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He says 1-0 rir technical failure. Meaning if he cant do another rep exactly the same as the previous reps without some small deviation in the predetermined technique, then he stops it there. It's very difficult and neurologically stimulating to mirror your reps with strictness and "bar speed". Its also a safe way to hypertrophy train.
@@antonsanmartin511 There was no breakdown in technique, OR slowing in bar speed. None. Getting a slow rep IS NOT a breakdown in technique. It is a byproduct of fatigue. It is what happens to EVERYONE as failure approaches, whether absolute or technical. It is not "neurologically stimulating" to mirror your reps in speed, it means you weren't at failure and were sandbagging the early reps by holding back, both of which are actually much EASIER on the nervous system. So, I can't say I agree with you.
@@GVS I agree that a significant slowing of bar speed is an indicator of approaching failure when you are training relatively explosively or specifically for strength in most cases. But when it comes to hypertrophy training, tempo can be factored in as part of the technique, at least for this method of training. So a signifigant deviation from the predetermined tempo is a kind of technical failure for this methodology. Mike's video you showed is a good example of this, you'll notice that "bar speed" is very controlled and stays basically the same throughout all three sets, even the "dark place" set. That style of hypertrophy training is physically demanding, requires focus, and is a different type of RIR training so to speak.
@@antonsanmartin511 I understand what you are saying, he's controlling the rep speed, in order to foster a mind muscle connection and time under tension. But I still completely and utterly reject the idea that this is actually failure. Failure to maintain rep speed is failure to maintain rep speed, but it is *not* failure in the way typically defined, he even said this himself. The definition of failure, even technical, is very clear. There's no need to twist it around and make everything seem like failure when it ain't.
Steve Shaw has a good take on using failure. He recommends "practicing safe sets," (stopping when your next one is going to have form breakdown) in a rep goal scheme. On the day you finally make all the reps in all your sets, keep going to failure, past goal, on your last set only. Next session you add weight and cut volume, to start progressing reps and sets again. This is how we used to train in our family in the 1960s and 70s from the 1930s training manual that came with our Dad's barbells in the 1940s. Interesting to note that everyone was "natty" back then and this worked for everyone.
Getting strong and jacked is simple, not easy, but simple. People like to make cop outs and overthink things, I'm all for science but when you're being a geek about the minutae of exercise selection and RIR / RPE (I have no issue with RIR as long as you've actually fully gone to failure and know how it feels) and never sticking to anything, thats what irks me, I've been there and done that and spent too long making 0 progress. What you're describing is just classic wave loading volume, building up to a high volume peak and then dropping the reps back and increasing the weight (like a wave) which will in turn lower fatigue and lower the volume until X amount of weeks when you build back up again without having to worry too much. Your dad must have been a strong dude and you will be/are too.
One of the biggest beginner mistakes is not learning to fail I think. You kinda have to fail all your lifts at least once as a beginner to know what it feels and looks like. Also that dark place stuff is good too if you can channel it into your effort. Btw it's better to fail as a beginner because the weight is light af so being pinned under 135 for a bench press is not an issue at all just roll it off no problem.
This is what I had to do. I saw so many programs with RIR and RPE and I was always wondering "wtf does that mean?" For the first month or so of my training I never explored it. But then I took a shoulder press to failure one day, it took about 10 extra reps, BLEW my mind! I took a minute to really process how my delts felt, and just chased that feeling with every exercise, every workout and now I have a good idea of where that is for my different muscle groups.
RPE & RIR can be a great way to measure how hard you’re working (especially for more experienced people), but the issue is that it’s highly individualistic.
I'm not sure it's a good measure, I've seen guys saying RPE 8-9 and the last rep was as fast as the first I trained someone just yesterday that declared he was done at rep 8, I pushed him to carry on and he got 14reps with good form!
@@davidhoskins6799 When I train those who are new to lifting I don’t use RIR. They almost always underestimate their personal abilities because they aren’t used to feeling uncomfortable.
@@Mfitzy I see the same thing, I actually think bar speed with good form is a better indicator. If the weight is still flying up, I am making you do more
I watched Mike's video yesterday and thought, "wow, his point of failure and mine are vastly different". Basically the same rep speed on the first and last rep, that's something I can't do when I'm close to failure. 🏋️♂️
RIR/RPE measures are theoretically useful, but we do need to keep in mind the limitations in application Addendum: if you simply declare that the weight is "light weight, baby" or "ain't nothin', but a peanut," then you will train with optimal SFR
Anybody that regularly trains to failure knows that Mike is wrong. Like Lyle said, 0 RIR is essentially the same as performing a one rep max; bar speed slows.
I think it's useful to draw a distinction between failing at low-rep sets and failing at high-rep sets. Failing in the former is much more likely to be technical - failing despite wanting to complete a rep and applying maximal exertion in the effort - while failing in the latter is more likely to be volitional - giving up because the 'burn' was too painful, although you had it within you to complete another rep.
Yes, if I see 1.5, 2.0 seconds for a double on a close grip bench press and they say it's 0-1 RIR I usually don't try to debate them. Because it's possible for failure to sneak up on you and the failure is real. But for a set of 15 with zero slowing at all, volitional, every time.
My experienced rant. Best free weight exercises to fail: - weighted pull ups/dips/push ups, biceps curls and overhead press, splits, , and not so tiring. -Not bad, but potentialy injure: deadlift, bar rows (you'll cheat before fail), front squat. -Bad idea to fail: back squat(special low bar), bench press&incline bench and leg press.
I do actually think it is plausible to fail on a bench, squat, etc. As long as you have safety bars, I don't think it _can_ be an issue. I think as long as you've exposed yourself to failure attempts, and have 'practiced' safe ways to fail, I think it's ok to go there sometimes?
@@chadliampolley6991 oh, of course, with safety bars the danger comes down. I think you have to reach failure to really know the feeling at the true reps before it, in order to manage the most accurate RIR (or RPE). But in terms of progress, i think years make gains, everybody at his pace, and it's not really necessary to get toasted frecuently. For example, i like to fail in some of the "secure exercises" i mentioned above when i have this mindset, to have fun or end the session with that stupid smile on my face 😅😅. However, to reach failure at the beginning of a workout it's not so funny 🤭🤭 Peace
@@carletes13 I once failed in high bar squat and will never forget. Have you tried failure on leg press ? Is there a possibility to press with the arms onto the legs in order to push the last rep? I´ve never tried or seen this live and am curious if it works
When I started lifting, just doing benchpress off of a normal flat bench and no safeties, I definitely had to keep some RIR (unless I had a good spotter with me). Now, with a squat rack in my garage and some nice safeties, I can basically go as hard as I want on bench and if I get stuck (aka fail halfway in a rep), you just leave the bar on the safeties. Same is true for squatting. I wouldn't want to go to failure on a back squat without pins or safety arms (you might be able to dump it backward, but I've never tried), but if you're doing front squats it's really easy to dump those without much issue. I'll still put the safeties out on my rack for front squats as I use them to gauge my depth. Rows and deadlifts are probably compounds you can more or less safely go to failure. Some machine compounds aren't great to fail on, either (hack squats / leg press)... but most isolation machines have almost no risk to doing so. Mike does a good job of highlighting how much internal drive can change your performance. I think, in an emergency, you can summon some unreal primal strength...but it literally takes everything you've got.
Excellent video on this. I've been training to failure, or learning to, as part of Mike Mentzer's program, I really enjoy it. And it was nuts to realize I didn't exactly know what failure was before trying it. It's an amazing feeling to dig down and continue until it hurts in the muscle and later hurts in your head and the weight's not moving, just sticking there. Describing it as a "dark place" is perfectly adequate, it certainly feels that way.
I think it's really good to do a true AMRAP occasionally as it fits into your programming and is safe to do so. With proper intensity it can be a really good check to see if you're sandbagging your sets. :)
I think one thing to consider with Olympic lifters not doing grinding reps or coming close to failure is that they are doing highly technical lifts, with a high degree of difficulty, which is why they live in the triple, doubles, and singles world. Form can break down quickly in snatch and C&J. Greater chance of injury. And, absolutely explosive training is extremely taxing.
Geoff this is the same as your other video. Mike says that 3rd set was 0 RIR, when it was really 2-3 RIR. I know his arms started vibrating in the last rep, thats only because he was in the hardest point of the rep. If he did a 4 second rep after that, it would've still been considered a proper rep. I mean especially since hes using a leg press, if he was at true 0 RIR he would've collapsed onto the floor. Mike is just trying to dance around the subject. Although he was right about those 1st and 2nd sets.
Great video. I usually push the bigger compound lifts close to failure, they get a bit "grindy", but I don't want to dump a squat or have the bar end up on my chest when benching. But isolation movements i.e. dumbbell curls, leg extensions, etc. I'll push to true failure. Seems to manage fatigue better and I can get in more volume that way.
Yaaas Geoffrey verity schofield has entered the discussion once again. Love it. When first watching RP's video I didn't think he's gone to failure at any point in the video.
I train to the point I’m going all jittery, it’s cool because I also provide entertainment for the rest of the gym(jokes on them though cause I’m getting the worth out of my gym membership)
I think he should've picked an exercise where he can safely fail without getting trapped beneath the weight so we can see his real RIR on those sets and how significantly his bar speed slows down on his last reps. He picked an exercise where it's never safe to go all out... It was also bad that he picked squatting type movement for a lot of reps which requires a lot of cardio, he probably got out of breath. Usually if you breath 3-4 times before you start the squat rep you can grind out few more reps even if you think you were going to die the previous reps and still not go to failure.
One thing I did notice is once Mike got into rage mode, his reps started going much faster across the board. He's probably pacing himself quite a bit at the lower levels. I'm assuming he's using the same weight for the 3 sets as they're trying to make a clear comparison.
I think everyone knows the reason Mike can build muscle stopping 10 reps from failure. No natural can train 10 reps from failure and build a significant amount of muscle pass the novice stage.
For me personally this is how I judge it: If there isn't a slow grinder at the end of the set, then I didn't work hard enough I've seen other people declare RPE 8-9 and the last rep was less than 1 second... no way are you close to failure Interestingly it's seems to be guys that advocate higher volumes doing this
I've been doing squats to actual concentric failure with and without a rack. I just figured it wouldn't be dangerous because with a rack, I just gently lower it and without one I bail. I do actually think about how I'll bail in order to not d*e. So I don't think it's that dangerous, at least not at my strength level. The biggest danger is damaging equipment or people around you. A danger I don't have to worry about. (Jamal Browner bailed low bar just fine too) To talk about rep speed... I'm not in anyway trying to defend nor argue against Mike. I think Mike should have chosen an exercise he can fail safely on, or set up something where he wouldn't get hurt on this one. If Mike showed himself *actually* failing with high rep speed, I think more people would be willing to believe that his failure just looks different from most. I find it hard to believe that someone of Mike's training age and training background doesn't know how to go to actual failure. But at the same, he would need to show it so he prove once and for all that his failure is just faster. But anyways on to the point. This is just a curiosity I have. Izzy Narveas posted a video a couple years ago where he was trying to explain how RPE looks for different lifters. He posted one of his clients (who was a very fast and explosive lifter) doing a set of 10. The very last rep was fast (faster than most lifters' first rep if I remember correctly), but not as fast as his own first rep. But when he attempted the next rep he failed. I think he's since deleted that video because I've been looking for it a couple weeks ago and just can't find it. Long story short, he was saying stuff like many factors beyond absolute bar velocity affecting where you fail or not. Something along the lines of "Using relative rep speed, not absolute rep speed". So you would compare the speed of rep to that of the speed of your first rep. Along with sticking points and other contentions such as muscle fibre type, neuromuscular explosiveness and so on. It makes sense, and he provided evidence in the form of an *advanced* trainee (think it was over 4 or 500lbs). But he was speaking in the context of strength athletes, who will generally try to lift faster and harder than a bodybuilder. So it would be a little different in cases like this. You're allowed to take it with a grain of salt because I can't provide the video. But still, what do you think about this?
It's possible. Again, can depend on the exercise. It's difficult in general to assess RIR, and not everyone can grind through a lift. And relative rep speed is important, so me comparing deadlifts to a leg press isn't 100% the same, as the mechanics are different, as I mentioned. I do think, however, in many cases, if someone isn't slowing at all (ALL reps between 1.2s and 1.4s) it's likely not 0 RIR. Heck, his middle effort set slowed more. So I completely understand the point Lyle is making. And yes, if the set of 15 was exactly the same and he failed the 16th, obviously...it was 0RIR. Finally, it's possible to bail from squats, yes. I just still generally don't advise going to failure on 'em. It's a good skill to have, especially without a power rack, but also can mess up your floor potentially, or the footsies of people nearby.
Here's the thing: Mike can try to redefine failure to keep from admitting that I'm right but I was VERY specific about what I was talking about which was pure physiological muscular failure. Not technical failure, not his babbling about real world failure, whatever the f that means. Physiological task failure = an inability to complete another full range repetition despite providing a maximal effort. It means doing rep after rep until you fail despite a 100% effort. I spent 6 articles defining my terms exactly as such. Mike is playing verbal silly buggers as usual because it's all he has now that he's past the personal attack, logical fallacy stage of defending the indefensible.. Even Zourdo's ORIGINAL RIR paper defines 0 RIR thus: For instance, a 10 RPE represents ‘max effort’ or no more repetitions could be performed." It doesn't mean stopping because you choose to. It doens't mean defining failure as "I don't want to do the last 3 grindy reps." Mike hasn't shown that in any video. He got closer in his most recent video but until he actually attempts a rep and fails, he's just blowing smoke like he alway does. So all Mike has succeeded in doing is what he always does: use semantics to talk in circles and confuse people. While he continues to mislead his 10's of thousands of viewers by telling them that 3-5 RIR is really 0 RIR because of semantic game playing. Oh yeah: who the hell are you?
For me when I get that mental block that kinda stops me from going to failiure, I put the weight down for 5-10 secs then hop back in to push out a few more reps and repeat that until I feel like I really can't do it anymore
I think doing a high rep armrap set is valuable before deciding working sets or an exercise. For example, i could do 12 reps of 105kg in the bench press, so I will do 3 sets of 10 with this weight. Hell I could probably even do 4 sets of 10, with the last set being to failure. Whereas if I trained to faliure I'd probably get 12, 9, 7, 5, and would be much more fatigued in other following exercises
I've taken ohp to failure where it stalls at forehead level and moves not an inch past. it's like I'm pushing against an actual ceiling. but getting pinned at the bottom of squat or bench just scares me like nothing else
Olympic weightlifters are actually not ultra fast twitch type 2b, the majority of their fibers fall under type 2a which is the intermediate. Otherwise they would not be able to handle the trainings they partake in where one exerts near maximal power production on daily basis. Not to mention that sport specific training causes fiber type change and aerobic/anaerobic adaption to some degree. Although it's necessary to have a natural genetical alignment for your sport to have a shot at becoming an elite.
I agree with you for legs mostly. An experienced lifter can basically do however many reps they want on quads based on the amount of hatred you have inside you that day. However on every other muscle group, the RIR swing is NOT that much. I cannot get angry and do 10 extra bench reps. Maybe a couple
Dunno about the chaos and destruction guy, but Vasiliy Alexeev is the one who said you should not always train on the nerve. I did the same thing - no hyping up before a hard lift. It never helped me a whole lot even at a meet, and anything you could lift while calm, you're guaranteed to be able to lift when you got a shot of adrenaline at the competition.
I think the problem with using low rpe is that most people limit themselves to a limited number of sets, maybe only 3-4. If theses people could have just doubled the number of sets, they could have done more volume. Sheiko's programs are mostly low rpe if only seen in individual sets, but when you have 15 sets of bench and 15 sets of squats at 50-80%, it would be pretty fatiguing even though it looks easy on paper.
Mike’s information is great, but his commentary on his own training makes no sense and contradicts his advice. He clarifies that he will only be demonstrating technical failure, but labels set 2 as RIR 0-1 then proceeds to get ~5 extra reps on set 3?? How can two examples of technical failure have such a big difference in total reps with speed and control being constant between the two sets? If one set was to be labeled as failure (RIR 0), it would be more accurate to label set 3 as such; this could only mean that set 2 would be a RIR 5-6 set. This is rather confusing, as he says in the video that he advises non-beginners to train at the intensity of set 2. I'm sure he doesn't believe that training at RIR 5-6 is optimal (he advises RIR 2-3 in other videos). He also didn’t really hit failure in any set according to his definition which is when “you attempt to do a repetition with perfect technique and fail”. There wasn’t a single attempt he failed both in terms of technique and fatigue.
For me, I know I'm at my limit when not only do I involuntarily shout, I also start getting the first signs of a ringing in my ears - it graduates to an actual ringing in my ears (technically, it's likely produced by my brain, but it certainly feels like it's coming from my ears and all around me) that drowns out all other sounds once I finish the set, which can last up to two-three minutes (usually under one minute, though). I don't usually go that hard, but for a few exercises I do make that effort (especially on weighted back extensions). Pretty sure it's not deadly dangerous (I did look into it and it seems mostly harmless), but I'm not taking any chances with fainting, throwing up, or macro muscle tearing - which is probably what would follow if I kept pushing my luck past the above explained point. Mind you, on the weighted back extension this reaction seems to kick in before mechanical failure, but that's what total volume is for.
Technically none of the sets were to failure. None of those by Mike, or Dan Green or Stephi. Even hard efforts by most people are volitional, the desire to stop overtakes the desire to keep going. That's 99%+ of the reason a set stops, because people chose to.
I think another issue is people being less intentional with form and using that as an out so that they can call it quits at "technical" failure. I believe you have mastered your craft when technical failure is the same as absolute failure. In practice, the only difference between the two should be the range of motion you can achieve
so is it willpower or a skill or can´t we define those individual variations yet? I also observed with intermediate/advanced people that sets really differ. some people decrease gradually in bar speed for example an 10 RM max. others have like 8 same reps in terms of speed and then all of a sudden it gets very slow and they grind the last two into complete failure.
"...learned..." This. I did ballet as a youngster, where in class - and performance - you do the jump or move on the beat, every time. The music won't slow down for you, no matter how tired you are. Plus, you're not even allowed to show the effort on your face. (Imagine a grunting, swearing swan princess: funny, but not classical! And before you say ballet isn't physically testing, try it, I dare you.) I tend to bring the same ethos to the gym though I do allow myself some grimacing these days. As for failure, at my age I'm more concerned about whether that stabbing, tearing pain is going to turn into an actual injury on the next rep. Being able to say I'm tough enough to train to failure isn't worth three months out with a torn shoulder. So I prefer volitional failure i.e. stopping before my tendons do it for me. Of course it's tantalising not knowing if I could have done one more, but it's just not worth it.
Tbh i do believe his last set was 0 rir, rep speed is a poor measurement for some people. I'm similar to mike, especially with my chest, i'll do a normal rep and then suddenly fail on the next one without the rep speed decreasing at all.
Sure, rep speed isn’t always indicative of failure. However, Mike defined technical failure (0 RIR) to be “when you attempt a repetition with perfect technique and fail”. He didn’t have a failed rep
@@mhan4875 yeah but you can't do that on certain exercises and machines. You don't want to get stuck in the hack squat for example and if i bench without a spotter i'm gonna stop before that last failed rep. If you know your body you know when that failed rep is coming.
This gives me new perspective on something. I recently started barbell squatting, been doing lowish rep sets, I have perfect eccentric control but nearly every rep on the way up has at least .5-1 second of hanging in the sticking point even though I end up banging out 5-8 reps with the weight. Does this mean my form is technically wrong and I need a bit less weight to practice more smooth concentrics or am I thinking too hard and giving enough effort?
The brain sends signal telling you to stop, and it takes a bit of willpower to push through. It doesn’t get easier, you just develop a stronger willpower muscle. This however needs to be balanced with your lifestyle, because channeling willpower is draining. How much will power you need to tap into is inversely correlated to the volume you can do. And if you’re willpower is being tapped for other goals outside of the gym, then it can really hamper your gains. This make choosing frequency and intensity balance very important for long term success.
The idea of stimulus time have one big issue. You take into account only the time in the gym. But form my experience, if I train close to failure with the big lifts then I need to sleep one our more the next night. And the hours after my training my physical and intellectual capability is diminished. That my result in more “stolen” time then saved in the gym.
I knew the RIR issue was a misunderstanding... Because the failure looks different from a person to a person is so true when you consider that failure is being reached anyways (pain tolerance, loudiness and facial expressions varies from a person to a person)
RIR is too blurry for me, to begin with... I found your video about 'underrated forms of progressive overload' much more intuitive and precise, than Mikes method. I like Mike, but no way I could predict the exact RIR, even though I'm not that unexperienced lifter.
i think the RPE and RIR is def not something for beginners. I started to pay more attention to it because i train hard. So if i always train hard i need to take a week off every 4 months. which i absolutely hate.
Isn't it possible that for Mike specifically he tends to just abruptly fail on sets? What I mean is something similar to what happens in the overhead press. The last rep of the set still has pretty good speed, but then you try to go for another and you just suddenly fail, even though you felt good for more. Maybe it's just an individual thing?
If he does, I think it would be informative and enlightening to show failure actually happening (on a safer exercise). That would, of course, shut up a lot of the "haters" and I'd love to see that as a follow up. To have zero slowing between reps in a higher rep set, literally no slowing at all...well, all I can say is that it's very rare and quite unusual. It doesn't have to be an 8 second final rep, but 1.3 seconds, the same as all the others?
@@GVS I have 2 clients who are like this. No Rep Speed decrease at all and i push them to do more, but gun to their head they cant do a single rep after with any smidgen of good technique and hit concentric failure hard. It happens
I think one way to try and get around the "reps in reserve are subjective" is to calculate them from a training max. Set a max at the level of effort you are comfortable working at, bang that number into a one rep max calculator, work out all the weight x reps equivalent to this max and take your reps in reserve off these numbers. I've been messing around with this for a while and have been loving it. I do 3x5 with 15 RIR 1x5-9 with a 10RM (calculated from training max not real max), then 2-5x10 with 10 RIR.
I can't be the only one that thinks mike's response is kinda bullshit? The main criticism people had with his use of RIR was that failure can mean different things, and that he was not going to true failure. He then made a response video were he did multiple sets that WEREN'T to failure, literally proving the points that people were trying to make. He also said things like "you were a fucking idiot" if you didn't agree with him, instead of backing up his claims with evidence. Then he made a second video where he explains that there actually ARE different types of failure. Then in this video on the third set that he calls 'true failure'... He doesn't even go to TRUE failure. In the second video he acts like the whole time he's been saying that 'RIR can be on a spectrum', and that 'his sets in the first video were failure but not true muscular failure.' But he WASNT saying that. He was called out, and then instead of making the video that he just made to clarify what he was saying.... He called everyone that disagreed with him 'fucking idiots'. This whole situation makes me question his integrity.
A bit late to the party, but hey w/e. RIR/RPE are good in concept but the scales are as you say highly individual, but same goes for bar speed. Personally I tend to hit a wall suddenly within 1-2 reps close to complete failure. For example I was benching yesterday, first 6 reps are all consistently around 1-2 seconds each, no. 7 gets slower and the last 8th rep I did grind for good 5 seconds (with the spotter shouting at me). To me all these concepts interact and should not be used separately, using them all together you could get a decent look at how much effort a trainee is putting in from their personal view as well as having measures for actual semi-reliable data points. There is probably a need for some research going into that taking all of these into account.
RIR is a great of a tool as any other tool is - I'll probably one day open my own youtube channel and make a comment on this but honestly, science isn't a acurate as you represent it. Except for exact science. AAAANY other form of "...logy" such as kinesiology is a proxy to the truth and it is ever developing as humans change trough (de)evolution and it is only trying to figure out some general rules, and there will always be at least 2%-49% of people on margins. Usually closer to 2% but technically you can still have majority people with 51%...And that being said, can you imagine in 3000 years of sedintary lifestyle or kiborgysation or gene doping or whatever crazy shit can in theory go on, how things could in some wild theory change in sports performance? How many research do you have where you don't have some kinds of screening tests? Most. How many research on "general population" have WADA doping test? None. Why? Too expensive. And if someone has a huge financial interest, can you trust WADA test? They are carried out by people who can be influenced by a bag of money under the table... And for most of the research, thats ok. Buuut there is that one guy who is considered "natural" and has had amazing results and he is considered as a margin and has taken into the statistic of averages. And this can go on with any deviation. Have you ever done some research that has been published or peer reviewed? And do you know what "logical fallacies" are? If you do, you know that if someone told you to find any possible logical issue in any research that you'd at least find one. Most of research are limited by money, time,technology,accuracy and interest. And probably some more issues that aren't on the top of my mind. I can go on, but you get my point. It is all proxy.
I don't think that I go all out most of the time. I've popped blood vessels in my eyes and broke a tooth during a set，but this are very rare cases. After most of my sets I start loosing my balance and ability to see clearly. And yet I don't thin I train hard enough in comparison to other people.
A while back I watched a video of @fortitude_training about bar speed. I was not having the slowing reps, I always hit a wall. I can feel it coming and know I will be stuck the next rep. To someone watching it looks like I quit. After commenting back and forth with @fortitude_training a couple of times I decided to try creatine to raise my ATP. I have since tried it and stopped it and that is the cause. I'm going to go back on creatine as soon as my order arrives. This may not apply to everyone because I have some health issues but might be the reason behind some people's inability to do slow grinding reps. It seems to be for me.
@@GVS I understand dead stop exercises aren't rest pause. It's my observation that these exercises allow for rests between reps, as if they were rest pause. Furthermore, deadlifts allow even more rest considering theyre eccentric free. The reset between reps allows for even more rest, effectively turning them into rest pause singles. Rest pause doesnt consist of 2 min rests either. Rest pause rests are well under a minute. Small muscles start to recuperate after 5 secs, while larger ones may take around 15.
@@boxerfencer of course, but that's unavoidable when doing deadlifts so I'm not sure it's a valid criticism. It might mean that deadlifting for reps especially with sumo allows higher reps than a calculator predicts but that's something sort of inherent to the exercise, which was kind of my point, that a calculator isn't everything.
@@GVS it's important to point out because what you're doing is comparing apples to oranges, when throwing deadlifts into the mix of bodybuilding exercises, which are not free of eccentrics nor have a reset between reps. Although i think israetel should be challenged on his inconsistent and convoluted presentation of 0 RIR, your illustration isn't a fair comparison. To put it another way, the pedagogical story of after having reached failure, being able to squat more if a gun is held to a lifters head, is idiotic because, allowing for long enough inter-rep pauses and clustering of reps, as with deadlifts, he'll always be able to do more reps than predicted with a consistent pace. Eventually, regular sets degenerate into rest pause. It's a natural progression and it's a straw man, and really an argument for rest pause, not standard sets nor RIR. The RM with a given %1RM or "calculator" fails to account for the amount of rest pause reps you can do with a % of 1RM because it was never created to account for it. It may be imprecise or vary from person to person or exercise to exercise, but it can be ameliorated by fine tuning and isn't evidence of uselessness. Plainly put, a tool can't very well be broken if you're using it for a use it was never intended.
The whole point of mikes RIR is to make sure people don't overtrain and burn out. Which they always do because of stupid people saying your not training hard enough. lmao just so stupid.
I'd like to see him actually fail - attempting another rep and not being able to complete it. And yes, do it on a safe exercise, like maybe a machine bicep curl where you can safely grind and miss the last rep. Technical failure is fine. I have a lot of respect for Mike. But I agree that his lack of grinding on his stated 0 (technical) RIR doesn't pass the common sense test. Even with technical failure, the last rep should be a GRIND.
I think t could be 0 RIR for him, I noticed many of the roided up body builders are in terrible shape, even their muscles would cramp up if they did more.
13:42 by all laws of exercises science, there is no way Stephanie should be able to do more than 1 rep. She does do it since she cares not what humans think is impossible
Genuine query/request: Can anyone here show me (give ref. reg.) any study correlating/associating RIR/RPE with bar speed. I'd be genuinely interested in knowing. Thanks in advance to those who respond to help.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961270/ www.researchgate.net/publication/277891585_Novel_Resistance_Training-Specific_RPE_Scale_Measuring_Repetitions_in_Reserve www.researchgate.net/publication/303635224_Application_of_the_Repetitions_in_Reserve-Based_Rating_of_Perceived_Exertion_Scale_for_Resistance_Training Searching "speed" or better yet "velocity" should turn up some pretty air tight stuff.
@Geoffrey Verity Scholfield Sorry, I didn't finish my thought - I was wondering if natural lifters can knock out grindy reps like that without repercussions.
@@olympic-gradelurker I don't see why it would really make a huge difference. Perhaps some endocrinological differences yes, but overall I don't think natural lifters lack the ability to train hard, near failure, to failure or past failure, when it makes sense.
@@betterlifeptstudio7314 yeah, on heavy %1RM lifts, which is why the guy who invented the system, Mike Tuchscherer, speaks of using RPE/RIR on doubles and triples. It's not made for higher rep sets, because other factors get involved, such as endurance/fatigue, which can creep up on you unexpectedly and cut a set short, which is what I think the speaker is trying to get at with his criticism of the %1RM model, although I disagree on how he goes about it. That said, there is still is a way to use RPE and RIR with high rep sets, only no one truly knows the system to speak to it.
You should be skilled at lifting such that you’re hitting concentric and technical failure at the same time. If this seems impossible to anyone, you’re not practiced enough at maintaining tension thru your entire body while performing every lift you do.
@@sadiewoodley255 Perhaps these people pay more attention to their program than they do to each rep/set during their workouts. Achieving this level of movement proficiency has always seemed like a more useful way to envision the mind muscle connection to me.
I think you might misinterpret the "at the end of a mesocycle"...the week before this "let´s visit the dark side"-week is stressful in terms of volume but you keep at least 2 RIR. So...I do not feel that exhausted when I go into this week...yes, I do not like this week...but hey, I am not here to go Nordic Walking. But yeah, I agree...if you, for some reasons, feel very exhausted and kinda beaten...do not try this at home...or the gym. You might get too close to really visiting the dark side ;-)
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He says 1-0 rir technical failure. Meaning if he cant do another rep exactly the same as the previous reps without some small deviation in the predetermined technique, then he stops it there. It's very difficult and neurologically stimulating to mirror your reps with strictness and "bar speed". Its also a safe way to hypertrophy train.
@@antonsanmartin511 There was no breakdown in technique, OR slowing in bar speed. None. Getting a slow rep IS NOT a breakdown in technique. It is a byproduct of fatigue. It is what happens to EVERYONE as failure approaches, whether absolute or technical.
It is not "neurologically stimulating" to mirror your reps in speed, it means you weren't at failure and were sandbagging the early reps by holding back, both of which are actually much EASIER on the nervous system.
So, I can't say I agree with you.
@@GVS I agree that a significant slowing of bar speed is an indicator of approaching failure when you are training relatively explosively or specifically for strength in most cases. But when it comes to hypertrophy training, tempo can be factored in as part of the technique, at least for this method of training.
So a signifigant deviation from the predetermined tempo is a kind of technical failure for this methodology. Mike's video you showed is a good example of this, you'll notice that "bar speed" is very controlled and stays basically the same throughout all three sets, even the "dark place" set. That style of hypertrophy training is physically demanding, requires focus, and is a different type of RIR training so to speak.
@@antonsanmartin511 I understand what you are saying, he's controlling the rep speed, in order to foster a mind muscle connection and time under tension. But I still completely and utterly reject the idea that this is actually failure. Failure to maintain rep speed is failure to maintain rep speed, but it is *not* failure in the way typically defined, he even said this himself.
The definition of failure, even technical, is very clear. There's no need to twist it around and make everything seem like failure when it ain't.
I've preached technical failure for decades. My main goal is to get folks from volitional to at least one technical per exercise per workout.
Do you also recommend 15 sets of quads in a workout?
Same here.
@@ProphetFear What is this comment referring to?
Steve Shaw has a good take on using failure. He recommends "practicing safe sets," (stopping when your next one is going to have form breakdown) in a rep goal scheme. On the day you finally make all the reps in all your sets, keep going to failure, past goal, on your last set only. Next session you add weight and cut volume, to start progressing reps and sets again. This is how we used to train in our family in the 1960s and 70s from the 1930s training manual that came with our Dad's barbells in the 1940s. Interesting to note that everyone was "natty" back then and this worked for everyone.
Getting strong and jacked is simple, not easy, but simple. People like to make cop outs and overthink things, I'm all for science but when you're being a geek about the minutae of exercise selection and RIR / RPE (I have no issue with RIR as long as you've actually fully gone to failure and know how it feels) and never sticking to anything, thats what irks me, I've been there and done that and spent too long making 0 progress.
What you're describing is just classic wave loading volume, building up to a high volume peak and then dropping the reps back and increasing the weight (like a wave) which will in turn lower fatigue and lower the volume until X amount of weeks when you build back up again without having to worry too much. Your dad must have been a strong dude and you will be/are too.
sounds like training for sissies. if youre not gonna go all the way to failure then dont call it failure. thats just quitting when it gets hard.
One of the biggest beginner mistakes is not learning to fail I think. You kinda have to fail all your lifts at least once as a beginner to know what it feels and looks like. Also that dark place stuff is good too if you can channel it into your effort. Btw it's better to fail as a beginner because the weight is light af so being pinned under 135 for a bench press is not an issue at all just roll it off no problem.
This is what I had to do. I saw so many programs with RIR and RPE and I was always wondering "wtf does that mean?" For the first month or so of my training I never explored it. But then I took a shoulder press to failure one day, it took about 10 extra reps, BLEW my mind! I took a minute to really process how my delts felt, and just chased that feeling with every exercise, every workout and now I have a good idea of where that is for my different muscle groups.
RPE & RIR can be a great way to measure how hard you’re working (especially for more experienced people), but the issue is that it’s highly individualistic.
Absolutely agree.
I'm not sure it's a good measure, I've seen guys saying RPE 8-9 and the last rep was as fast as the first
I trained someone just yesterday that declared he was done at rep 8, I pushed him to carry on and he got 14reps with good form!
@@davidhoskins6799 When I train those who are new to lifting I don’t use RIR. They almost always underestimate their personal abilities because they aren’t used to feeling uncomfortable.
@@Mfitzy I see the same thing, I actually think bar speed with good form is a better indicator.
If the weight is still flying up, I am making you do more
@@davidhoskins6799 rpe is a great tool that just like every other takes practice to fully utilize
I watched Mike's video yesterday and thought, "wow, his point of failure and mine are vastly different". Basically the same rep speed on the first and last rep, that's something I can't do when I'm close to failure. 🏋️♂️
RIR/RPE measures are theoretically useful, but we do need to keep in mind the limitations in application
Addendum: if you simply declare that the weight is "light weight, baby" or "ain't nothin', but a peanut," then you will train with optimal SFR
That twerk will forever be in my mind ...
That's something we can't unsee lol
Wait what i didn't see any i was just listening
Anybody that regularly trains to failure knows that Mike is wrong.
Like Lyle said, 0 RIR is essentially the same as performing a one rep max; bar speed slows.
google Shane Hamman and repeat that.
My dream is to, one day, comment on one of your videos before FitLabb beats me to it...
I think it's useful to draw a distinction between failing at low-rep sets and failing at high-rep sets. Failing in the former is much more likely to be technical - failing despite wanting to complete a rep and applying maximal exertion in the effort - while failing in the latter is more likely to be volitional - giving up because the 'burn' was too painful, although you had it within you to complete another rep.
Yes, if I see 1.5, 2.0 seconds for a double on a close grip bench press and they say it's 0-1 RIR I usually don't try to debate them. Because it's possible for failure to sneak up on you and the failure is real. But for a set of 15 with zero slowing at all, volitional, every time.
The thing I appreciated most was the editor's "Hey oohhh". The info was good too though.
I did appreciate the way you addressed muscle fibre type it did actually give me a bit to think about
My experienced rant.
Best free weight exercises to fail:
- weighted pull ups/dips/push ups, biceps curls and overhead press, splits, , and not so tiring.
-Not bad, but potentialy injure: deadlift, bar rows (you'll cheat before fail), front squat.
-Bad idea to fail: back squat(special low bar), bench press&incline bench and leg press.
Sounds like a good idea for a tier video :)
@@GVS For sure you will complete the list😇
I do actually think it is plausible to fail on a bench, squat, etc. As long as you have safety bars, I don't think it _can_ be an issue. I think as long as you've exposed yourself to failure attempts, and have 'practiced' safe ways to fail, I think it's ok to go there sometimes?
@@chadliampolley6991 oh, of course, with safety bars the danger comes down. I think you have to reach failure to really know the feeling at the true reps before it, in order to manage the most accurate RIR (or RPE). But in terms of progress, i think years make gains, everybody at his pace, and it's not really necessary to get toasted frecuently. For example, i like to fail in some of the "secure exercises" i mentioned above when i have this mindset, to have fun or end the session with that stupid smile on my face 😅😅. However, to reach failure at the beginning of a workout it's not so funny 🤭🤭
Peace
@@carletes13 I once failed in high bar squat and will never forget. Have you tried failure on leg press ? Is there a possibility to press with the arms onto the legs in order to push the last rep? I´ve never tried or seen this live and am curious if it works
For a million dollars per rep you can’t tell me he didn’t have 2-3 more reps.
Brother had like 5
When I started lifting, just doing benchpress off of a normal flat bench and no safeties, I definitely had to keep some RIR (unless I had a good spotter with me). Now, with a squat rack in my garage and some nice safeties, I can basically go as hard as I want on bench and if I get stuck (aka fail halfway in a rep), you just leave the bar on the safeties. Same is true for squatting. I wouldn't want to go to failure on a back squat without pins or safety arms (you might be able to dump it backward, but I've never tried), but if you're doing front squats it's really easy to dump those without much issue. I'll still put the safeties out on my rack for front squats as I use them to gauge my depth. Rows and deadlifts are probably compounds you can more or less safely go to failure. Some machine compounds aren't great to fail on, either (hack squats / leg press)... but most isolation machines have almost no risk to doing so.
Mike does a good job of highlighting how much internal drive can change your performance. I think, in an emergency, you can summon some unreal primal strength...but it literally takes everything you've got.
Excellent video on this. I've been training to failure, or learning to, as part of Mike Mentzer's program, I really enjoy it. And it was nuts to realize I didn't exactly know what failure was before trying it. It's an amazing feeling to dig down and continue until it hurts in the muscle and later hurts in your head and the weight's not moving, just sticking there. Describing it as a "dark place" is perfectly adequate, it certainly feels that way.
I think it's really good to do a true AMRAP occasionally as it fits into your programming and is safe to do so. With proper intensity it can be a really good check to see if you're sandbagging your sets. :)
I think one thing to consider with Olympic lifters not doing grinding reps or coming close to failure is that they are doing highly technical lifts, with a high degree of difficulty, which is why they live in the triple, doubles, and singles world. Form can break down quickly in snatch and C&J. Greater chance of injury. And, absolutely explosive training is extremely taxing.
Ah, I meant when they are squatting. Can't really grind the Olympic lifts themselves.
@@GVS well they do it badly in crossfit lol. Sorry man you never specified and I’ve seen some grinder squats with Olympic lifters. They just dump it.
@@safathletics -lets go grind out some clean and press 🙃
Geoff this is the same as your other video. Mike says that 3rd set was 0 RIR, when it was really 2-3 RIR. I know his arms started vibrating in the last rep, thats only because he was in the hardest point of the rep. If he did a 4 second rep after that, it would've still been considered a proper rep. I mean especially since hes using a leg press, if he was at true 0 RIR he would've collapsed onto the floor.
Mike is just trying to dance around the subject. Although he was right about those 1st and 2nd sets.
I was gonna suggest that you do a video on it and here you are!
Great video. I usually push the bigger compound lifts close to failure, they get a bit "grindy", but I don't want to dump a squat or have the bar end up on my chest when benching. But isolation movements i.e. dumbbell curls, leg extensions, etc. I'll push to true failure. Seems to manage fatigue better and I can get in more volume that way.
Until I see Mike go to failure, I will never believe his sets to be RIR 0-1 with that rep speed.
I wasn't looking at the screen and the "hey ohh" fucking scared the shit out of me.
Sorry the editor is an asshole sometimes.
Yaaas Geoffrey verity schofield has entered the discussion once again. Love it.
When first watching RP's video I didn't think he's gone to failure at any point in the video.
I train to the point I’m going all jittery, it’s cool because I also provide entertainment for the rest of the gym(jokes on them though cause I’m getting the worth out of my gym membership)
Lmao
I think he should've picked an exercise where he can safely fail without getting trapped beneath the weight so we can see his real RIR on those sets and how significantly his bar speed slows down on his last reps. He picked an exercise where it's never safe to go all out...
It was also bad that he picked squatting type movement for a lot of reps which requires a lot of cardio, he probably got out of breath. Usually if you breath 3-4 times before you start the squat rep you can grind out few more reps even if you think you were going to die the previous reps and still not go to failure.
Agree, on both points. Getting stuck in a leg press makes it probably the single worst exercise to attempt to go to or close to failure.
I didn't comment right away but it hasn't been an hour yet so algorithm should be happy with this comment :o
One thing I did notice is once Mike got into rage mode, his reps started going much faster across the board. He's probably pacing himself quite a bit at the lower levels. I'm assuming he's using the same weight for the 3 sets as they're trying to make a clear comparison.
Yes I noticed that as well. And I remember seeing some study or another where bellowing or giving a war cry increased force production or rep speed.
My neighbor minds the animal noise and weights clanging, but his complaining brings me joy and workout fuel better than carbs and pre-workout.
yeah and by going a little faster in he's reps he can also get out a few more reps with the same effort. try it and you will see.
I think everyone knows the reason Mike can build muscle stopping 10 reps from failure.
No natural can train 10 reps from failure and build a significant amount of muscle pass the novice stage.
I would be very curious to see an alternate universe where Mike stayed natural and if he could get good results with this, yes.
Did not expect to see my gym in this video. Didn't know Dan was famous haha
this is why i always squat with safety bars
you don't have to worry about failing a rep coz you can just leave it at the bottom
For me personally this is how I judge it:
If there isn't a slow grinder at the end of the set, then I didn't work hard enough
I've seen other people declare RPE 8-9 and the last rep was less than 1 second... no way are you close to failure
Interestingly it's seems to be guys that advocate higher volumes doing this
I am usually very fast right up until failure where I to the observer will suddenly hit a wall. I can feel fatigue building up, however reps are fast.
We train because of our heads not for the body, so of course to grinding failure.
I've been doing squats to actual concentric failure with and without a rack. I just figured it wouldn't be dangerous because with a rack, I just gently lower it and without one I bail. I do actually think about how I'll bail in order to not d*e. So I don't think it's that dangerous, at least not at my strength level. The biggest danger is damaging equipment or people around you. A danger I don't have to worry about. (Jamal Browner bailed low bar just fine too)
To talk about rep speed... I'm not in anyway trying to defend nor argue against Mike. I think Mike should have chosen an exercise he can fail safely on, or set up something where he wouldn't get hurt on this one. If Mike showed himself *actually* failing with high rep speed, I think more people would be willing to believe that his failure just looks different from most. I find it hard to believe that someone of Mike's training age and training background doesn't know how to go to actual failure. But at the same, he would need to show it so he prove once and for all that his failure is just faster.
But anyways on to the point. This is just a curiosity I have. Izzy Narveas posted a video a couple years ago where he was trying to explain how RPE looks for different lifters. He posted one of his clients (who was a very fast and explosive lifter) doing a set of 10. The very last rep was fast (faster than most lifters' first rep if I remember correctly), but not as fast as his own first rep. But when he attempted the next rep he failed. I think he's since deleted that video because I've been looking for it a couple weeks ago and just can't find it.
Long story short, he was saying stuff like many factors beyond absolute bar velocity affecting where you fail or not. Something along the lines of "Using relative rep speed, not absolute rep speed". So you would compare the speed of rep to that of the speed of your first rep. Along with sticking points and other contentions such as muscle fibre type, neuromuscular explosiveness and so on. It makes sense, and he provided evidence in the form of an *advanced* trainee (think it was over 4 or 500lbs).
But he was speaking in the context of strength athletes, who will generally try to lift faster and harder than a bodybuilder. So it would be a little different in cases like this.
You're allowed to take it with a grain of salt because I can't provide the video. But still, what do you think about this?
It's possible. Again, can depend on the exercise. It's difficult in general to assess RIR, and not everyone can grind through a lift. And relative rep speed is important, so me comparing deadlifts to a leg press isn't 100% the same, as the mechanics are different, as I mentioned.
I do think, however, in many cases, if someone isn't slowing at all (ALL reps between 1.2s and 1.4s) it's likely not 0 RIR. Heck, his middle effort set slowed more. So I completely understand the point Lyle is making.
And yes, if the set of 15 was exactly the same and he failed the 16th, obviously...it was 0RIR.
Finally, it's possible to bail from squats, yes. I just still generally don't advise going to failure on 'em. It's a good skill to have, especially without a power rack, but also can mess up your floor potentially, or the footsies of people nearby.
What’s with all the algorithm comments?
Wrong channel guys
We need to come up with some original shtick for GVS
Here's the thing: Mike can try to redefine failure to keep from admitting that I'm right but I was VERY specific about what I was talking about which was pure physiological muscular failure. Not technical failure, not his babbling about real world failure, whatever the f that means.
Physiological task failure = an inability to complete another full range repetition despite providing a maximal effort. It means doing rep after rep until you fail despite a 100% effort.
I spent 6 articles defining my terms exactly as such. Mike is playing verbal silly buggers as usual because it's all he has now that he's past the personal attack, logical fallacy stage of defending the indefensible..
Even Zourdo's ORIGINAL RIR paper defines 0 RIR thus:
For instance, a 10 RPE represents ‘max effort’ or no more repetitions could be performed."
It doesn't mean stopping because you choose to. It doens't mean defining failure as "I don't want to do the last 3 grindy reps." Mike hasn't shown that in any video. He got closer in his most recent video but until he actually attempts a rep and fails, he's just blowing smoke like he alway does.
So all Mike has succeeded in doing is what he always does: use semantics to talk in circles and confuse people. While he continues to mislead his 10's of thousands of viewers by telling them that 3-5 RIR is really 0 RIR because of semantic game playing.
Oh yeah: who the hell are you?
Just a dude, makin' some videos.
I mean it is clearly written in the channel's name 🙃
Obsessed with Mike much lyle?
Snort stuff before a set .. lmfao dude u are funny. Liking the recent consistent content 👍
For me when I get that mental block that kinda stops me from going to failiure, I put the weight down for 5-10 secs then hop back in to push out a few more reps and repeat that until I feel like I really can't do it anymore
Technical failure is the one I like
When is going to true failure appropriate? I've done it a few times before and I was destroyed for the rest of the day. It was like having the flu.
Depends on the exercise, individual, training phase, rep range. If you have that much of a reaction to it, probably not worth it, ever.
I think doing a high rep armrap set is valuable before deciding working sets or an exercise. For example, i could do 12 reps of 105kg in the bench press, so I will do 3 sets of 10 with this weight. Hell I could probably even do 4 sets of 10, with the last set being to failure. Whereas if I trained to faliure I'd probably get 12, 9, 7, 5, and would be much more fatigued in other following exercises
I've taken ohp to failure where it stalls at forehead level and moves not an inch past. it's like I'm pushing against an actual ceiling.
but getting pinned at the bottom of squat or bench just scares me like nothing else
Olympic weightlifters are actually not ultra fast twitch type 2b, the majority of their fibers fall under type 2a which is the intermediate. Otherwise they would not be able to handle the trainings they partake in where one exerts near maximal power production on daily basis.
Not to mention that sport specific training causes fiber type change and aerobic/anaerobic adaption to some degree. Although it's necessary to have a natural genetical alignment for your sport to have a shot at becoming an elite.
I agree with you for legs mostly. An experienced lifter can basically do however many reps they want on quads based on the amount of hatred you have inside you that day.
However on every other muscle group, the RIR swing is NOT that much. I cannot get angry and do 10 extra bench reps. Maybe a couple
Actually failing on squats is dangerous, stupid, and awful. Which is why I've only done it twice.
Dunno about the chaos and destruction guy, but Vasiliy Alexeev is the one who said you should not always train on the nerve.
I did the same thing - no hyping up before a hard lift. It never helped me a whole lot even at a meet, and anything you could lift while calm, you're guaranteed to be able to lift when you got a shot of adrenaline at the competition.
Yup, did a full video on it. I think it's overrated, too.
I think the problem with using low rpe is that most people limit themselves to a limited number of sets, maybe only 3-4. If theses people could have just doubled the number of sets, they could have done more volume. Sheiko's programs are mostly low rpe if only seen in individual sets, but when you have 15 sets of bench and 15 sets of squats at 50-80%, it would be pretty fatiguing even though it looks easy on paper.
19:30 How do you have a upside down Christmas on your throat 😵😵
Mike’s information is great, but his commentary on his own training makes no sense and contradicts his advice. He clarifies that he will only be demonstrating technical failure, but labels set 2 as RIR 0-1 then proceeds to get ~5 extra reps on set 3?? How can two examples of technical failure have such a big difference in total reps with speed and control being constant between the two sets? If one set was to be labeled as failure (RIR 0), it would be more accurate to label set 3 as such; this could only mean that set 2 would be a RIR 5-6 set. This is rather confusing, as he says in the video that he advises non-beginners to train at the intensity of set 2. I'm sure he doesn't believe that training at RIR 5-6 is optimal (he advises RIR 2-3 in other videos).
He also didn’t really hit failure in any set according to his definition which is when “you attempt to do a repetition with perfect technique and fail”. There wasn’t a single attempt he failed both in terms of technique and fatigue.
For me, I know I'm at my limit when not only do I involuntarily shout, I also start getting the first signs of a ringing in my ears - it graduates to an actual ringing in my ears (technically, it's likely produced by my brain, but it certainly feels like it's coming from my ears and all around me) that drowns out all other sounds once I finish the set, which can last up to two-three minutes (usually under one minute, though). I don't usually go that hard, but for a few exercises I do make that effort (especially on weighted back extensions).
Pretty sure it's not deadly dangerous (I did look into it and it seems mostly harmless), but I'm not taking any chances with fainting, throwing up, or macro muscle tearing - which is probably what would follow if I kept pushing my luck past the above explained point. Mind you, on the weighted back extension this reaction seems to kick in before mechanical failure, but that's what total volume is for.
Is volitional failure even failure? it's just... stopping
Technically none of the sets were to failure. None of those by Mike, or Dan Green or Stephi.
Even hard efforts by most people are volitional, the desire to stop overtakes the desire to keep going. That's 99%+ of the reason a set stops, because people chose to.
I think another issue is people being less intentional with form and using that as an out so that they can call it quits at "technical" failure. I believe you have mastered your craft when technical failure is the same as absolute failure. In practice, the only difference between the two should be the range of motion you can achieve
Yes especially on curls, lateral raises, that type of thing. A lot of technical failure that I see is...well...premature capitulation.
what do you mean people have never failed on squats?
How do you know your one-rep max if you don't fail to squat said 1RM+5lb?
23:50 personally, i don't make an effort to visualize mike at all, at any time, but to their own. There's no accounting for taste.
so is it willpower or a skill or can´t we define those individual variations yet? I also observed with intermediate/advanced people that sets really differ. some people decrease gradually in bar speed for example an 10 RM max. others have like 8 same reps in terms of speed and then all of a sudden it gets very slow and they grind the last two into complete failure.
Combination. Some is innate but a lot can be learned.
"...learned..."
This. I did ballet as a youngster, where in class - and performance - you do the jump or move on the beat, every time. The music won't slow down for you, no matter how tired you are. Plus, you're not even allowed to show the effort on your face. (Imagine a grunting, swearing swan princess: funny, but not classical! And before you say ballet isn't physically testing, try it, I dare you.)
I tend to bring the same ethos to the gym though I do allow myself some grimacing these days.
As for failure, at my age I'm more concerned about whether that stabbing, tearing pain is going to turn into an actual injury on the next rep. Being able to say I'm tough enough to train to failure isn't worth three months out with a torn shoulder. So I prefer volitional failure i.e. stopping before my tendons do it for me. Of course it's tantalising not knowing if I could have done one more, but it's just not worth it.
All of Mikes Sets were not even close to Zero reps in Reserve. 😂 thats j joke. Even his last Set was at least 3 reps in Reserve.
Man my life's goal is to get healthy enough to visit the dark place at least semi regularly again
Tbh i do believe his last set was 0 rir, rep speed is a poor measurement for some people. I'm similar to mike, especially with my chest, i'll do a normal rep and then suddenly fail on the next one without the rep speed decreasing at all.
Sure, rep speed isn’t always indicative of failure. However, Mike defined technical failure (0 RIR) to be “when you attempt a repetition with perfect technique and fail”. He didn’t have a failed rep
@@mhan4875 yeah but you can't do that on certain exercises and machines. You don't want to get stuck in the hack squat for example and if i bench without a spotter i'm gonna stop before that last failed rep. If you know your body you know when that failed rep is coming.
@@cimi93x i agree, but just based off his own definition, he did not reach failure
This gives me new perspective on something. I recently started barbell squatting, been doing lowish rep sets, I have perfect eccentric control but nearly every rep on the way up has at least .5-1 second of hanging in the sticking point even though I end up banging out 5-8 reps with the weight. Does this mean my form is technically wrong and I need a bit less weight to practice more smooth concentrics or am I thinking too hard and giving enough effort?
Enkiri is a phenom!
The brain sends signal telling you to stop, and it takes a bit of willpower to push through. It doesn’t get easier, you just develop a stronger willpower muscle.
This however needs to be balanced with your lifestyle, because channeling willpower is draining. How much will power you need to tap into is inversely correlated to the volume you can do.
And if you’re willpower is being tapped for other goals outside of the gym, then it can really hamper your gains. This make choosing frequency and intensity balance very important for long term success.
The idea of stimulus time have one big issue. You take into account only the time in the gym. But form my experience, if I train close to failure with the big lifts then I need to sleep one our more the next night. And the hours after my training my physical and intellectual capability is diminished. That my result in more “stolen” time then saved in the gym.
I knew the RIR issue was a misunderstanding... Because the failure looks different from a person to a person is so true when you consider that failure is being reached anyways (pain tolerance, loudiness and facial expressions varies from a person to a person)
Of course, but at least some slowing in bar speed is pretty universal.
If someone stopped due to pain tolerance, was that really failure, though?
RIR is too blurry for me, to begin with... I found your video about 'underrated forms of progressive overload' much more intuitive and precise, than Mikes method.
I like Mike, but no way I could predict the exact RIR, even though I'm not that unexperienced lifter.
i think the RPE and RIR is def not something for beginners. I started to pay more attention to it because i train hard. So if i always train hard i need to take a week off every 4 months. which i absolutely hate.
Isn't it possible that for Mike specifically he tends to just abruptly fail on sets? What I mean is something similar to what happens in the overhead press. The last rep of the set still has pretty good speed, but then you try to go for another and you just suddenly fail, even though you felt good for more. Maybe it's just an individual thing?
If he does, I think it would be informative and enlightening to show failure actually happening (on a safer exercise). That would, of course, shut up a lot of the "haters" and I'd love to see that as a follow up. To have zero slowing between reps in a higher rep set, literally no slowing at all...well, all I can say is that it's very rare and quite unusual.
It doesn't have to be an 8 second final rep, but 1.3 seconds, the same as all the others?
@@GVS I have 2 clients who are like this. No Rep Speed decrease at all and i push them to do more, but gun to their head they cant do a single rep after with any smidgen of good technique and hit concentric failure hard. It happens
I am kinda the same way, once the bar starts to slow down, that's it, the next rep or the one after wont go anywhere
What I don't get is how you claim technical failure on something like the leg curls or extensions.
Damn I remember going to failure as a beginner
I make better progress day by day, recovering properly & eating healthy
How would you apply this to rest paused sets and go hard past a rep limit
It's a different system when going beyond failure.
Algorithm 💪🏻
Is he wearing two belts? One above the other?
I think one way to try and get around the "reps in reserve are subjective" is to calculate them from a training max.
Set a max at the level of effort you are comfortable working at, bang that number into a one rep max calculator, work out all the weight x reps equivalent to this max and take your reps in reserve off these numbers.
I've been messing around with this for a while and have been loving it. I do 3x5 with 15 RIR 1x5-9 with a 10RM (calculated from training max not real max), then 2-5x10 with 10 RIR.
I can't be the only one that thinks mike's response is kinda bullshit?
The main criticism people had with his use of RIR was that failure can mean different things, and that he was not going to true failure. He then made a response video were he did multiple sets that WEREN'T to failure, literally proving the points that people were trying to make. He also said things like "you were a fucking idiot" if you didn't agree with him, instead of backing up his claims with evidence.
Then he made a second video where he explains that there actually ARE different types of failure.
Then in this video on the third set that he calls 'true failure'... He doesn't even go to TRUE failure.
In the second video he acts like the whole time he's been saying that 'RIR can be on a spectrum', and that 'his sets in the first video were failure but not true muscular failure.'
But he WASNT saying that. He was called out, and then instead of making the video that he just made to clarify what he was saying.... He called everyone that disagreed with him 'fucking idiots'.
This whole situation makes me question his integrity.
Thoughts on Mark RIppetoe?
Would be a full video (probably not on him, but on starting strength).
A bit late to the party, but hey w/e. RIR/RPE are good in concept but the scales are as you say highly individual, but same goes for bar speed. Personally I tend to hit a wall suddenly within 1-2 reps close to complete failure. For example I was benching yesterday, first 6 reps are all consistently around 1-2 seconds each, no. 7 gets slower and the last 8th rep I did grind for good 5 seconds (with the spotter shouting at me). To me all these concepts interact and should not be used separately, using them all together you could get a decent look at how much effort a trainee is putting in from their personal view as well as having measures for actual semi-reliable data points. There is probably a need for some research going into that taking all of these into account.
RIR is a great of a tool as any other tool is - I'll probably one day open my own youtube channel and make a comment on this but honestly, science isn't a acurate as you represent it. Except for exact science. AAAANY other form of "...logy" such as kinesiology is a proxy to the truth and it is ever developing as humans change trough (de)evolution and it is only trying to figure out some general rules, and there will always be at least 2%-49% of people on margins. Usually closer to 2% but technically you can still have majority people with 51%...And that being said, can you imagine in 3000 years of sedintary lifestyle or kiborgysation or gene doping or whatever crazy shit can in theory go on, how things could in some wild theory change in sports performance? How many research do you have where you don't have some kinds of screening tests? Most. How many research on "general population" have WADA doping test? None. Why? Too expensive. And if someone has a huge financial interest, can you trust WADA test? They are carried out by people who can be influenced by a bag of money under the table... And for most of the research, thats ok. Buuut there is that one guy who is considered "natural" and has had amazing results and he is considered as a margin and has taken into the statistic of averages. And this can go on with any deviation. Have you ever done some research that has been published or peer reviewed? And do you know what "logical fallacies" are? If you do, you know that if someone told you to find any possible logical issue in any research that you'd at least find one. Most of research are limited by money, time,technology,accuracy and interest. And probably some more issues that aren't on the top of my mind.
I can go on, but you get my point. It is all proxy.
Are isometrics better for abs compared to reps? ex: holding a plank vs crunches.
I sure hope so coz planks (with weights) are the only thing i'm doing for abs
Do both
I already have visible abs, just wanna make em stronger.
Depends on the intensity of the exercise.
I know that as long as I progressively overload I'll get stronger, but I really don't do much abs so if I do do them what would be better?
I don't think that I go all out most of the time. I've popped blood vessels in my eyes and broke a tooth during a set，but this are very rare cases. After most of my sets I start loosing my balance and ability to see clearly. And yet I don't thin I train hard enough in comparison to other people.
That's pretty hard training.
Have you ever purposely gone to failure on an exercise like the squat?
Yea. But I don't really advise it. Not worth it.
He said it because it's funny. Enjoy.
11:20
Bar looks so thick
What’s the name he mentions at 21:31?
are you eyes 2 different colours?
A while back I watched a video of @fortitude_training about bar speed. I was not having the slowing reps, I always hit a wall. I can feel it coming and know I will be stuck the next rep. To someone watching it looks like I quit. After commenting back and forth with @fortitude_training a couple of times I decided to try creatine to raise my ATP. I have since tried it and stopped it and that is the cause. I'm going to go back on creatine as soon as my order arrives. This may not apply to everyone because I have some health issues but might be the reason behind some people's inability to do slow grinding reps. It seems to be for me.
0 RIR? May I lol
Geoff: 12:04 10 reps at 90% 1m is rest pause
I assume green has small raisins, and steffy probably has another problem, but that's just me.
Wasn't really rest pause. I mean, it was dead stop, and on a deadlift, but it wasn't like a 2 minute set.
@@GVS I understand dead stop exercises aren't rest pause. It's my observation that these exercises allow for rests between reps, as if they were rest pause.
Furthermore, deadlifts allow even more rest considering theyre eccentric free. The reset between reps allows for even more rest, effectively turning them into rest pause singles.
Rest pause doesnt consist of 2 min rests either. Rest pause rests are well under a minute. Small muscles start to recuperate after 5 secs, while larger ones may take around 15.
@@boxerfencer of course, but that's unavoidable when doing deadlifts so I'm not sure it's a valid criticism. It might mean that deadlifting for reps especially with sumo allows higher reps than a calculator predicts but that's something sort of inherent to the exercise, which was kind of my point, that a calculator isn't everything.
@@GVS it's important to point out because what you're doing is comparing apples to oranges, when throwing deadlifts into the mix of bodybuilding exercises, which are not free of eccentrics nor have a reset between reps.
Although i think israetel should be challenged on his inconsistent and convoluted presentation of 0 RIR, your illustration isn't a fair comparison.
To put it another way, the pedagogical story of after having reached failure, being able to squat more if a gun is held to a lifters head, is idiotic because, allowing for long enough inter-rep pauses and clustering of reps, as with deadlifts, he'll always be able to do more reps than predicted with a consistent pace. Eventually, regular sets degenerate into rest pause. It's a natural progression and it's a straw man, and really an argument for rest pause, not standard sets nor RIR.
The RM with a given %1RM or "calculator" fails to account for the amount of rest pause reps you can do with a % of 1RM because it was never created to account for it. It may be imprecise or vary from person to person or exercise to exercise, but it can be ameliorated by fine tuning and isn't evidence of uselessness. Plainly put, a tool can't very well be broken if you're using it for a use it was never intended.
@@boxerfencer most of their FIRST REPS were slower than Mike's LAST REP of 1.3 seconds, so I really can't take that argument that seriously.
The whole point of mikes RIR is to make sure people don't overtrain and burn out. Which they always do because of stupid people saying your not training hard enough. lmao just so stupid.
I'd say way more people don't train as hard as they should.
I'd like to see him actually fail - attempting another rep and not being able to complete it. And yes, do it on a safe exercise, like maybe a machine bicep curl where you can safely grind and miss the last rep. Technical failure is fine. I have a lot of respect for Mike. But I agree that his lack of grinding on his stated 0 (technical) RIR doesn't pass the common sense test. Even with technical failure, the last rep should be a GRIND.
Mike is a legend
I think t could be 0 RIR for him, I noticed many of the roided up body builders are in terrible shape, even their muscles would cramp up if they did more.
13:42 by all laws of exercises science, there is no way Stephanie should be able to do more than 1 rep. She does do it since she cares not what humans think is impossible
Genuine query/request: Can anyone here show me (give ref. reg.) any study correlating/associating RIR/RPE with bar speed. I'd be genuinely interested in knowing.
Thanks in advance to those who respond to help.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4961270/
www.researchgate.net/publication/277891585_Novel_Resistance_Training-Specific_RPE_Scale_Measuring_Repetitions_in_Reserve
www.researchgate.net/publication/303635224_Application_of_the_Repetitions_in_Reserve-Based_Rating_of_Perceived_Exertion_Scale_for_Resistance_Training
Searching "speed" or better yet "velocity" should turn up some pretty air tight stuff.
@@GVS Thank you! I shall go thru this article and search with the search strategy you suggested.
Stephie's a monster but I highly doubt she's natural.
Agree, sort of a different topic, though.
@Geoffrey Verity Scholfield Sorry, I didn't finish my thought - I was wondering if natural lifters can knock out grindy reps like that without repercussions.
From a female perspective, that is. If I go that far, I do not recover well.
@@olympic-gradelurker I don't see why it would really make a huge difference. Perhaps some endocrinological differences yes, but overall I don't think natural lifters lack the ability to train hard, near failure, to failure or past failure, when it makes sense.
I remember Greg saying that she's natural but has great genetics 🙄
LOL, he could have gotten at least 5 more reps.
Inb4 jeff comments.
1st set: 0 RIR without effort?! Ok Mike.
2nd set: that was 2 RIR
3rd set: not to failure since velocity didn't change much, meaning no grinder
If you are experienced you have a better perspective on if you can get another rep out. but whatever.
@@betterlifeptstudio7314 yeah, on heavy %1RM lifts, which is why the guy who invented the system, Mike Tuchscherer, speaks of using RPE/RIR on doubles and triples.
It's not made for higher rep sets, because other factors get involved, such as endurance/fatigue, which can creep up on you unexpectedly and cut a set short, which is what I think the speaker is trying to get at with his criticism of the %1RM model, although I disagree on how he goes about it. That said, there is still is a way to use RPE and RIR with high rep sets, only no one truly knows the system to speak to it.
So... Greg Doucette is right. ;)
You should be skilled at lifting such that you’re hitting concentric and technical failure at the same time. If this seems impossible to anyone, you’re not practiced enough at maintaining tension thru your entire body while performing every lift you do.
Agree, I’ve been wondering why no one has talked about this on any video with this debate
@@sadiewoodley255 Perhaps these people pay more attention to their program than they do to each rep/set during their workouts. Achieving this level of movement proficiency has always seemed like a more useful way to envision the mind muscle connection to me.
I think you might misinterpret the "at the end of a mesocycle"...the week before this "let´s visit the dark side"-week is stressful in terms of volume but you keep at least 2 RIR. So...I do not feel that exhausted when I go into this week...yes, I do not like this week...but hey, I am not here to go Nordic Walking. But yeah, I agree...if you, for some reasons, feel very exhausted and kinda beaten...do not try this at home...or the gym. You might get too close to really visiting the dark side ;-)