Training - Relative Intensity A

Relative intensity is a concept that helps regulate submaximal work and avoid training to failure. It involves working within a certain intensity range based on a person's muscle fiber type and capabilities. This can be determined using a rep max chart. Relative intensity can be calculated using reps in reserve or actual setting and intensity. It helps provide context and progression in a training block. Starting with a base week at 70% relative intensity allows for acclimation and familiarization before gradually increasing intensity. This approach helps prevent burnout and allows for progressive overload without compromising form or risking injury. So, I'm just going to go out and say that relative intensity is one of these concepts that I feel like I've been on an island talking about for just 15 years now, and a lot of people are just kind of confused by it or don't really grasp the concept of why. You know, I'm just going to say at the top, for me, it's a way to regulate submaximal work. Just that's it, right? If we're going to utilize progressive overload in any way, I think in some sort of legitimate real conversation, it has to have, if we're using compound closed kinetic chain movements like squat and deadlift, that working up to true muscular failure and progressive overload is not a great combination. I think we know that. I think we know that intuitively, right? This idea that over the course of two, three, four week training blocks, that if you're working up to absolute capacity every single workout, you're going to get hurt. You just know that, right? And that true muscular failure, taking something to some sort of capacity, is predicated off this idea of high intensity training and saying, okay, like every single day, you're going to absolute failure, you're doing minimal effective dose of one set of failure, of true mechanical failure, whether it's taking a movement to concentric failure or through all three phases of the movement, concentric, isometric, and eccentric. That in itself is a different phenomena than we're looking at in terms of relative intensity. So if you want me to explain high level, relative intensity is a way to regulate and monitor sub-maximal intensity, because if we're going to use compound closed kinetic chain movements, the rationale is we can't train to failure every single time if we're going to utilize something like progressive overload. Now, there's a chart in the module which you should look through now. And as you look through it, you can see, okay, there's a traditional RM. So you have your one RM, so 100%, and then that progresses all the way down to 70%. And there's a corresponding rep scheme for it, right? So one RM is 100%. And then we go through, you can see this in multiple ways of like 97 and a half for two, and then 95 for three. I like 5% increments, I feel like it's more realistic, and it definitely hits a little bit more of the larger group, right? This slow-twitch versus fast-twitch RM cycle, if you have a fast-twitch athlete, their rep max is probably not even this close, right? This one could be a one RM at 100%, and then a two RM at 90%, and a three RM at 80%, right? These like super freak athletes that they burn out so quickly, so the rep max is a lot lower number to a corresponding intensity, and I'm being a little bit, I'm exaggerating for points sake. And then you go from the other end of like Charles would talk about, if you put 85% of the bar slow-twitch athlete, like an ultra-endurance athlete, they can hit it for 20. I don't know if that's real per se, but you can kind of get the gist of a rep max chart is kind of relative to a person's muscle fiber type and what their capabilities are. Now, with that being said, is that is the foundation of a relative intensity, right? So you just take that top row of max of 195, 92, and then you just put that now vertically, and then you get a relative intensity. So if I'm working at 100% relative intensity, then you just follow the top line, one, two, three, four, and five, all the way through to 10. If I'm working at 97%, you just basically take away at a rep. When you're looking at it, I can hit 92 for probably two and three, but now that's my, let's just go to 95, keep it simple. I can hit theoretically 95% for two, but now I'm only hitting that for one, so I should have at least one rep in reserve. So 95% would be this concept of having one rep in reserve. I should be able to hit that for, in theory, four reps, but in this case, I'm only hitting it for one. So now I have three reps in reserve, and you go down to 85, I should be able to hit that for quote unquote six. Now I have potentially only, I have now an additional, sorry, four reps or three reps in reserve, and you just keep working your way through that. Let's say that I wanted to follow a progression of I wanted to go 90% for four reps on week four. Okay, what is that relatively speaking to a two or three or four week training block? So if I'm going to go a four week training block, do I go 90% for all four weeks, or do I build up into it? And I think that's where, for me, it gives some sort of context. Now, there's another way to look at this in reps in reserve of saying, hey, we're going to essentially add a rep each week, or take away a rep each week and get closer to a true 4RM. So week one of a training block, instead of saying that I'm hitting 90% relative intensity, you can say, I'm going to say, hey, for this set of four, you're going to hit this for eight. You're going to use a weight that you could hit for eight, but you're only hitting it for four. And then next week, you're going to use a weight that you can hit for, in theory, seven, and then next week, six, and the following week, five, and then four, right, whatever the reverse engineering of that. To me, the relative intensity is this high level of like, give some sort of like, intensity range to work within. And I think that in itself, it gives some sort of ceiling to work through. And one of the things if you ever do a three or four week training block is you find week one is just all about getting acclimated, right? The novelty is a stimulus. That's really what it comes down to, that you could do really sub-maximal intensity with a very, very, very low rep or high number of reps in reserve and still get a really good training effect, right? You'll still get some muscular shortage, you'll still get some TNS fatigue, you'll still get this like, density-like outcome. And I think that in itself is probably worth the time to think about training sub-maximally. That's a really interesting note. On the other note, you can look at it from, well, why not just train to absolute failure? Well, that's when we start to see people peak and burn out, and then they find ways to get through the next two, three weeks, right? If I'm going to absolute failure, and then I got to come back and hit that for higher intensity, so if I'm starting at four at 90, and then next week, I got to hit five at 90, or I got to hit four at 92, well, eventually, that's going to lead to some sort of compensation or injury. And I think we know that. I think we kind of have this perception of like, man, technical failure is always what we're looking for. But truth is, is they have a number they're supposed to hit, and progressive overload is the foundation of what we're doing, and they don't meet that expectation, then the chances of them getting hurt or altering the mechanics suffers. That's a tough pill to swallow. So as I'm looking through this, and I'm starting to think about relative intensity, and you can look at this from the two ways, reps and reserve, or from actual setting and intensity. And the way to calculate that outside from the chart is just taking their intensity, their RM, and multiplying it by the relative intensity of the week. So if my 1RM on squat is 100 kilos, if I'm working at 70% relative intensity, now my 1RM is 70 kilos. And then you just work that up. So I'm going to work up to 80% relative intensity, okay, now I'm going to do 80 kilos, then I'm going to work up to 90% relative intensity, I'm going to do 90 kilos, and then my 1RM is going to be 100 kilos, right? So you set a super max, and you can work off of that, so 102, 92, and then work your way all the way down to 72, right? And I think that in itself, it gives some sort of context, like, hey, what's a good load for today? If we're going to work at 70% relative intensity, I'm going to work up to a super max of whatever you did last time, and then today you're going to open up with 72 based off this 102 super max, like a 2% jump based off what we did last training cycle for 1RM. And reverse engineering this progression, you don't need to make a 10% relative intensity jump. I just think that's kind of the most linear, right? So if we're going to look through the traditional cycle of base, load, load, perform from tier system, or Charles Poliquin's Variety in Strength Training, this idea of progressing every single week until you hit a functional performance week, then you can look at it from, okay, well, what is a base? Getting acclimated, getting familiar with the sets of reps, the exercises, the tempo, the rest, the density, you don't need a whole lot. 70% seems like a pretty good base week. So 70% relative intensity, or in this case, if you look at it from this chart, it's going to be about 10 reps in reserve, right? So whatever it is, if I'm going to work up to a 1 rep max, I should be able to hit that for at least 10. So it should feel really light. I'm getting the movement pattern down, I'm getting the exercises down, I'm getting the exercise order, I'm getting all the variables really locked in, and then I start to titrate up. Okay, we're going to work up to 80%. That could be the load, right? So it's a little bit more stimulating, a little bit more progressive, and then we work up to 90%. Now I have three reps in reserve, and I'm looking at it from, okay, I'm getting closer and closer to that 1rm. You can go very simply a 85, 90, 95, 100% relative intensity, if that's the way you want to look at it, making smaller jumps. For me, though, I just generally think this is my way of structuring compound, multi-joint, closed kinetic chain movements in a group setting, controlling the intensity, understanding the premise of the week, of getting acclimated, base, and you can see that on the recommendations, right? So if you look at it from the light, super reload, the major reload, base work, so 82 to 80%, major load work, rep max testing, and then you get to rep max testing and 100%, you get this really good setup of organizing your intensity, right? So if I'm going to work, let's say that I want to utilize some sort of structure of saying sub-maximal intensity with these compound, closed kinetic chain movements that require coordination and skill, take time to develop and groove the pattern, you're not working up to a true RM. And that, in itself, is a really important thing to establish. Now, maybe the issue comes to, like, I don't know how to explain this to my athletes, sure, I get that, or I don't fully understand this myself, sure, I get that, and I think there's a conversation to be had if you don't really understand it or if you don't really grasp it or resonate with it, then why? Don't use it. If you like the idea of reps and reserves, that makes more sense, hey, I'm going to hit in four weeks a true 1RM, and I want to add a rep, so week one of a four-week training block, I'm going to have three reps in reserve, right? So I'm going to hit four for a 1RM weight, and I'm going to progress up. Or I'm going to use an intensity that would leave for three reps in reserve. Whatever it is, whatever that structure is that you want to go through, well, my point relative intensity, and hopefully this is coming across, is eventually we're going to have to meet this really big issue of free weight exercises require more skill and coordination and can't be taking a full-out failure every single week, and we need some sort of system to progress that from one week to the next, that we need to appreciate that a lot of these movements are not necessarily as ingrained as we would like, especially working with student-athletes. And if we look at these student-athletes as they're athletes first, lifters second, and we start to build our plan to accommodate them, then I think we have a really good structure, a really good, I guess, agreeable moment to say, this is less about trying to absolutely gut these kids every single day in terms of training load or training intensity. It's more about having some sort of structure from one week to the next. There's other performance cycles you can think about, too. It doesn't necessarily have to follow the traditional base load-load-perform. You can go a performance cycle, so you go load-load-reload-perform, and the way that would look, let's say that we're going to go a 100% performance week, so we're going to work up to 100% true RM, and then we're going to organize our training around that. So we look at it from, okay, I want to get a base week at 80%, so that will be, I want to get a load week, right, so I want to look at 85%, then I'm going to work up to 90, no, let's go 90, 95, and then we do a reload, right, and the reload will be this 70, 85. Now, here's something that I think is something to consider with performance weeks, and it'll be a little bit of a tangent. If you ever read Tapering for Sport, one of the most important variables for intensity-based athletes, these under-10-second-based athletes, 100-meter sprinter, the 100-meter freestyle, whatever that's really shorter duration that's more maximal effort and more this anaerobic alactic energy system, if you will, they do better with deload strategies or tapering strategies that keep intensity high, but drop the volume, ha, ha. So if we're looking at this and relatively speaking for performance week for a alactic sport and we're going, okay, we're going to go this load, load, so 90, 95, and then we look at a reload, well, if I was going to go, I don't know, this huge drop down to 70%, so if I'm working up to 100 kilos and I go 90, 95 for one, and then week three of a training block drop down to 70 kilos, there might not be as much of a transfer or an adaptation as we would like because the intensity was dropped too much. And this is where you get into, well, how many sets am I doing? That's where you could look at this alternatively, right? So what is the upper limit? You could look at something like a pull-up and chart, right? How much total volume can I hit at a certain intensity? So maybe I can hit four reps, I can hit total four reps above 90%, right? So if I'm working 90% relative intensity and I'm going to do four sets of one at a 90% relative intensity weight or a three reps in reserve type of focus and I'm shaving away a rep in reserve or increasing my relative intensity each week, well, then I could look at it from the reload or the deload week to allow for adaptation instead of adjusting the intensity. So I go up to 97%, I just drop it down to one set or drop it down to two sets. I drop it down in some capacity to be able to hit a maximal weight the next week without dropping off, right? And this is where if I'm looking through anybody in terms of their programming, one of the most, I think, misunderstood and underappreciated aspects of variables and management of variables is the amount of sets, right? And I've been a big proponent of this from the start of knowing what you need to do and then loading up on it as much as humanly possible is a pretty amazing strategy if you think about it. On the other note, though, if you look at it from the concept of if I'm just going to do four or five sets of anything or I'm going to do three or five sets of everything, I think there's a huge missed opportunity to manage this. And if I'm only progressing one variable, right? We talked about this in progressive overload module of like I'm only going up in intensity each week, that's it. So you just didn't understand that's all I'm doing. You have a huge missed opportunity to increase volume or density. Just bottom line. You can increase reps, you can increase sets, you can increase the time or decrease the time between sets or you can accrue more stuff within a certain period of time. And if you're not looking at those other variables and managing them from a progressive overload standpoint, you might be missing the mark of really leveraging some of these performance blocks versus a traditional block. A traditional block is great. It's very simple. It's very intuitive. You're going to go up every single week and everyone's going to feel like, oh, I get it. It really makes sense. On the other note, though, if we're going to get into a performance cycle and you're going to start to play around with reps and reserve or looking at it from something like a actual progression of sets from one week to the next and dropping off those sets to get some sort of transmutating effect, then you start to go, okay, these blocks, orientations from a load, load, deload, perform or a load, base load, load, perform, they have a whole different context. And as I'm looking through this interplay between what's readiness and wellness and HRV and what can I actually get from a bar speed intra-training, then I can start to assess, okay, well, the amount someone can progress from one week to the next and the amount I can adjust from one week to the next varies quite a bit. And that's also really important to note. As we start to look through the actual application of this, which we'll talk about in the next portion of this module, is going to be, all right, well, what can I do on a week-to-week basis from an exercise, from a training perspective? How can I optimize this experience from progressive overload, relatively speaking? All right, so I'm going to stop here. Let's go into the practical next. A lot to unpack. I love this concept. I think it's one that probably I've always worked really hard to understand and utilize. I think it gives me some sort of foundation for understanding how to leverage sub-maximal intensity one week to the next, especially with closed chain, kinetic or compound multijoint movements. So, like, a lot of really good things to pull from this. All right. Hope you guys are doing well. Hope you guys are cranking through these modules. And we'll see you on the next portion of this.