Tracking your RIR is helpful for 1) ensuring you’re getting adequate stimulus to the muscles and 2) being able to better track and manipulate the amount of fatigue you generate.
Tracking RIR is pretty simple for the most part.
Example:
Week 1: Lat Pulldown @ 100lbs x 10 reps @ RIR 1
Week 2: Lat Pulldown @ 100lbs x 10 reps @ RIR 1.5
Week 3: Lat Pulldown @ 100lbs x 10 reps @ RIR 2.5
The reps and weight stay the same, but the RIR of the set is reducing week by week. In other words – you’re getting stronger.
Adequate stimulus is anywhere between 0-4 RIR. When we approach a set, the efficacy of the set is determined by its proximity to failure because then, and only then, is the muscle experiencing significant enough tension to provoke adaptation. It’s important to take every working set to an RIR between 0-4 if your goal is hypertrophy (growing more muscle). The closer to failure you take a set, the more stimulus you provide to the muscle due to recruiting more and more muscle fibers maximally. However, you can’t just take every set to 0 RIR while simultaneously doing a ton of sets.
Whenever you lift weights, fatigue is generated both locally and systemically. This means if you do a set of rows to 0 RIR, the muscles used directly are going to experience fatigue, and the rest of the body via your central nervous system (CNS) is going to experience fatigue as well. Both of these types of fatigue will limit your ability to recruit muscle fibers. The higher the magnitude of the fatigue, the more it impacts your ability to produce strength and tension both in the short and long term. There’s give and take when it comes to choosing your proximity from failure, and there’s some varied approaches to best practice out there. I won’t go into all the different variations here (partially because I don’t think I could articulate them as well as the major proponents), but I’ll explain my approach with a couple caveats.
Caveats:
1. It’s assumed that you take movements through a full range of motion while controlling the movement the entire time, meaning both the eccentric (muscles lengthening) and concentric (muscles shortening) portions of the lift.
2. RIR 0 is defined by technique deviating substantially from the norm to the point where other muscles must compensate in order to complete the life (rocking back on a row, hip thrusting a bicep curl, doing a good morning squat).
3. Personally, I get extremely beat up by true RIR 0 movements. Other people seem to tolerate them much better than I do. Your mileage may vary when it comes to my approach.
With that out of the way, let this mini-manifesto begin.
My current philosophy on the subject of effective training is this: stimulating reps drive hypertrophy and strength (albeit at different thresholds). Not total tonnage (which is think is a monumentally useless tool), not total number of arbitrary reps. Pure and simple reps that result in muscles producing enough force to stimulate high levels of mechanical tension (the force the muscle experiences). They experience this high level of tension when muscles are near-maximally or maximally recruited, which only happens near the last 5 reps of a set prior to failure, because the prior fibers that were producing force are too fatigued, so it calls in the last stand of fibers as you get closer to failure. There’s likely a more science-y way to explain this, but there you go.
My Four Basic Tenants of Training
Training must be hard enough (i.e. within 5 reps of failure) in order to experience gains.
Reps in reserve, or RIR, is a method for measuring the proximity to failure of any given set.
Here’s a basic outline:
RIR 0: No reps left in the tank, could not do another rep.
RIR 0.5: Maybe 1 more rep left in the tank.
RIR 1: Definitely 1 rep left in the tank.
RIR 1.5: Definitely 1 rep left, maybe 2.
So on and so forth.
As a general rule, I keep the majority of my training between RIR 2 and 3, occasionally dabbling in RIR 1 and 4. It’s taken quite a bit of trial and error to figure out what works best for myself, but here’s a very general outline.
Pushing Movements:
Majority of training is RIR 2.5.
Deloads are around RIR 3.5-4.5.
Overreaching weeks go to about RIR 1-2.
My upper body pushing movements are not super strong, so the fatigue they generate compared to the rest of my training is on the low end. Thus, I’m able to tolerate an average higher intensity.
Pulling Movements:
Majority of training is RIR 3.
Deloads are RIR 4+.
Overreaching weeks are RIR 2-3.
My upper body pulling movements are quite strong, and taking them to true failure completely thrashes my body. I’ve found that keeping my average intensity around RIR 3 allows for a pretty stable progression. This results in me usually doing more pulling sets due to needing to get in more stimulating reps since I get less per set on average.
Squat + Variations
Majority of Training is RIR 2.5.
Deloads are RIR 4+
Overreaching weeks are RIR 0-2
My squats and other variations stay a bit lower due to being a powerlifter primarily and having lots of technique work sprinkled in. That being said, split squats to RIR 1 for 2-3 sets will have me sore for 3+ days, so I have to back off pretty substantially. Leg extensions seem to be extremely well tolerated, so I can take 2-4 sets of those to RIR 0 and only be sore for a little bit. It’s extremely difficult to do, but I can tolerate it.
Deadlift + Hinge variations
Majority of Trainining is RIR 3.
Deloads are RIR 3-4
Overreaching weeks are RIR 1.
My deadlifts are mostly tolerated well. Conventional deadlifts give me quite the lower back pump at RIR <2, but RDL’s and back raises are tolerated very well.
Isolations (Biceps, Triceps, Delts)
Majority of training is RIR 1.5.
Deloads are RIR 3.
Overreaching weeks are RIR 0 supplemented with drop sets.
These guys recover so quickly and cause so little issues that I train them pretty hard when it comes to isolation exercises. Once again, as a powerlifter, I do place them strategically as to not interfere with my main compound lifts.
This is just a general guideline as to what has worked out for me. I know this is going to get glossed over and eventually met with, “I tried your exact paradigm and it didn’t work!” but, so be it. Win some lose some.
Training must be tolerable enough within the session to build up enough stimulating reps within a workout.
You only have so much energy for any given session. As your energy depletes, so does its quality. This means your ability to maximally recruit fibers diminishes as the workout extends longer and longer. Part of this is due to local fatigue of a particular muscle, the other part is CNS fatigue accumulating throughout the workout.
With this in mind, I prefer to keep my sessions short and frequent. I lift 6 days a week, but only about 45-75 minutes per session. This allows for enough quality work to be done and enough quality rest in between sets.
I’m still working on the exact paradigm of counting stimulating reps, but for now I just focus on stimulating sets and use a gross simplification. Pick an arbitrary number between 2-4 and is correlated with your RIR. If your RIR is 3, aim for 3 sets, if it’s 2, 2 sets, 4, 4 sets. Once again, gross simplification and you will have to figure this out for yourself. But it’s probably a good starting point.
You also must pick a certain amount of exercises. I’ll use my own training as an example. Since I train 6 days per week, my volume is fairly spread out throughout the week. We’ll go with my first squat-focused leg day.
Squat Variation: 3 sets at RIR 3
Back Raises: 2 sets at RIR 2
Lunges: 2 sets at RIR 3
Lat Pulldown: 3 sets at RIR 3
Here’s my logic for the day:
My squat variation is primarily practice aimed at bettering my back squatting abilities. It provides some stimulus, and I do it for enough sets to get a solid 4-6 stimulating reps in. I don’t feel very tired after, which allows me to jump into my currently focus of glute growth.
I load up my back raises and take them as close to RIR 2 as I can get, sometimes overshooting into RIR 1. This allows me to get a solid 4-8 stimulating reps in, but I’m starting to feel a bit fatigued.
My lunges will stress my glutes substantially due to them being pre-exhausted by the back raises, and they will also allow for some more quad stimulus. For whatever reason, these absolutely clobber me, and by RIR 3 my legs are extremely wobbly. At this point, I know my legs will “feel it” for at least a day, but not any longer. This is important because I work my legs Monday/Wednesday/Saturday, so I need these legs fresh by Wednesday for my main squat day.
Lat pulldowns are added in here because although my CNS is a bit fatigued at this point, there is zero local fatigue. I rest for a solid 5-6 minutes after my last set of lunges, then head into my lat pulldowns. I keep my RIR around 3 as to not generate any more CNS fatigue than necessary, while still getting a solid 4-6 stimulating reps in. These lat pulldowns are added in, almost as an afterthought, but it’s extra volume that I can tolerate.
All in all, I have about 10 challenging sets. At 6 days a week, that comes out to roughly 60 challenging sets for my whole body. Which naturally leads into the next tenet…
Training must be tolerable enough week to week that you can continually progress for at least 3+ weeks before a deload is necessary.
This section is actually pretty straightforward.
- You need to be able to recover in time for your next session that hits similar body parts.
- You need to be recovered enough going into the next week that you can continue making progress.
- If you can make it at least 3 weeks with steady progress, you’re doing it right.
- The more you fine-tune your training, the longer you’ll be able to drag out training blocks without a deload.
- If you aren’t training very hard and/or have very low volume and still can’t recover, you probably need more sleep, water, sun, and food. Figure out which one you’re lacking and go from there.
Training must be enjoyable enough so that you aren’t constantly battling your own psychology.
This one is also very straightforward.
Here’s the thing, unless you’re a professional athlete and getting paid to do this, you probably don’t need to do exercises you despise. There’s so many different ways to achieve the same result it’s mind boggling.
Find exercises you enjoy, or at least don’t actively dread, and just get really good at them for like 2-3 years.
If you get to a point where you decide you want to take this hobby more seriously, then prepare to do exercises you don’t particularly like for variation sake. But even then, it’s only for a couple months before you can switch back to other exercises (this is all in an attempt to fight of staleness).
These are my four basic tenets to training effectively! Train hard, eat plenty, and rest well, follow these simple examples and you’ll be on your way to making progress!