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Episode 39: RPE, 1 RM, 3 sets of 10, oh my?
926 Plays1 year ago
Welcome to Episode 39 of the Movement Logic podcast! In this episode, Sarah takes a trip back in time to find out: Where did the ubiquitous 3x10 come from? It’s a wild ride that takes her down more than one rabbit hole and brings us face to face with 1RM, RPE, RIR, and everything else with an R in it.
You will learn:
- Where did the 3 x 10 protocol come from
- How 3 x 10 has changed over time, in a significant departure from what it originally contained: progressive overload
- How long held beliefs around effort level and pain created a rehab emphasis on volume over effort
- Where RPE came from
- The RPE - RIR relationship
- Pros and Cons of using RPE - RIR versus 1RM in your strength training
And more!
3 Sets x 10 Reps The History Logic and Reasoning on Physical Culture Study Website
Thomas L DeLorme and the science of progressive resistive exercise (abstract)
Progressive Resistance Exercise excerpts on Dave Draper Website
Exercise in Education and Medicine by R. Tait McKenzie (full digital download)
RPE In Powerlifting on Progressive Rehab And Strength Website
RPE vs Percentage Based Training Explained on Barbend Website
Sign Up Here for the Movement Logic Newsletter and receive our free Barbell Equipment Guide!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Movement Logic Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic podcast with yoga teacher and strength coach Laurel Beaversdorf and physical therapist, Dr. Sarah Court. With over 30 years combined experience in the yoga, movement, and physical therapy worlds, we believe in strong opinions loosely held, which means we're not hyping outdated movement concepts. Instead, we're here with up-to-date and cutting-edge tools, evidence, and ideas to help you as a mover and a teacher.
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to the Movement Logic Podcast.
Questioning Standard Exercise Prescription
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm Dr. Sarah Kort, physical therapist, and today we're going to dive into the question, what's the deal with three sets of 10? Why is this the prescribed amount of sets and reps for exercises, whether it's your PT homework or your workout routine? What's the goal of this set and rep protocol if there is one? And if this is your default for everything, what might your body be missing out on?
00:01:05
Speaker
Spoiler alert, I might be mentioning bone density and or strength training in this episode. Who first came up with three sets of ten? Why did they decide on it? Is it based on research? What's going on here? I'm also going to delve into RPE, RIR, 1RM, and any other acronyms that have the letter R in them to help you figure out what's the easiest way to understand how much you should be lifting based on your specific goals.
00:01:34
Speaker
And I want to say that my original plan for this episode started in one place. And then when I started researching it, it went to a bunch of other places that were fascinating and that I'm going to share with you. So this may be a good grab a cup of tea and sit by the fire episode, because I'm going to tell you a bit of a story.
00:01:52
Speaker
Now, before I begin, if you haven't already, please subscribe. It takes two seconds and it tells the algorithm to put us, the Movement Logic podcast, in front of more people like you, dear listener, who might also benefit from what we're doing. It's a no stress way to make sure you get every episode every week and don't miss any. And it also helps guide the AI overlords to whom we bow down.
00:02:23
Speaker
I shouldn't even joke about it because they're gonna come get me. The AI overlords to whom we bow down, a better sense of who would also like the work that we're doing here. Okay, let's start at the beginning.
History of the 3x10 Protocol
00:02:34
Speaker
Where did three sets of 10 come from? Well, an army sergeant and medical doctor named Thomas de Lorm was one of the originators of this protocol. Born in 1917, he grew up in poverty and battled rheumatic fever as a teen, ending up six feet tall but very frail for his height.
00:02:51
Speaker
He studied medicine and physical fitness and started weightlifting to build his body back up. He then promoted, via his own positive experiences from lifting weights, what were at the time unorthodox approaches to physical therapy and rehabilitation, including
00:03:07
Speaker
lifting heavier weight and increased numbers of repetitions. With what turned out to be serendipitous timing for him, he was able to try out his theories because there was an influx of injured soldiers returning from World War II at the time that he was working on all of these ideas. So this is where things get interesting. Delorme's advice to lift heavy weight was a different direction from the prevailing school of thought originally developed by R. Tate McKenzie about 30 years prior.
00:03:34
Speaker
Mackenzie is considered one of the founding members of the field of Physiatry, which are medical doctors who are concerned with physical rehabilitation. Mackenzie developed exercises, massage treatments, and hydrotherapy treatments, among many others, that are still in use by PTs today.
00:03:51
Speaker
Now, Mackenzie wrote a book called Exercise in Education and Medicine in 1909, which you can actually download a digital version of if you want to go down the rabbit hole I went down. And I will link to that in their show notes as well.
McKenzie's Influence on Physical Therapy
00:04:05
Speaker
Just a heads up, it's a 600 page book, but...
00:04:08
Speaker
If you want to read about physical education of mental and moral defectives, those are his words, not mine, not mine, then you'll want to grab a free copy of this book. I will tell you this. I was hooked from the get-go, and you'll probably see why when I read you some quotes from the book.
00:04:24
Speaker
He is a very compelling writer. Now, I did not manage to get all the way through the 600 pages of the book in preparation for this podcast, but I did specifically look for anything that we would recognize today as recommended exercise for physical therapy, and in particular anything relating to effort.
00:04:43
Speaker
weight and pain. I definitely need to read the book more closely. For example, he goes into long descriptions of people's facial expressions while they're exerting in different ways. I'm assuming because it was one of the only ways to estimate their work levels. But from my first pass, it does seem that he favors more endurance-type exercise
00:05:02
Speaker
for its ability to move blood through the body. That's his belief. And similarly, passive exercise like massage to do the same thing. And thus, and this is a quote, improve the nourishment of the muscle cell artificially by alternately forcing out the products of fatigue under pressure and thus keeping it bathed in a renewed stream of arterial blood sufficient to prevent wasting where active movements are impossible. He later states, athletic training aims to produce a machine to run
00:05:32
Speaker
leap, fight, or row, and fat would only be an encumbrance like extra ballast so that a man in fine athletic form is not in the best condition to rise from a depleting illness or resist the siege of an exhausting infection like typhoid fever or pneumonia where the stored up fat of the normal individual becomes his most valuable asset.
00:05:54
Speaker
Listen, I don't know if you think I'm joking about this book, but it's an absolute page turner because there are some concepts that we think we invented 20 years ago and it turns out they've been here all the time. And then there's some utter codswell up like this idea, which says, don't be in shape because if you get really ill, it's going to be much harder for your body to deal with it, which is just not true.
00:06:14
Speaker
So now when we return to Delorme, did he develop his theories in opposition to this idea of lower intensity endurance exercise? I don't know. But I do see that a lot of PTs nowadays are often concerned about adding external weight and rehab when someone is in pain because we're in this mindset of not creating more pain for our patients. But that's a whole other conversation about appropriate levels of pain, the subjective nature of pain. And you know what?
00:06:42
Speaker
What you can do right now is go to episode 30 of this podcast, where I discuss this in detail with orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Chris Rayner. Let's get back to our main story.
DeLorme's Research and Progressive Loading
00:06:53
Speaker
Delorme eventually joined forces with Dr. Arthur Watkins, who had similar views around strength training and load.
00:06:59
Speaker
and together they started to test out their sets and rep theories. In 1945, DeLorean published a paper titled Restoration of Muscle Power by Heavy Resistance Exercises in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery.
00:07:13
Speaker
I tried to find the paper, but I only found citations for it. So the following quotes are from a website, physicalculturestudy.com, and I will link to that in the show notes as well. So in this paper, Delorme found that in 300 cases, and just remember all of those returning soldiers from World War II with injuries and fractures that he could test out his theories on.
00:07:33
Speaker
So in 300 cases, the best results were with 7 to 10 sets of 10 repetitions of an exercise, which is potentially 100 reps.
00:07:46
Speaker
which is a lot of reps. And also now it sounds like it's going to be an endurance based protocol, right? Because how could I lift something super heavy a hundred times? So what is any different between this and the prevailing thoughts from the school of McKenzie? What's a bit different about this is that the protocol was to start with a light load and gradually increase the load over the seven to 10 sets until the person reached a 10 rep max.
00:08:16
Speaker
Now, apparently, DeLorme said that this protocol created a, quote, splendid response in muscle hypertrophy and power together with symptomatic relief.
00:08:26
Speaker
Okay, well, so here's where I'm going to break in for a second and talk about rep maxes and what they are good for.
Understanding One Rep Max
00:08:31
Speaker
We have talked about one rep max on several episodes, but in case this is the first one you're listening to, I'm going to explain it again. And frankly, it bears repeating as many times as you can stand hearing it because while none of these concepts are complicated, it can take a little bit to wrap your head around them fully. So one rep max is the heaviest load that you can lift one time and one time only
00:08:56
Speaker
without deviation in your form. This can be a difficult thing to measure directly and potentially is only a theoretical number because it would depend on a lot of things like how physically or mentally tired you were, what have you eaten, how much have you exerted yourself already that day? But it's a useful number to estimate because it lets you then figure out everything from one rep max to 12 rep max. How would you figure that out, you ask?
00:09:24
Speaker
Well, it's our friend, the mighty one rep max table. So if you do a Google search of one rep max table, you will find it pretty easily. And I'm also going to add a link in the show notes to one. It is a chart, a weight training load chart that lets you figure out what amount to lift in order to work at what specific rep max for any exercise you want to do. For example.
00:09:51
Speaker
If you tried to do a squat with 100 pounds, and you discovered that you could do four of them,
00:09:56
Speaker
but after four, when you started to try the fifth one, it was like, nope, I don't have it. That means your four rep max for the squat is 100 pounds. So then you go to the chart and you go over to the row called four RM, four rep max, and you go down and you find the weight for your four rep max. It's not 100, but on the chart it's 99. So that's close enough. That's where you'll work. So then from that, you can discover that your 10 rep max
00:10:26
Speaker
would be 82.5 pounds and you can either round down to 80 or round up to 85. And then your one rep max is 110 pounds. What that also tells us is the percentage relationships between one rep max and all the way up to 12 rep max in terms of how much of your effort you are using.
00:10:49
Speaker
So sometimes this is called a percentage-based protocol. One rep max is the same as 100% of your effort, right? Remember, you cannot lift this thing more than one time. So it's everything and then you're done. Four rep max is considered 90% of your effort. Eight rep max is considered 80% of your effort and so on. Hopefully that makes sense. So if we return to this Delorme and Watkins protocol of a 10 rep max,
00:11:19
Speaker
what they're talking about is not quite enough load to be categorized as bone density building. And the reason we know that is when we look at the one rep max chart, 10 rep max is 75% of the effort of a one rep max. Now for bone density, we actually need to be in the 85 to potentially 95% of your one rep max, which is more like a three or six rep range.
00:11:48
Speaker
it's a lot less. Now maybe to you that sounds like 75% at that 10RM isn't that far from 85% and it's not, but in that small amount of load difference that's going to put you into the bone density training range and
00:12:05
Speaker
the difference is going to take you down from being able to do 10 reps to only six reps of something. So there's a significance to it, even if it sounds like, oh, but it's only 15 pounds or something like that. So let's give you a concrete example. Let's say someone has a deadlift one rep max of a hundred pounds from the chart that tells us that their 10 rep max is 75 pounds. And we know that the 10 rep max is only
00:12:34
Speaker
75% of the effort of a one rep max, and we need to be at 85% of that effort to be in bone density building category. So then when we look at that, which is the equivalent of a six rep max, that's 85 pounds. So just 10 pounds more added to a deadlift can put the person into a bone building category.
00:13:00
Speaker
And that weight difference is significant enough that they go from being able to do 10 repetitions of it down to only six repetitions of it. And I think this is the thing that a lot of us aren't really aware of or don't quite realize is that lifting heavy may not be that far off from what we're already doing.
00:13:18
Speaker
And the biggest difference is that we have to step outside of this 10 repetition school of thought because the second you add enough weight, in this case, just 10 more pounds, now we're doing bone density building work and we're only doing six repetitions.
00:13:33
Speaker
Right? So it doesn't mean lifting heavy at the same volume of exercise that you will have been doing previously. In fact, if you've never tried lifting heavy, you're going to be surprised at how little actual lifting is going on and how much more rest time is happening instead. There's a lot of standing around, but that's specifically because the weight is heavy to the point that you cannot just lift it over and over and over again. You have to take longer breaks and you have to do shorter sets.
00:14:03
Speaker
Okay, now another component that's useful to consider is a much more subjective one. When we're doing our three sets of 10, for example, how hard does it feel? How many more repetitions do we think we could do at the end of the 10 reps? Now, if you're truly doing a rep max, a 10 rep max, the answer is always zero.
00:14:26
Speaker
And any rep max, the answer is always zero, regardless of the number of repetitions. So that's going to make a huge difference in the amount of weight that you're using. Just because you're lifting something 10 times doesn't automatically mean it's your 10 rep max. And this is where RPE and RAR come into play.
00:14:45
Speaker
I'm going to put a pin in that conversation and continue with our tale of Delorme and Watkins, but do not worry, we will come back to this topic for sure. So, Delorme's research in 1945 had him recommending seven to ten sets of ten reps, which sounds like an insane amount of reps and it's a lot,
00:15:07
Speaker
The important thing to remember is that it is supposed to be progressive, right? So the first few sets are not supposed to be the hardest thing. In fact, they might even be what we would consider a warmup. Now, Delorean Watkins continue with their research and a few years later in 1948 and in 1951, they updated their protocol stating, quote,
00:15:27
Speaker
Further experience has shown that this figure, that's the 7 to 10 sets, to be too high, and that in most cases a total of 20 to 30 repetitions is far more satisfactory. Fewer repetitions permit exercise with heavier muscle loads, thereby yielding greater and more rapid muscle hypertrophy.
00:15:49
Speaker
This is where we first start to see this idea of three sets of 10 revealing itself. But I want to emphasize that what Delorme is advocating is getting to a 10 rep max, which suggests that the person is working with a pretty heavy weight because it means that the 11th rep is unattainable and they maxed out at 10. In 1951, Delorme and Watkins co-authored the book, Progressive Resistance Exercise, in which they outlined a lot of parameters for successful weight training.
00:16:18
Speaker
I've included a link in the show notes, not to the book itself, which I wasn't able to find, but to a site that has quotes from the book.
00:16:26
Speaker
If you want to read about things like rep speed and the rest times that they recommend, you can check these quotes out on that site. But what I want to highlight from their book is that the authors themselves are not especially attached to the 10 rep protocol. They write, quote, the number of contractions per bout is arbitrarily set at 10. If fewer repetitive lifts were required, the resistance could be increased.
00:16:51
Speaker
Whether 10 is the optimum number for rapid increase in strength has never been established in terms of criteria other than the empirical practice of weight lifters. It is probable that the number closely approaches the optimum. So one of the things that I've always thought about the 10 rep number is that it's probably become so ubiquitous because it's an easy number to remember. It's a natural unit of measure. When we learn to count, we count to 10. We have 10 fingers.
00:17:20
Speaker
and 10 toes, in theory. But the authors themselves admit that it's an arbitrary number and that it's just one that they observed weightlifters using. They go on to say, quote, Incredible as it may seem, many athletes have developed great power and yet have never employed more than five repetitions in a single exercise.
00:17:41
Speaker
I just want to break in to say that is not incredible to us, but for someone who started out thinking that you needed to do up to 100 repetitions of something for it to be effective, that probably does seem pretty incredible. Back to the quote, the amount of weight lifted seems to be the important factor in stimulating hypertrophy. Some investigators feel that it is the amount of work performed per unit of time that is responsible for strength.
00:18:07
Speaker
I'm going to break in again just to say this is what the measurement of what is called power is. Observations to date, though not conclusive, indicate that it is the tension the muscle is driven to develop that to a great degree, if not entirely, is responsible for stimulating hypertrophy and consequently strength. That's interesting, but here's how they actually recommend using the 3x10 protocol, which is even more interesting. I quote,
00:18:35
Speaker
If by doing 10 repetitions with the first weight, 50% of the 10RM, and 10 with the second weight, 75% of the 10RM, the patient is too tired to perform the 10 reps with the 10RM, then only five repetitions should be performed in the first two sets, thus leaving the patient fresher for the 10 repetitions with the 10RM.
00:18:59
Speaker
Another possibility is to omit the middle 10 repetition set, 75% of 10 RM, starting then with 10 repetitions with the 50% of the 10 RM and going directly to 10 repetitions with a 10 RM. So if all you heard from that was like RM, RM, RM,
00:19:18
Speaker
I don't blame you. Here's what they're recommending. If you do the protocol the way they think you should, your first set of 10 is only at 50 percent of your 10 rep max. Whatever the amount of the 10 rep max is, you're going to do half of them weight. Your second set of 10 is 75 percent of your 10RM. Again, whatever that weight is, you're going to do now 75 percent of it.
00:19:45
Speaker
And your third set of 10 is 100% of your 10RM, meaning you can do 10 reps at this weight, but no further. So those three sets are designed to be done at increasing weights. Oh, to make that concrete, let's say you can squat 40 pounds 10 times, but not 11 times. So that means 40 pounds
00:20:06
Speaker
is your 10RM. So using this protocol, your first set is 50% of that, which is 20 pounds. Your second set is 75% of that, which is 30 pounds. And your third and final set is 40 pounds, which is your true 10RM. Now in the rehab world,
00:20:24
Speaker
And the general fitness world, I do not, you know, outside of the strength training world, I do not see people using this progression with their three sets of 10 reps. It's typically the same load throughout or the same thera band. Some of this may be practicality. If you're giving a patient homework, not all of them have a whole sets of weights at home to work with. So you may be stuck with having them work with the same weight throughout, but
00:20:50
Speaker
I'm not sure that that's what's stopping most people from prescribing a progressive set of weights. I think we got the information around three sets of 10 and then the rest of it was either left off on purpose or
00:21:03
Speaker
It's just part of the generational game of telephone that all these protocols go through. That detail got left behind. What I think is especially interesting is this 50%, 75%, 100% setup is how many weightlifters find the right level of difficulty for lifts based off of their 1RM.
00:21:21
Speaker
So this approach is absolutely still being used today. The number of reps may not make it to 10, but as we saw from the authors, they're more than happy to change out the number of reps as appropriate. They acknowledged that 10 reps was somewhat arbitrary and was based on the ease of the number to stick to, but that if you were going to lift heavier, you may not do as many reps, or that if you were 50% and 75% warmups were too fatiguing, you could just do five of each if you wanted, or you could completely leave out the 75
00:21:51
Speaker
percent set in the middle and just do the first one and the last one So the big takeaway from this is that the original three sets of ten protocol was essentially two warm-up sets one at 50% and one at 75% before doing the ten rep max set and Look, obviously that's a lot more complicated to try and give your patients or clients for homework
00:22:13
Speaker
and there's probably going to be some issues around people getting confused, especially if the weight amount doesn't work out to really easy math, or they might not have the right equipment and it's more time consuming to explain, but for all of those reasons why not to do it, none of them have anything at all to do with the efficacy of the training parameters.
00:22:37
Speaker
And I honestly have been truly racking my brain trying to remember if there was any discussion of this in PT school, if the three sets of 10 should be progressive. And I really can't. And I even asked a class member, a friend of mine, if she remembered any discussion of this concept and she agreed that she did not hear anything about it. And if you're a physical therapist and you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, yeah, this is all well and good, but if I have a patient who's coming back from an injury or surgery, I'm not rep-maxing them on anything.
00:23:07
Speaker
I hear you, but I do think we need to reconsider the trajectory of rehab and make sure that in as many situations as possible, we are working with progressive overload, whether that overload means an extra one pound.
00:23:23
Speaker
or going from the yellow TheraBand to the red TheraBand that we're still moving the person forward in terms of improving their capacity. Because this is a completely different concept than that tired old three sets of 10 has now become. This is progressive overload during rehab. This is using strength for pain relief during rehab. We tend to think of these as newer ideas, but apparently it's been around since the 1950s.
00:23:52
Speaker
Now, I didn't have time to get into the rest of the PT world at the time of Delorman-Walkins, but I do think that would be an interesting episode to get a sense of what practices did we start out with in rehab that we have, or maybe should have by now, replaced with better ones, and which practices were shunned at the time but have turned out to be pretty forward thinking.
00:24:15
Speaker
As you know, we've created an equipment guide and so if you haven't gotten it already, you may want to get a hold of that equipment guide, which you get if you sign up for our mailing list. This guide is beautiful. It is pictures hyperlinked to products on the internet that you can then use to either purchase that product or get ideas for maybe cheaper options elsewhere. This guide has everything. Words, pictures, hyperlinks, pages,
00:24:43
Speaker
aesthetically beautiful. Laurel made it mostly. So let's go back to talking about different approaches to your strength training. The 1RM concept is what I personally am currently using as I have a protocol that is aimed specifically at increasing strength in three moves, the deadlift, the squat, and the chest press.
00:25:07
Speaker
And the way it works is I train three times a week on these movements with various levels of difficulty, sets, reps, as laid out by the program. And then every few weeks I lift progressively up to my current one RM level on each exercise and I see if I can increase it. And sometimes I can and sometimes I can't. Now, this protocol doesn't take into account how easy or how hard any of the work is, partly because it's already set up to have some days be easier than others.
00:25:37
Speaker
My personal least favorite day is 6x6 day because that is 6 sets of 6 reps at 75% of my 1RM. Now if you recall, 75% of a 1RM is technically a 10RM. But if we think about how DeLorean Walk-Ins were talking about working up to one set of your 10RM, and I'm doing 6 sets of 6 reps at the same level,
00:26:03
Speaker
Hopefully you can sense why it's hard and I hate it, especially if I'm already a bit tired. But this approach is sort of the do exactly what I say on exactly these days, the one RM approach, or sometimes it's called the percentage approach because it's always at some percentage of your one RM. It's pretty easy to follow if you're training on your own, which is what I'm doing, because you just do what you're told on each specific day.
00:26:29
Speaker
As a PT, I find this delightful because I spend a lot of time telling other people what to do with their bodies. And at the end of the day, I am always thrilled when I don't have to think about what to do with my body and I can just do what I'm told.
Introduction to RPE
00:26:42
Speaker
However, there's another approach and the other approach is using what is called RPE, that is rate of perceived exertion. And it can be used with or without its buddy, RIR, which stands for reps in reserve.
00:26:57
Speaker
Now, it's not complicated, and it may be overall a better way to work. Though, you'll see a lot of people arguing about which approach is better. Total shock, people arguing on the internet. And, you know, that, again, I'm not here to say which one to use, I just want to give you information about both of them so you can make good choices for yourself. So, what is RPE?
00:27:18
Speaker
RPE is a subjective measure of how hard you feel like you are working while you're doing something on a scale of one to 10. One is no effort at all. 10 is maximum effort. This does not mean that you are doing 10 repetitions of something.
00:27:36
Speaker
It's concerned with how it felt to do the number of repetitions you did. In other words, instead of your goal being three sets of 10 reps, now your goal might be to work at an RPE of seven with that specific weight and movement. So that might mean that for your 100-pound deadlift, your RPE of seven occurs when you do six reps, not 10 reps,
00:28:03
Speaker
I'll put an RPE chart in the show notes so that you can see the verbal descriptor that goes along with each level. But basically, six RPE is very easy. Seven is easy. Eight is moderate.
00:28:15
Speaker
nine is hard and 10 is maximum effort Deadpool style. Generally speaking with lifting weight, we're not really concerned with anything below a six out of 10 RPE. Now, if figuring out how hard something feels doesn't seem like something you could work with easily, especially if it's not something you've tried to sense before, there is a second part to this measurement that's called RIR or reps in reserve. Reps in reserve asks a slightly different question.
00:28:43
Speaker
How many more of these do you think you could do right now? So what's especially great about reps and reserve is that it's a question you are continuously asking yourself during the set because you're looking to hit a specific goal. And once you hit it, your set is done. This might be an easier thing to track than the RPE's question of how hard are you working? And the great news is your RIR will give you an RPE result as well.
00:29:12
Speaker
So here's how it works. You're doing a deadlift and you've decided you're going to lift 50 pounds and you are going to stop when you have what feels to you like three RIR, three reps in reserve. You could do three more of these
00:29:28
Speaker
and then you would have to stop. So you start your repetitions of your deadlift with your 50 pound weight. And the first two, you feel fine. And you definitely feel like you could do several more. And then as you do number three and number four, it's really starting to feel harder. And then at repetition number five, you get the sense, you know what? I could only do three more of these. So then you stop. So your lift was one set of five reps at three RIR.
00:29:59
Speaker
So I hope that makes sense. Now here's the awesome part. RIR and RPE will together always total 10. What does that mean? That means your one set of five reps at three RIR that you just did, you are automatically working at a seven rate of perceived exertion. And in fact, in order to give people a sense of what a rate of perceived exertion should feel like, it's often described in terms of RIR.
00:30:27
Speaker
7RPE is 3 reps in reserve, 8RPE is 2 reps in reserve, 9RPE is 1 rep in reserve, and 10RPE is 0 reps in reserve.
00:30:42
Speaker
Now here's the mildly confusing part that you will want to keep in mind. Just because seven RPE means you have three reps in reserve, it doesn't mean that you're doing seven repetitions of a movement. The RPE number is just a measure of perceived effort at any number of repetitions. It could be three repetitions or it could be 12 repetitions. Either way,
00:31:10
Speaker
you have three reps left in reserve and you're still working at a seven RPE. I hope this makes sense because it can be a little bit fiddly in the beginning. And you may be saying to yourself, well, this seems more complicated. I liked that version that Sarah was talking about before when she said, you just do what it tells you to do and shut up about it. Why might you choose this slightly more fiddly approach over the definitely not fiddly percentage based one RM based approach?
00:31:40
Speaker
Well, one argument that a lot of people make is the R-P-E-R-I-R approach is a better way to prevent injury because you're not forcing yourself to lift a pre-prescribed load on a day when you might be tired, slept poorly, you're hungry, you're in a bad mood, things like that. I found this lovely quote on a site that I'm linking to called Progressive Rehab and Strength
00:32:05
Speaker
They say having a subjective way to express how our body interprets load serves to tune us into our perception of it.
00:32:16
Speaker
I kind of love that because it's the idea of how do I sense how hard I'm working? Well, we're going to start giving it a number. And because it's subjective, that number, it's like the pain scale. That number is only useful in comparison to you in the past and in the future. It's got nothing to do with anyone else's experience. So it's about really clarifying for yourself how hard you're working. Here's another thing that they say on the Progressive Rehab and Strength website.
00:32:42
Speaker
In turn, having the ability to express how we feel on a particular day can help us fine-tune our training, adjust it, and improve our ability to get stronger while reducing our risk of injury and overtraining. So this is a really valid point. The same weight can feel completely different from one day to the next.
00:33:02
Speaker
And in this way, if you're working with R-P-E-R-I-R, you work with exactly where you are that day, and you're not pushing beyond your physical limits just because your one RM based program told you to. So if we were to compare those two approaches side by side, let's say you are doing your program that is one RM based, it's percentage based, and today's lift is supposed to be
00:33:30
Speaker
85% of your one rep max, which means it's six repetitions at a predetermined weight. And it's a certain number of sets of those repetitions of that predetermined weight. There's no wiggle room at all.
00:33:46
Speaker
and let's say you woke up that day and you didn't sleep well or you drank a lot the night before or just something's off and you don't feel great and you're looking at it and you're like oh man i really i don't i don't know that i have it in me right now to do three sets or however many of six reps of my 85 one rm lift
00:34:03
Speaker
But I know that I want to be working at an eight or a nine-ish on my RPE, which means when I do these lifts, I should have one or two reps left in reserve. So now I can choose any weight that I want.
00:34:22
Speaker
I can lift until I feel like I have one or two reps left in reserve if I'm using the same weight that the percentage program wanted me to then it may end up being a fewer number of repetitions or I might decide I'm gonna lift a lighter weight because I just don't feel like I've got an in me today and maybe it will be It may even end up being a higher number of repetitions, right? But I'm now
00:34:51
Speaker
allowing my body to
00:34:54
Speaker
I'm allowing myself to have a much more holistic approach to how I'm lifting and I'm not just doing what I'm told to do from an arbitrary chart. Now, the concept of RPE was first introduced in the 1970s by Dr. Gunnar Borg of Stockholm University and he had what was called the Borg scale, which if you're a PT, you might have heard of. But the Borg scale was from six to 20, which is a very not friendly workable set of numbers.
00:35:23
Speaker
And it's basically been replaced by the 1 to 10 scale that we use today. So this RPE data becomes especially useful over time as you or your trainer slash PT slash coach can track how many reps and sets of a weight in a movement that you're able to do at a specific RPE.
00:35:42
Speaker
For example, hey, Beth, today you're squatting 75 pounds at a RPE of seven. And when we first started doing squats three months ago, a seven RPE of that weight, you were only able to do five reps, but today at a seven RPE of that same weight, you're doing eight reps. This ability to track your performance over time becomes a guide to how much you might do during a week or a month, depending on rest, number of sessions, et cetera.
00:36:11
Speaker
The one difficulty is that because it's subjective, it might be hard to figure out at first, but the longer you use it and work with it, the easier it will become. And you will have a dialed in sense of what your personal RPE scale looks like. And that's the only one that matters because it's subjective. There's even some research that shows that experienced weight lifters can very clearly delineate their own RPE.
00:36:35
Speaker
And as your progress tends to slow with the more experience you have lifting weights, it's a good way to have more autonomy around what you're lifting as you advance.
00:36:45
Speaker
And you can also use RPE for your accessory lifting, meaning the additional exercises that you're doing that aren't perhaps your compound lifts like the deadlift and the squat, but that you're doing to create a rounded workout for that day. So for example, if you're doing biceps curls, it's a lot easier to figure out how many to do at an RPE of seven versus trying to hit a one RM on a biceps curl. And, and.
00:37:12
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know if I'm fear mongering by saying like trying to get a 1RM on your biceps curl is a good way to injure yourself. I don't know, but it seems hard. It seems like it would be very hard to figure out and much easier to just get a sense of, oh yeah, I'm working at this effort level of seven out of 10. I could do three more of these right now. Okay, so some things to pay attention to when you are working with RPE.
00:37:38
Speaker
One is that a higher RPE will be more accurate than a lower RPE and this has to do with the reps in reserve. It's a lot easier to say, I could definitely do one more or I cannot do another single one than to be able to say with any amount of accuracy, I could do three more but not four more.
00:37:59
Speaker
For the same reason, sets with more reps are harder to gauge than sets with fewer reps. If you're doing multiple sets, the number of reps to get to the same RPE can change because of fatigue from previous sets. So it's a lot more of a moving target than a 1RM percentage-based program. And in terms of equating the RPE with load,
00:38:21
Speaker
Here's a very basic breakdown. Six to seven RPE is low intensity, high volume. This might be an early to mid stage rehab protocol depending on how the patient is presenting, or it might be part of some endurance strength focus type of programming. It's definitely where three sets of 10 lives in our modern interpretation where every set is the same effort.
00:38:44
Speaker
A seven to eight RPE is considered moderate intensity and moderate volume. This is a good place for people who are beginners to strength training to aim for, because depending on their fitness level, they may not yet be capable of taking on anything higher than this. I mean, to be totally fair, there will be people starting at the six to seven level and that's okay too. We meet everyone where they are and there's no shame in it at all. We just want to make sure we don't stop there. The eight to nine RPE is high intensity, low volume.
00:39:15
Speaker
And here's where we enter bone density building territory. And we have several episodes this season that discuss bone density building activities, including an episode on plyometrics and another one about how yoga does not place enough demand on the bones to build new bones. So you can go listen to those as well. This is also deep into strength building territory, which means you're going to be progressively overloading on a purposeful schedule to continue to increase how heavy you can lift.
00:39:43
Speaker
The bottom line is that there are pros and cons to using percentage-based 1RM training versus the RPE RIR training, and an ideal program might be a combination of the two. But if you're new to lifting, you're probably going to want to start with just one or the other and stick with that for a while, unless you're working with a trainer who has the experience to create programming that takes both into consideration. And if we go back to our initial question that was the basis for this whole episode, namely, what's the deal with three times 10?
00:40:13
Speaker
The bottom line is that when this protocol was developed, it was much more in line with how weightlifters work today when working towards a rep max lift and very different from what it has become, which is three sets of 10 that are all the same and thus a very low RPE, RIR number, and no longer a progressive series of sets, which means it's not promoting overload or a true strength training protocol.
Reassessing Traditional Exercise Methods
00:40:38
Speaker
Whether any of these things are good or bad or wrong or right is a longer discussion. And frankly, I'm not sure if there's ever going to be total agreement on what to do when, because you can pretty much always find research that backs what you want to do, which is one of the inherent problems with research. So I'll let the internet yellers live to fight over it another day. But I will say this, if you're doing three sets of 10 for all your exercises because that's what you learned in the beginning,
00:41:04
Speaker
and you don't know how to progress from that, well, it's time to take a closer look at what you're doing, and either on your own, if you feel able to do it, or with the help of a qualified professional, figure out how to actually start a strength protocol that is going to see you get stronger, that is going to help you build more bone density if that is a concern of yours, and frankly, it should be all of our concern, and so on and so forth.
00:41:35
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed this episode and that it's given you some new information about strength training and has inspired you to maybe start picking up some heavier weights or to seek out help from someone that can program it for you. You can check out our show notes for links to all the references I mentioned in this podcast. Thank you so, so much for listening. Finally, it helps us out a huge amount if you liked this episode to subscribe and to rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.