Hello Good Doctors, thanks for all you write about and share. If my questions are treated elsewhere sorry, I did search.
In the Bridge document (page 10, paragraph 3) you write that 70% and up loads are useful for strength adaptations. But since then I’ve seen Austin, for example, write about doing volume at 65%. Is there a value in sub-70% volume for hypertrophy, or is there something else to this?
I’ve read Jordan write in a couple of places that some set x rep combo at RPE * or whatever works out to some percentage range. e.g. 8 x 3 71% to 74%, 3 x 3 was 85 %. I’ve seen a table for reps vs RPE for single sets given % of est 1 RM, but never for multiple sets. Is there such a chart, or is there a way to convert from the single set chart?
Thank you for your consideration of these questions, hope to learn more.
We probably need to update this to be more clear. View the range of possible intensities as a “spectrum”, similar to how we talk about the various exercises you might choose falling along a spectrum of specificity in terms of their similarity (and hence carryover) to the competition lifts. Various exercises might have their usefulness at a particular time in the development and training of a lifter.
Similarly, the closer you get to 100%, the more “specific” the intensity becomes for strength outcomes measured by a 1RM effort. However, the caveats here:
Total training stress (via volume) needs to increase over time, and you can’t keep adding sets and reps at 100% intensity for obvious reasons.
Strength performance is not determined entirely by neuromuscular factors - muscular hypertrophy is also required, and training volume is THE primary driver of muscular hypertrophy.
Therefore, in order to accumulate increasing training volumes over time, the average intensity of that volume work needs to decrease in order to achieve a sustainable balance between delivering an effective dose of stress, and managing the consequent fatigue to facilitate long-term adaptation.
When not approaching a competition, “specificity” in terms of readiness for a 1RM performance (much like specificity of exercise selection) is less of an important factor, whereas we use “developmental” cycles to accumulate lots of training stress via high volumes (sometimes using less specific exercises), which require commensurate reductions in intensity.
The evidence shows that equivalent hypertrophy can be achieved at essentially ANY intensity (even very low intensities, say, 30%) … AS LONG AS THE SETS ARE TAKEN NEAR/TO FAILURE. Since a bodybuilder doesn’t care about their 1RM, they have no problem with doing sets of 20-30 or more reps. But for a powerlifter, you’re getting WAY off the end of the specificity spectrum, and introducing a bunch of problems from a fatigue (and potentially soreness, at least at first) standpoint. So we – admittedly, arbitrarily – say that intensities around 60% and up are “useful” for a strength-focused trainee, and my personal preference is to keep the majority of training volume in the 65%-80% range. We do not like accumulating much work in the 80-90% range, because the fatigue/adaptation tradeoff becomes less favorable.
I don’t know what you mean “converting for multiple sets”
So what I’m trying to ask is this. If we do repeated sets, of course the RPE will go up for the later sets. Is there some way of estimating RPE for multiple sets at a fixed load? 3 x 5 at 75% is ???RPE, 5 x 5 at 75% is ???RPE? This probably doesn’t make much sense, I understand the idea of adjusting load from set to set to maintain RPE, but given Jordan’s posts I thought there might be some chart estimating this.
No, there is no such chart, because the amount that the difficulty goes up depends on a number of individual factors, rest periods, etc. and is not really possible to predict. You appear to be overthinking it a bit.