It’s really great to see the back-and-forth between you guys. Just a regular gym bro here. I figured I’d add some comments as I’ve seriously used both hypertrophy driver methods being discussed here (volume controlled by RIR versus lower volume high intensity) over the past ~1.5 years. Skip reading further if not interested.
I first became really interested in the “science” movement behind hypertrophy early last summer, which introduced me to Dr. Mike’s training methods. I strictly followed his protocols up until maybe 3-4 months ago so definitely enough time to make an honest assessment. I absolutely made progress but had reached the point where I was feeling constantly fatigued even with the prescribed maintenance weeks. The problem with this training method is that the two main variables it uses (volume and RIR) are simply difficult to manage. There’s too much to guess at and estimate. Weight progressions take a backseat to volume progressions. I was also spending a shit load of time in the gym due to the ever-increasing volumes. Sets per week built progressively from roughly 8 per bodypart per week up to as many as 20 sets per bodypart per week. Rep ranges from 6-12.
Fast forward and for the past ~4 months I have been training (per Paul), “To failure, or very close to it, and focus on progressive overload. If guys would just get THOSE TWO THINGS IN CHECK about 95% of their confusion would be eliminated.” It really has been a revelation and I’ve seen more progress than I have in years (ironically last trained this way in my 20s when I also saw excellent progress). I hit a limited number of focused sets to failure (~2-4 HARD worksets per bodypart TWICE per week; rep ranges 6-12) and get the hell out of the gym. The bottom line is I KNOW that my training is effective because I could not do any more work if I had to. 45-60 minutes per workout tops. That’s a far cry from the 2-2.5 hour exhausting volume workouts I’d built up to.
I have realized that for me, training hard as hell (no BS RIR) with regular weight progression is the main driver for hypertrophy. It’s not volume (as in more and more sets). It just isn’t and I did not need “science” after all to tell me that. What’s comical to me is that training with peak intensities are allegedly supposed to be the worst at accumulating fatigue but I’ve found for me that the opposite is true. Training with ever-increasing volumes is the worst at accumulating fatigue and as we’re seeing, all that volume is really for nothing.
But to me the effective reps model is indeed that simplistic. If you’re training to failure then you’re going to get about 5 reps that contribute towards the growth stimulus.
If you’re leaving 1 in the tank, it’s about 4. 3 RIR and it’s about 2. 4 RIR and it’s about 1.
Interestingly enough this coincides with the results we saw in the Haun study where they did 36 sets of squats by the 6th week and saw minimal quad growth. You’d also have to factor in that the muscle damage at those volumes were so high that it would have circumvented the entire adaptation process. Point is that gives pretty good insight for how NOT to program for maximum hypertrophy responses (ultra high volume with high RIR numbers).
I agree. One of the biggest issues with the evidence based fan boys is spouting off the words in the abstract without ever reading the study to determine if it’s even practical or applicable to a real world training scenario. A great majority of studies aren’t actually practical in their training design.
I think the disconnect with the effective reps is that you see it as over complicated and I see it as less. To me it gives guys at least a target to be hitting in their training that will be tied to growth. Rather than just doing a certain amount of volume for the sake of if, and not seeing any progress at all (I could go on all day about some of the misinformation related to RIR and how it keeps systematic fatigue down).
Either way to me the effective reps is a much better principle for guys to look at than volume load or volume.
I certainly think it’s better than volume load (which borders on completely worthless). As for whether it’s better than volume, I think it depends on the definition you use; the definition I’ve been using for a while is sets to failure or very close to failure (because of the similar per-set hypertrophy we see with high and low-load training), which winds you up in basically the same place as effective reps. It’s simpler, doesn’t rely on quite as many assumptions, and matches up with the experimental evidence better imo (I’m really not sold on a set to failure REALLY being better than a set that’s one or two reps from failure; the issue is just that when most people think they’re one or two reps from failure, they’re actually much further, so actually going to failure idiot-proofs it).
Effective reps and hard set volume basically get you to the same place. You could say to aim for 25 effective reps or 5 hard sets, and it comes out to basically the same prescription. They also have the same pitfalls, in that, just as someone could chase higher volume for its own sake, people could also chase more “effective reps” for their own sake. If you countered that by telling people to aim for a range of effective reps per session, you could also tell people to aim for a range of hard sets per session and get to the same place (i.e. 25-50 effective reps, or 5-10 hard sets). As long as the most crucial element is in place - telling people to beat their damn logbook by adding more weight or more reps as long as their form stays good - it’s going to drift toward higher-effort, lower-RIR training anyways.
I think the biggest point is making it clear to people that sets need to be hard and close to failure to maximize growth, and chasing volume load for its own sake is dumb. I just think that can be done without all of the additional baggage and iffy underlying assumptions of the effective reps model specifically.
I also agree with this wholeheartedly, by the way. The number of people who claim to be into science is WAY smaller than the number of people who actually read the research, and the number of people who try to read research is way smaller than the number of people actually who have a strong enough background in both research and coaching to not screw up the interpretation.
Are you really THE GREG NUCKOLS!!! I’ve been religiously reading Stronger by Science for the past 2 years. Taught me more bio than my bio class! As a food blogger who almost majored in Russian studies, breaking down r- values and protein chains definitely isn’t my thing. Your work is pretty much the extent of my science education! Good luck in Grad school!
That needs context. There’s literally no point in leaving any reps on the table with single joint movements IMO, and even with a lot of compound movements outside of deadlift or squat variations you should still be taking sets to absolutely form/musicale failure. I’m not sold on the idea of leaving reps in the tank for shit like leg curls, pulldowns, side laterals etc. The belief that avoiding true failure is going to supply the same degree of stimulus without creating as much fatigue makes no sense at all. If a set is going to create an enormous amount of stimulus then I’d assume the fatigue would be significant as well.
But I won’t be sold on the ides that you’re basically getting equal or almost equal parts stimulus but not creating anywhere near as much fatigue with it. Not to mention that once you increase the reps you actually lose that particular benefit if it even exists (more reps are going to create deeper inroads to nervous system recovery).
I don’t agree. Because getting as many effective reps as possible means you’re going to be training really f’n hard. And this will be self limiting due to that effort. No one is going to be doing much more than 30-40 effective reps overall in a training session and recovering.
To me effective reps are a tool. And I like it a lot better than saying “sets” because the majority of the guys online who like to talk about training a lot train like pansies. They have no idea wtf 2 RIR really is because there’s a whole side of the EB community that says you don’t need to train to failure so they have no idea what failure even looks or feels like.
I literally deal with that shit on the daily.
I think the ground we can both agree on is that guys need to be training to failure for some pretty lengthy periods to both accelerate the growth process and to actually understand what truly hard training really is. There’s no way to get around that if someone wants to grow and get better. And most guys simply do not train hard enough.
Spot on dude. As I said, I think the area Greg and I are going to find middle ground with is that there needs to be an emphasis on effort and progressive overload first and that volume will take a backseat to those two things.
I think this is where we may differ somewhat, depending on what you mean by form failure. My general take is that it depends a lot on the degree to which other muscles can contribute. Using the bench press and squat as two examples, something we see is that the pecs in the bench press and the quads in a squat may be more-or-less “tapped out” a bit before failure, with other muscles picking up the slack. With the squat it’s obvious, and you’d pick it out as form failure (you can still get the reps up, but you start reverting to more of a good-morning form). With the bench, the reps could still look exactly the same, but your pecs are on life support with your triceps picking up more of the slack. That differs from DB bench where your triceps just simply can’t contribute to the same degree, so when your pecs reach that level of intra-set fatigue, you fail rather than being able to eke out another rep or two (i.e. with DB bench, your pecs are going “to failure,” whereas with barbell bench, your pecs may, for all intents and purposes, be going a rep or two past failure). Now, I think you can FEEL when you reach that point with the bench press, so you might rack it and call it failure because you know other muscles are about to start taking over, but you know you could probably still muscle up another rep or two without technique visually changing all the much. And if that’s what you mean by “taking sets to absolutely musicale (I assume that was supposed to be ‘muscular’) failure,” I think we may not actually disagree. I’d still just call it a rep or two shy of failure; just depends on what a person means when they say “failure.”
I’ve tried to keep nerd shit to a minimum so far, but I actually think that whether or not this is the case for an individual may have to do with their individual ammonia and purine metabolism. Basically, there’s evidence that going to failure increases blood ammonia levels pretty dramatically (i.e. that half or more of the elevation in ammonia that occurs with training is due to just the final rep or two). Blood ammonia levels increase during exercise primarily when anaerobic metabolism is progressing at such an extreme rate that you’re no longer just cycling through ATP and ADP (gaining and losing one phosphate), but actually cleaving phosphates from ADP to form ATP and AMP. The AMP can then either lose its phosphate and enter the blood as adenosine, or be deaminated, forming ammonia and inosine monophosphate. Adenosine and ammonia both can cause sensations of “CNS fatigue” (and also actual central fatigue), and ammonia itself is directly catabolic (elevated ammonia is the main reason muscle wasting occurs with kidney disease). Adenosine resynthesis is also a relatively slow process, thus reducing muscle ATP levels which mechanistically decreases muscle performance for a few days, and could theoretically limit the available energy for muscle repair and growth.
Now, to be clear, I’m not trying to be alarmist about any of that stuff. Unless someone has some sort of kidney disease, their blood ammonia levels will probably be back to baseline within 10 minutes of your workout finishing, so it’s not like any of this is actually dangerous. However, there’s some level of individual variability at every step in that process: the degree to which going to failure disproportionately affects ammonia levels, central sensitivity to the effects adenosine and ammonia, muscles’ sensitivity to the catabolic effects of ammonia, how quickly people are clearing it during the session (even though it’ll get back to baseline after a workout, it may be substantially elevated for your entire training session), rate of adenosine resynthesis in muscle, etc.
Basically, if you’re using the “effective reps” model, and you think 2 RIR means 3 effective reps, and 60% of the benefit you could get out of a set, for some people who maybe produce less adenosine and ammonia and handle them better, 2 RIR may also mean 60% as much fatigue as they’d get from going to failure, so it matches up and you don’t get anything extra out of stopping shy of failure. For someone else who produces more adenosine and ammonia and handles them worse, 2 RIR could mean 60% of the benefit but only 25% as much fatigue as they’d get from taking that set to failure.
To make it clear, though, that’s literally just talking about the final rep or two before failure. The difference between 2 and 4 reps in reserve is a lot smaller than the difference between 2 and 0 reps in reserve. If someone’s more than a couple of reps from failure, I think they’re mostly just wimping out and wasting their time, but I really do think that last rep or two does cause disproportionate amounts of fatigue for some people. And again, that’s mostly just talking about big multijoint exercises where you’re training enough muscle mass at once to have a notable impact on ammonia levels (I doubt curls or delt raises move the needle much).
I think you’re underestimating peoples’ ability to abuse proxy measures. I’ve mentioned doubles at 7RPE a few times because that was something I saw someone actually doing in the name of “effective reps” (it really stuck in my mind, because the first thing I thought was, “what the actual fuck are you doing bro?” and my second thought was, “this is actually a perfectly rational way to train if you take this model literally”). I’ve also seen stuff like non-failure drop sets (i.e. a set to RPE 7ish, followed by multiple shorter sets to RPE 7ish, racking up about 16 “effective reps” in about 3 minutes without ever actually doing anything very hard). If you have a proxy measure that you can optimize for while avoiding hard work, a lot of people will abuse it and optimize for the proxy itself. Since “effective reps” is new (the idea is old, but it only got popular again recently, and especially Chris’s conception of it), most people haven’t figured out how to abuse it to the same degree they abuse volume load as a proxy measure, but it’s it’s still exploitable, and people WILL exploit it (and some people are already exploiting it) to avoid actual hard training.
Well all of that would be entirely dependent on the bio mechanics being used in those movements. Which is a huge part of programming to begin with. The powerlifting bench press where you lock the scapula into depression and retraction doesn’t even work the pecs at all and essentially turns them off. I showed this in a video with meadows and will be going over this more this weekend with the bio mechanics specialists I’m with. So that’s a totally different discussion.
Right. If I can maintain food execution then I should be able to train to failure and distribute the majority of the mechanical loading on the tissues I’m training. And when that muscle can’t produce enough force to continue moving the weight I’ve hit failure. Especially if it means delving into faulty or poor motor patterns to eek out more reps. I don’t want to do that. Which falls under the squat and deadlift examples.
Correct. But there’s a multitude of factors there we could go back and forth on about the ammonia levels produced during training and the myriad of factors that can be related to that. Someone could literally take some sodium bicarbonate and fix this particular issue. However that itself would interfere with some of the physiological responses we need in order for the body to say “oh shit I have this stress I need to adapt to”.
I’m in the middle of a bio mechanics workshop so I’m responding during breaks. Lol and yes I meant muscular. [quote=“gnuckols, post:31, topic:260612”]
I think you’re underestimating peoples’ ability to abuse proxy measures. I’ve mentioned doubles at 7RPE a few times because that was something I saw someone actually doing in the name of “effective reps” (it really stuck in my mind, because the first thing I thought was, “what the actual fuck are you doing bro?” and my second thought was, “this is actually a perfectly rational way to train if you take this model literally”). I’ve also seen stuff like non-failure drop sets (i.e. a set to RPE 7ish, followed by multiple shorter sets to RPE 7ish, racking up about 16 “effective reps” in about 3 minutes without ever actually doing anything very hard)
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AHHHHHH!!! That makes sense now to me as to why you see it as a less effective approach but I’d agree with you that this falls under the pretenses of someone trying to manipulate the principles of effective reps and missing the entire spirit of it.
For me this just about sums it up nicely. Just keep it simple, train hard and consistently over time and you will see results. Everything else is just details that take people focus away from the things that really matter. Hard work, discipline and time.