I asked this question on the facebook page and didn’t really get an answer to my questions.
My question is this:
In a given day the RPE looks like this 5@6 5@7 5@8 x3 sets. The next week may be 4 sets or 2 sets @8.
My question is do the RPE 6 & 7 even matter? I understand they are there to gauge your RPE 8 but if i go in and just work right up to my RPE 8 and do 3 sets then is that enough stimulus to adapt or is part of the stimulus for the adaption that is necessary taking into account the 6 & 7 as volume as work towards the end goal?
Like if one week RPE 5@6 5@7 5@8 x3 sets and the next week is 5@6 5@7 5@8 x2 sets and I just do the 5@8 x3 the one week and 5@8 x2 the following week are we still on task? but if you add the sets across like the 5@6 5@7 5@8 x3 sets that 5 total sets and 5@6 5@7 5@8 x2 sets thats 4 total sets.
I hope that makes sense. I dont know how else to pose the question.
Thanks!
Depends on the context, of course, but they matter less than the top sets. I wouldn’t skip them on purpose.
How could you determine the appropriate @ 8 without a set @ 6 or 7?
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As the load has increased as i’ve gotten stronger, there’s no way I could effectively move my working weight without warmup sets. Maybe I could knock out a set of squats at 225 cold, but any higher would mess me up. In addition to RPE determination and physically warming up your muscles, there is an important psychological benefit to acclimating to higher loads via warmup sets.
I can usually gauge it fairly accurately from what I did after the first week of the program that I’m on. If I want to improve at my top set, sometime I feel like I exhaust myself to quickly doing say 345 for 6 @ 6, 355 for 6 @ 7 then 365 for 6 @ rpe 8. Sometimes if I just did 315 for 6 then I can kinda judge if 365 for 6 at rpe 8 would be a pretty good judgement. So if I knew that and the total sets over all was 4 sets would I be better doing 3 tops sets at eight instead of doing 6@6 6@7 and 6@8x2.
Follow up question, Can you gauge rpe 8 for reps after a single better then doing reps at rpe 6 & 7 to get to rpe 8?
I’m not sure if I find this very likely if you’re actually using RPE vs. discrete numbers. Performance varies more than that typically.
I think if that is the case then I would have you do the extra sets to improve conditioning, get in some challenging volume, and would be okay if you only squatted 360 or 357.5 x 6. I would recommend doing the warm up sets, as I don’t think you’re able to predict with any certainty your top set that far off of it.
Not typically, unless the rep work is very close to the singles, e.g. doubles or triples.
Thanks for your response Jordan! Much appreciated