I hope you have had a good week of trying to become a savage (assume that's the goal, right?).

Anyway, what I wanted to touch on in this email was the concept of "relative intensity" and how you can use it in your training to get better results. Now, first things first, we need to get some definitions out there....

Relative Intensity = Intensity of effort, or the proximity of your effort to your maximum possible effort. 

There are a couple of ways this can be gauged, the most popular being rate of perceived exertion (RPE) and reps in reserve (RIR). For the purpose of this discussion, we will focus on using RIR, as it's probably the easiest to put into practice for weight training.

Basically, you are rating your sets based on the number of repetitions you feel you could have done versus how many you actually did. Therefore, if you did 8 reps with your 10 rep max, you would have done 8 reps with 2 RIR. 

Well, going to failure does have its benefits. You see, repetitions completed closer to failure, where the speed of movement is decreasing, are most likely to result in the best gains. However, if you take all of your sets all the way to failure, then you are going to accumulate a disproportionate amount of fatigue relative to the work that you did. Therefore, if you go to failure early in the session, you compromise the quality of the work you can do in the next session, but beyond that, if you go to failure throughout the session, you will be fatigued for a longer period of time, reducing the potential for you to get into the gym and train at your best in a couple of days.

Well, what it means is that staying a couple of reps from failure on most of your sets in the gym is a pretty good idea. It does NOT mean that your training should be easy. You see, 2 RIR is actually still pretty damn hard, especially across multiple sets. However, I can see how people would think that keeping reps in reserve is just not "hardcore", but allow me to show you that most people are simply not as hardcore as they think anyway....

This study looked at trainees' ability to self select a load they could lift for 10 reps on the bench press. You may think 25 year old, trained men would be more likely to overestimate their strength, but in fact, they were actually able to do an average of 16 reps with what they thought was an appropriate 10 rep weight. Not only that, but when you look at the individual data, the upper end of the range was 21 reps, so that's off by 11 reps. 

The point of the above is to illustrate that you are probably already leaving reps in reserve, even if you don't realise it. If you begin to use RIR more regularly, you likely have a better chance of managing fatigue and accumulating more total repetitions across multiple sets. 

This is how I would implement this with a client (although it's not for all clients, so don't think this is something everyone needs).

Goal - 4 sets of 8-10 reps at 2 RIR

Set 1 - Client hits 8 reps with 2 RIR at 60kg

Set 2 - Client hits 8 reps with 2 RIR at 60kg

Set 3 - Client hits 8 reps with 1 RIR at 60kg*

Set 4 - Client hits 8 reps with 2 RIR at 55kg

*Rather than pushing onto set 4 at 60kg, hitting failure and being fatigued for the remainder of the session, the client would adjust the load slightly, in order to maintain the RIR goal.

This can also be periodised throughout a block of training, but we will talk about that another time.

Hopefully, that helps you out. If you do take something valuable from this, please do let me know. Or, even better, why not share these tips on your Instagram story and tag us, we would love to see that feedback.

Speak soon!

Kind Regards,