Its Time to Retire "ONE MORE REP!"
The popularity of various weight loss challenge game shows on TV gave mainstream popularity to old school gym speak. To be honest, much of it just brought back bad memories. The phrase “one more rep”, in particular is an example of such gym speak. It has since become synonymous with conquering an obstacle or overcoming a challenge, and more frustrating to many of us…injuries.
For the sake of our sanity I think it’s time we decided to retire “one more rep”.
The concept “one more rep” refers to the act of taking an exercise to all out failure. Muscle failure is the point at which the muscles involved in a particular exercise are no longer able to overcome the resistance applied.
Let’s take the Bench Press for example. You get to the 8th rep on a set and you start to struggle a bit. You decide to lower the bar to see if you can eek out just “one more rep”, and you get pinned under the bar. This is muscle failure. Your chest, shoulders and triceps have hit a fatigue threshold, and you can no longer continue moving the weight.
The flaw in this, especially for those of us over 40, is we have a smaller margin of error. As you get closer and closer to muscle failure your form starts to suffer and the smaller muscles that support your joints begin to fail. That’s when the rotator cuff tears occur during a press, or your knees start to buckle in on a squat and your meniscus tears, or your back starts to round a little more and your spine is compromised on a deadlift.
What’s most important to understand about the idiocy of this concept is science has shown it to be unnecessary. That’s right, you DO NOT have to take any exercise to all-out muscle failure to optimize your results. Research tells us that the training response an exercise is best if you simply get close but avoid all-out failure. So why do we feel the need to push to failure? Easy…misinformation, uneducated coaches or trainers, the need to keep the past alive and of course, social media influencers.
There’s a better way.
Good strength coaches and fitness trainers will often use a concept called Repetitions in Reserve (RIR) to monitor intensity and prevent clients/athletes from training to failure. Basically, RIR refers to leaving something “in the tank” at the end of each set.
Effective use of RIR requires being in-touch with your body and your effort. You need to be able to estimate how many additional repetitions you would have been able to complete after stopping a set. For example, let’s say you complete 12 reps of an exercise. At the end of the set you ask yourself “how many more reps do I think I could’ve completed?”. If you say 3, then you had an RIR of +3 for that set.
The best way to organize your workouts for effectiveness is to be able to select a weight for an exercise that will allow you to achieve a specific number of repetitions at a predicted RIR. You should then use a stepwise progression reducing the RIR of each successive set. Basically, allowing you to warm-up a movement and the muscles involved as you add weight or strive for higher effort from the first to final set of an exercise.
Set #1 – RIR +3-5
Set #2 – RIR +2-3
Set #3 – RIR +1-2
If you really need to experience increased fatigue during your workouts there are safer ways to do it. For example, you can use a Drop Set on the final set of an exercise, each successive drop stopping at an RIR +0-1. Or, you can use a Rest-Pause strategy where you complete a range of reps to an RIR of +0/1, rest for 10 seconds, and try to get two more to a +0/1, and repeat again.
Instead of thinking of an RIR +0 as muscle failure, you can also begin to interpret RIR +0 as the point of “form failure” or when you recognize your form has gotten sloppy. This is the point where your larger muscles have become tired and the smaller muscles begin to hold on for dear life as you continue to push outside your ability.
As a reminder, the absolute most important variable regarding progress in strength training is CONSISTENCY. Avoiding strategies that risk injury becomes increasingly important for those of us who’ve been training for over 30 years, especially when such strategies have been proven less effective. So, lets agree to move on and get rid of “one more rep”. Its time we came up with new inspiration.
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