Progressing your workouts

You will progress your exercise over time by using an important principle called progressive overload. Every workout, or every week (apart from deload weeks), you want to try and increase the intensity just a little. As your level of fitness also increases, you want to still be challenging yourself.

This principle is managed by taking advantage of the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale, and the Reps in Reserve (RIR) model.

Reps in Reserve (RIR)

RIR is the number of reps you stop before reaching either technical or muscular failure.

1-3 reps to failure if where we want to be, most of the time.

Although going to complete failure is correlated with maximal muscle growth, it's also the most fatiguing so we don’t usually want to go that far. By stopping before failure, you accumulate less fatigue and also leave room for progression over time. We can optimize your training and results by using RIR to incrementally increase the demands and stress of your workouts over time.

Example...

  • Week 1: 3RIR
  • Week 2: 2RIR (Beat reps from last week OR More weight and same amount of reps)
  • Week 3: 1RIR (Beat reps from last week OR More weight and same amount of reps)
  • Week 4: 0RIR (Beat reps from last week OR More weight and same amount of reps)
  • Week 5: Optional 0RIR again or Deload

Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE)

The RPE scale allows us to check in with how hard we are working, so we know if we are working too hard or not hard enough. The scale below is a version that works in tandem with the RIR model:

Choosing your Weights

To begin, focus on finding a weight that is challenging, but around RPE 7, for the lower end of the rep range.

For example, if the rep range is 8-12 reps, find a weight that pushes you to RPE 7 for 8-10 reps.

In other words, after 8-10 reps, you still feel like you have around 3 reps left in reserve. Each following week, your goal is to perform more reps than you did the last week with the same weight used for that exercise.

Before & After Each Workout

Warming Up

You’ve probably heard of warming up before starting a workout. This warm up is important to do at the beginning of exercise for three main reasons:

  • To increase pulse rate, core temperature and blood flow to your muscles
  • To mobilize joints and increase the flexibility of your muscles
  • To prime movement basic patterns before moving into more advanced or loaded variations

To cover all three bases, we suggest a sequence as follows:

1. Some controlled articulate rotations (CARs) to prime the major joints: wrists, shoulders and hips

2. 3-4 x 45-60 second sets of metabolic movements, such as burpees, side shuffles, inch worms, bear crawls to increase heart rate and blood flow

3. 3-4 dynamic stretches and / or mobility movements to further mobilize joints and muscles

4. A couple sets of light movement patterns akin to those which you shall be training

Cooling Down

The main purpose of cooling down is to allow your pulse rate and breathing to return to normal levels, and to help alleviate any tension in muscles that may have been worked.

If your workout was more cardio-focused, then a lower intensity version of the exercise you have been doing is recommended. For example, after a 5km run, reduce speed to a brisk walk for 2-3 minutes before stopping and stretching.

After strength training, some static stretches of the muscles worked can help increase the range of motion of the relative joints. The latest research shows hold times in excess of 1-2 minutes are needed to send the required messaged to your CNS, that will initiate the response needed for increased flexibility.

Important note: push the stretch until you feel tension, but never until you feel pain.

The workouts in this program are all Full Body workouts, so the cool-down stretches can be performed for 1 minute or more after your training, to help relieve tension and increase flexibility.