RIR and It's Influence on Training

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This Week’s Healthy Discussion

1. RIR and It’s Influence on Training

2. I’ve Switched Splits

3. How Managing Fatigue Leads to More Gains

RIR and It’s Influence on Training

Reps in reserve or more commonly called “RIR” is an important tool with managing fatigue and building muscle in the most practical manner.

RIR is the number of reps you have left in the tank during a working set.

So, if you stop one rep shy from failure then you would be 1RIR.

We can use this tool to help program our working sets and manage our recovery.

Many say we should always train to failure, however this can lead to not recovering quick enough for the next workout.

That’s why it’s becoming more and more popular to take a working set to around 0-2RIR because this is saving some of that useful energy.

You might even notice that your strength will shoot up because now that you have this extra recovery, you can progress a little quicker.

Just to clarify, 0RIR is not the same as failure. 0RIR is the realization that you did your last complete rep, and failure is still trying for the next rep even though you don’t complete it.

It’s impressive because even that last attempt by going to failure, adds on a lot of unnecessary fatigue.

I’ve Switched Splits

It’s finally come the time where I’ve stuck with a workout split for a good few months and it’s caught up the weak points that it was programmed to bring up.

I’ve now switched to Upper/Lower.

This might seem as a surprise but it actually serves a purpose.

Recovery is vital when building muscle and we’re now seeing that frequency is also incredibly important.

So I’ve organized my week to be Upper, Lower, Rest, Upper, Lower, Rest, Rest.

1-3 working sets per muscle group all going to around 0-2 RIR.

This is to get enough stimulus while also getting enough recovery.

I’m testing this out as it is what many coaches are doing at the moment and I will let you know how I find it.

How Managing Fatigue Leads to More Gains

If you’re interested in finding out more about the power of fatigue, I highly recommend watching my youtube video.