom line with failure training is that it does have its place, and is maybe even a little more beneficial to advanced lifters (newbies don’t have to push very hard to make progress).
BUT it also does have some considerations and drawbacks, and is not required to make gains.
Enough with failure, let’s get into some ways of measuring intensity.
RPE & RIR
RPE & RIR have recently become more popular methods of tracking progress and measuring intensity. Here’s a look at each:
RPE: Rate of Perceived Exertion
This refers to how intense you believe the set was. It’s typically on a 1-10 scale, 1 being virtually no intensity or effort, and 10 being maximum intensity & effort. (One more rep would be failure)
Since I mentioned there can be drawbacks to hitting failure, the RPE method is a great way to ensure you’re right in that failure range, without actually having to hit it.
That makes it great if you lift by yourself and don’t have a spotter!
RPE also helps track progression. If you perform a lift at what you believe to be a 10 RPE, but then say the next week you perform the same lift (same weight, reps, etc) and it feels only like a 7 or an 8 RPE, hey, you got stronger!
Other ways to use it for progression would be to start using it on a lift with a lower RPE, say, 6-7/10. Then, week by week, increase the RPE by adding a little weight, more reps, or slowing your lifting tempo, etc.
This is kind of an example of “train harder than last time” lol, but put into actual practice.
RIR: Reps in Reserve
RIR simply refers to how many reps you had left until you would have hit a 10 RPE (max effort).
To reiterate, you do not need to hit failure in order to make progress, but you do have to be near failure – up to 5ish reps away.
That being said, RIR is a great way to make sure you’re in the right rep range to still produce results while not having to train to failure every time
For example, if someone is benching 135lbs, and the maximum number of reps they can hit before failure is 12, they might start out by doing sets to maybe 8, which would be 4 RIR.
Then, the following week they might push to sets of 9, or 10 (3 or 2 RIR, respectively).
And so on until they push to the top of the rep range. Then they can add a little weight (small weight jumps – 2.5 – 5lbs – are key) and then rinse & repeat!
Doing this will still allow for enough stimulus to produce steady progress while not physically burning out too quickly.
RPE and RIR also work together! For example, an RPE of 8 would mean you had roughly 2 RIR.
ANOTHER GREAT MEASURE OF INTENSITY…
The PUMP! When you experience that wonderful feeling, you can ensure those muscles are getting worked… now just push a little harder, heh.
SUMMARY
In order for our muscles to grow and get stronger, they need to be challenged. The level of intensity during a workout doesn’t have to be completely balls-to-the-wall, but it does matter.
1-5 reps away from failure is a good spot to be in! And utilizing things like RPE and RIR can help track and measure intensity!
Thanks for reading!
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