While you might be frustrated by this, you should realize it is normal, due to the fatigue factor. You will generally find that you start to power out on the fourth or fifth sets and may not be able to finish them. What this all means is that your average real intensity for all sets might be somewhere at the 95% mark, not 90% as you would’ve assumed from the nominal weight on the bar. But is it?ĥ×5 is one of the most effective progressive training models, if you choose your weights wisely. It would appear that your workout is a success. Ideally, your 25th rep will feel like 100% as far as your muscle fibers are concerned. Your percentages will go down with each rep and with each set as you proceed through your workout. It will continue this way throughout your third, fourth, and fifth sets. By the time you finish the second set, you’d probably be working with something that feels like 96% of your 1RM. If you were tested for your 1RM at that very minute, you would find that it is slightly lower than what it was originally.
On your second set, you will take what you think is your 90%, but it is more likely about 91 or 92% of what your maximum is at that moment.
But since you’ve already done one set, the fatigue factor still will be operative. If you are a vigorous young athlete, you will return to normal in time for your next set, or at least it will feel like normal. After that first set is done, it’s time to take a rest period of a few minutes. If you aren’t, you weren’t working with 90%. The same energy that went into your fifth rep at 90% would be the energy you would need at a first rep with 95% of your best.Īt the end of the set, you are visibly tired from the effort and breathing a little harder. Rep 5: As far as your muscle fibers are concerned, this is 95%.The fatigue factor is starting to set in, although you may not notice it at this time. The 90% feels not like 90% anymore, but maybe more like 91%, give or take. Rep 2: Probably a little bit more difficult.Rep 1: Your 90% of maximum on your first rep feels just like that: 90% of your best.To fully understand this factor, it is wise to look into what is happening at the muscle fiber level as you move through your sets. This approach forgets to take into account the fatigue factor. If you indeed try to find your 90% of maximum poundage and then try to do it for five sets of five, you may run out of gas. If you program your training this way, you may soon find that things don’t work out so neatly. So they will plan to do their 5×5 routine with 90%, straight across. They will invariably read somewhere that their best for 5 reps should be about 90% of their best single. Trainees are generally told to do 5×5 with a weight that they can just handle. The late Bill Starr did so in the 1970s, while Mark Rippetoe and others hold it forth today. This type of routine goes back at least as far as Mark Berry in the 1930s and has regularly been rediscovered. Five sets of five reps are used at a constant intensity. This study of intensity becomes a little more interesting if we look at a standard 5×5 workout used in basic strength developments. Knowing your 1RM will help you design an effective training program. As you might imagine, the higher the rep number, the more variable your probable percentages of 1RM will be. (Because few trainees concentrate on sets consisting of four reps, nobody seems to care much about what their 4RM would be.) Bodybuilders and other trainees interested in hypertrophy will probably be aware of their 8-12 rep intensities. If you do, you have probably discovered that your maximum at any repetition range is fairly predictable once the 1RM is known.Īlthough trainees will vary slightly, it usually works out that a 2RM can be done at 98% of your 1RM, a 3RM can be done at 95%, and a 5RM can be done with 90% of your best. Some of you may also keep track of your maximums at other repetition ranges, such as your 3RM or 5RM. You all are probably aware of your 1RM in all of the lifts important in your training, regardless of whether that be weightlifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding, or general strength training. It allows you to read through a workout routine and get a pretty good idea of how heavy or light a particular day in the gym is going to be. But the percentage system is a good rule of thumb. When you delve into the intricacies of exercise physiology, it becomes clear that intensity is not so easily calculated. For example, if your best overhead press is 200lb, then a 90% intensity lift would be 180lb, a lift at 80% would be with 160lb, and so on. Ever since the 1970s, weight trainers on this side of the Atlantic have been accustomed to measure training intensity as a percentage of one-repetition maximum (shortened to 1RM).
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