Adjusting Training Intensity For Your Best Gains Ever

Have you ever had one of those particularly hard gym days where the weights feel unbelievably heavy?

A weight that you would usually knock out five easy reps with seems like your one rep max, and you might grind your way through three excruciatingly horrible reps, before racking the bar and giving up. Sometimes even your warm up sets can feel much heavier than they used to, and you trudge from one exercise to the next in a kind of daze, feeling lethargic, achy, and really tired, just waiting for the session to finally come to an end. Why?

The first thing you need to understand is that you can’t go at 100% all the time — doing so can lead to injury, fatigue and plateaus in performance. Sometimes you just don't do as well as other times, and that is perfectly okay and normal. Even the best bodybuilders have bad days. The key to maintaining your progress year-round is to regulate your training intensity based on how you feel on a particular day and to know when to take it easy and when to go all out.

Everyone has sessions like this – it’s part and parcel of the iron game, but clearly these workouts don’t do any good at all. You’re merely going through the motions, and not getting any benefit from the session.

Once every now and again, a session like this isn’t a huge issue. But it’s when they become more frequent, and your training starts to feel like a chore, with every exercise requiring maximum effort, yet still feeling like the weights are working against you that you need to start worrying.

It could be a sign that you’re overdoing it and pushing yourself too hard.

This isn’t to say you should take every session easy. Going too light and not pushing yourself is just as detrimental for progress as going too heavy and struggling with your weights, but you may just need to reign things in slightly.

Too many people feel like they’re not working hard enough or making gains if they don’t fail the last rep on every set, need a spotter to help them out with a couple of forced reps or slow negatives on each exercise, or don’t wake up with extreme soreness each morning and struggle to even sit on the toilet or climb a flight of stairs.

This isn’t the case though – getting bigger and stronger isn’t about beating yourself into a jello-like pulp, it’s about being smart and stimulating muscles, not annihilating them.

Going heavy causes a great stress on your central nervous system. Your CNS is like the control center for your muscles – when it’s turned on and alert, you’ll be quick, explosive and strong. Heavy weights will feel light as a feather and your power levels will be through the roof. When it’s fatigued however, every weight you lift will be a grinder, and feel like its double what it actually is.

This is the main problem with so many programs, and the way a lot of people train.

Shooting for a new one rep max on the same exercises week after week, or insisting on going to failure, or even past the point of failure and using techniques such as drop sets, forced reps, and partial reps is a surefire way to kill your CNS. While all these tactics are important parts of a strength training program, they should be used sparingly and not seen as the norm.

Taking the odd session or a few exercises a bit lighter is not a cop-out – it’s essential if you want to maintain progress and make your best gains every. You must know when to max out and when to ease off on the intensity and coast for a while.

Enter The RPE Scale

The RPE scale is a powerful tool in your training arsenal.

RPE stands for “Rate of Perceived Exertion.”

To demonstrate, let’s use the back squat as an example.

Say your one absolute single repetition maximum was 225lbs. At this weight you can just about squeeze out a rep with good form. You’d hit proper depth, maintain a good back position and finish the lift, but it wouldn’t be too quick and you’d find it a real effort, this would be an RPE of 10.

With that in mind, take a look at the following table determining RPE scales:

RPE 10: No more reps in the tank – absolute maximum effort.
RPE 9: Very tough but could get one more rep.
RPE 8: Challenging, but 2-3 more reps left.
RPE 7: You need to apply maximum force, but the lift is fairly quick.
RPE 6: Not light per se, but the speed is high and the lift looks explosive.

By basing all your training around the REP scale, you can ensure that you never feel over-trained again.

Start each session with some explosive exercises such as clap push-ups, jump squats, box jumps or barbell cleans. Use light weights, but try to get a feel of how alert you’re feeling. If the reps all feel tough, then it’s a good sign that you should probably take today’s session a little lighter. If you feel awesome, everything is super-speedy and feels incredibly light, it’s time to shoot for some personal records.

RPEs Per Session

You should only have one maximum RPE exercise per session – the rest should be between a 6 and 9. Here’s how a sample lower body session might work.

Explosive Warm Up Exercises – 2 exercises such as box jumps and kettlebell snatches for five sets of three to five reps each, RPE 6 with maximum power.
Back Squats – Work up to one top set of 1-3 reps at RPE 10.
Stiff-Legged Deadlifts – 3 to 4 sets of 5 to 8 reps with at RPE 8.
Lunges – 5 sets of 10 at RPE 7.
Calf Raises – As above

By limiting yourself to just one all-out maximum exercise per session, you limit fatigue, yet still maintain progress and increase strength.

Monitoring RPEs

The beauty of the RPE scale is that it allows you to change your program workout by workout depending on how you feel.

A regular squat program might call for you to do 6 sets of 3 reps with 85% of your one rep max in your workout. This is fine if you’re feeling energetic, strong and powerful, but if you’re not, you’ll lift with bad form, potentially run the risk of injury, and get very little out of the session.

Following the RPE method though, you can adjust the poundages to suit how you’re feeling. If your 85% lift is 200lbs and you’re not feeling too good, just hit six solid sets with 180 pounds. If you’re feeling great on the other hand, shoot for 210 or 200lbs.

Deloads

Just a final note on regulating intensity regarding deloads.

If you are feeling really beaten up and fatigued, take a deload week, which involves reducing your intensity. You shouldn’t stop training – do exactly as you would usually, just reduce your weights to around 70% of what you’d usually lift and use it as a chance to recover.