Hey guys, have been lurking for a while, first question on this forum.
Let me first say that this post is motivated by my complete lack of ability in judging RPE, despite trying for about 9 months. Once in a while I do an AMRAP (or near AMRAP) set and realise what I thought was @7 was actually @4 or @9. Due to this and the fact that I’m no longer an early intermediate, progress has been very slow.
Anyway. The other day I randomly decided to warm up all the way up to my work sets using fahves, instead of the usual tapering into 2s and 1s as the weight increases. Just felt like switching things up a bit and that I could use a little more volume.
Not surprisingly, the work sets felt very hard due to the accumulated fatigue. In a way I suppose this is a good thing, because it prevents from using weights too heavy for my own good.
could this be an effective form of autoregulated programming? I.e. start with the bar, progressively add weight and do sets of 4-7 until you reach a point where it becomes quite hard. And then maybe a heavy single followed by 1-2 back off sets? That would mean a fairly large amount of work done at submaximal weight, which I believe is the idea for intermediates.
Thanks for your thoughts on this.
cheers