Greg on effective reps (Hey maybe not): https://www.strongerbyscience.com/effective-reps/
Chris B. on effective reps (Hey maybe): What is training volume?. If you enjoy this article, you will… | by Chris Beardsley | Medium
What’s the difference between effective reps and hard sets?
I’ll be honest, I listened to the stronger by science podcast on this and glanced at both articles so I am not exactly a scholar on this idea. With that said, it seems to me like we are basically just talking semantics as to which term is “better.” To throw a third and fourth term into the mix, Whats the difference between, hard sets, effective reps, RPE, and RIR? It seems to me like they all correlate with basically the same Idea. You have to do some sort of effort approaching failure to “optimally” train (this is why nobody bothers to track warmup sets). I don’t think that any of these terms actually change how training is conducted in a meaningful way. Any set near failure will be, hard, contain maximal motor unit recruitment (at some point in the set), be RPE 7-9, be RIR 1-3. Also, how does one, on an individual level in a gym, quantify exactly how many reps were “effective” out of all the sets/reps they did in their workout? Effective reps seems much harder to pin down than using RPE or RIR or even “hard sets” which is probably a little too vague for most people.
I think JoshA nailed it.
The Dr’s have good things to say about both Nuckols and Beardsley. They do voice a little reservation about how Beardsley’s graphics tie up his points in a pretty bow that might not fully convey how the science is still a bit messy, but does a good job of communicating his point to the reader.
Edit: Also, a lot of the information we have on these concepts “effective reps and hard sets” is actually in the context of hypertrophy.
I think the reason that last 5 reps before failure are called the “effective reps” is primarily because with anything more it is difficult to even figure out how many reps the person could still do. RPE 6 can be indistinguishable from RPE 5. And I don’t know who could even judge an RPE 4, for example. Even if 6, 7 or even 8 reps to failure were enough for strength and hypertrophy adaptations, how would one even program that? Who is that sensitive to judge that a particular rep was 7 reps away from failure and not 9? It is impossible. Personally, I don’t even trust my “4 reps to failure” judgement and second-guess it all the time. My understanding is that “effective reps” range is when most people can accurately judge that they are approaching failure and that means they most likely have recruited as many motor units as they could by this point.
Is the issue that sometimes people make gains partially off volume that is below RPE 6? Which according to the effective reps model would be the same as ZERO exercise?
Much of the reason for the “effective reps” paradigm is that it has been demonstrated that quality hypertrophy stimulus requires maximal muscle fiber recruitment, and that this is not accomplished with sub 5rm loads until the reps that are close to failure, usually within 5 reps.
That is a major summation of Chris Beardsley’s point in the article the OP linked.
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](How does proximity to failure affect hypertrophy? | by Chris Beardsley | Medium)Heavy loads (1–5RM), which correspond to >85% of 1RM, typically involve full motor unit recruitment on all of the reps in a set, and also involve moving with a slow speed.
Therefore, we might expect all of the reps of these sets to count as “stimulating reps.”
In contrast, moderate (6–15RM) and light (15RM+) do not involve full motor unit recruitment on all of the reps in a set. Also, so long as we move with maximal intent, the muscle fibers do not shorten at a slow speed. Rather, levels of motor unit recruitment increase gradually as the set progresses, while bar speed reduces progressively because of fatigue. In fact, the bar speed reached on the final rep of a set to muscular failure with any load is the same as the bar speed achieved in a 1RM effort.
Therefore, we might expect only the final reps of sets with moderate and light loads to count as “stimulating reps,” while the earlier reps will not.
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](How does proximity to failure affect hypertrophy? | by Chris Beardsley | Medium)
Another, similar article by Beardsley is this one: