Reps in Reserve

watts6151 wrote: »

mmapags wrote: »

84creative wrote: »

@GaryRuns this is exactly the same conclusion I came to. At 35 I definitely don’t want to knacker myself out so I’m happy only going to failure every 4 weeks to see if my RIRs are correct. So far They’re spot on.

In what I've read and listened to from Dr. Mike, the key thing is that going to failure increases fatigue and need to recovery exponentially (his word not mine) and impacts volume that drives hypertrophy. Leaving a couple in the take allows for greater training frequency and thus volume, the key driver of hypertrophy.

Mike also says not going to failure potentially leaves gains on the table, there’s a time and place for failure, tbh honest most small muscle groups can be taken to failure quite Often because they recover so quickly, side delts, biceps etc

I concur.

For hypertrophy response which is typically done with higher reps lower intensity I typically program RPE 9. This "can" be done with lower reps just the same, but recovery might be an issue for some people.

What we want is full recruitment of the muscle motors. To achieve that we have to get near failure. I usually do this with the smaller muscles that recovery faster as well as lean towards isolation lifts.

So you might see me program curls in this way but not squats typically. With intensity of 40lbs of the curls versus 405 lbs of a squat we can see the obvious recovery difference when we go near failure of any rep scheme.

Like mentioned previously this is for hypertrophy of more accessory lifts variety. I wouldn't necessarily program it for a main lift that involves many large muscle groups that leans greatly towards the strength trainging of the spectrum.

There is a time and place for near failure if programmed intelligently.

3/2/1 reps over the meso cycle/weeks makes so much sense to me.. I love everything about this kind of training..