I’ve been keeping a log of my workouts for about two years now, and recently ginned up a database to store the numbers, so I could ask for my 1RM for October '07, for example.
I’ve been looking online for a way to express the hardness of a particular set. It seems to me that a guy who benches 500 for one rep does more work than a guy who benches 100 for five reps. However, maybe a guy who benches 100 for 50 reps is doing more work than a guy who benches 225 for a double.
I know there are studies for heart rate, oxygen usage, and such. But it seems that these measures are only good relative to the lifter himself. And yeah, there’s a sense for ‘hardness’ where a guy who benches 100 once works just as hard as a guy who benches 500 once, because they’re both at their 1RM. But I’m looking for something more objective, so I can tell that I’ve done a certain amount of work today.
Is any of this feasible? Or is it really all based on 1RM, like the Brzycki Equation?
Just multiplying weight X reps can be useful though I found it somewhat lacking.
I multiplied weight X reps divided by total rest period time across all sets and it seemed to give a better indication of what you subject yourself to when moving a weight.
I considered that, but it seems wrong that I can do 3 sets of 5 reps at 100 lbs and have that be the same as 3 sets of singles for 500.
Maybe it doesn’t make sense to compare sets of different reps? Or perhaps I should ‘normalize’ by saying that a person doing sets of 5 at 100 is the same as a guy doing singles for 113 (using the calculator at
http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/OneRepMax.html). Thus, a guy doing singles at 500 is roughly doing 5 times as much work as the guy working w/ 100’s.
I have calculated (Volume/Intensity/Reps) for many years (10+)now. The values are relative to the specific lifter and additionally to the specific type of routine being used.
Total weekly volume/intensity/reps or values over set periods of time(6-8-10 weeks) can be usefull to compare program results for a specific lifter; but not for lifter to lifter comparisons.
You could try timing the length of the set itself, it would take much less time to do 1 rep at 500 than 5 reps at 100.
That would give you a substantially different number.
If you take 3 seconds per rep, that would be 3x1=3 for the 500 lbs. and 3x5=15 for the 100 lbs.