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Training to failure: the key to progress

This is an excerpt from Train Smarter, Not Longer by Patroklos \"Pak\" Androulakis Korakakis.

Intensity of effort, or how close a set comes to the point of failure, is a fundamental variable in making gains, regardless of your goals. Intensity of effort is measured by how many repetitions in reserve are left at the end of a set (table 2.4). Training to zero repetitions in reserve, or failure, means completing repetitions until no additional repetition can be performed despite attempting to do so. Notice the last part of that sentence? This is something people often get wrong, assuming that as long as they feel like no more reps are possible, they’ve trained to failure. However, training to failure means that even if you were held at gunpoint to perform another repetition, you’d fail to do so despite giving it your best effort.

In practice (aka in the gym), we use the repetitions in reserve scale, which has become a practical and effective way to gauge and adjust training intensity. It not only provides a clear framework for determining effort but also allows you to adapt dynamically based on your readiness on a given day. Instead of aiming for a predetermined weight for your training session, you can guide your weight selection by the reps in reserve target that you’ve set. This will allow you to push yourself harder on days when things are feeling good, while safeguarding you from bad days when forcing loads that are too heavy can do more harm than good.

In addition to the repetitions in reserve scale, you may also come across the modified Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale, which is essentially based on repetitions-in-reserve. Introduced by Borg (RIP) in 1962 (Borg 1982), the original RPE scale, intended for aerobic endurance training, ranged from 6 to 20, where 6 meant “no exertion at all,“ and 20 meant “maximal exertion.“ Although the numbers were chosen somewhat arbitrarily by Borg, they were supposed to correspond in a rough way to the heart rate of a healthy adult: a rating of 6 corresponds to a heart rate of about 60 beats per minute (resting heart rate for many people) and a rating of 20 corresponds to 200 beats per minute (the maximal heart rate of a young adult). By using this scale, lifters could subjectively rate their level of exertion during exercise, which could then be used to guide exercise intensity. A simple version of an RPE scale is shown in table 2.5.

The modified RPE scale based on repetitions in reserve, runs from 1 to 10, where 10 represents maximal effort (zero repetitions in reserve), and lower values indicate progressively less effort (Zourdos et al. 2016) (table 2.6). A simple way to convert repetitions in reserve to the rate of perceived exertion is by subtracting the repetitions in reserve from 10. For instance, a set performed with 2 repetitions in reserve corresponds to a rate of perceived exertion of 8. One scale is not inherently better or different from the other, so it all comes down to personal preference when deciding which one to use in practice. In this book, we will be using repetitions in reserve as our main way of quantifying effort.

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