Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the High Performance Physiology podcast. I'm Chris Beard today. I'm here with my co-host Rob Malseri. We're going to talk about clusters, reps in reserve and velocity-based training today. So we're kind of wrapping up three items all in one podcast, mainly because they're very closely related, but also because we generally don't use clusters very much in our programming, generally don't use velocity-based training very much. That's not to say that they're not really useful tools, it's just that they're not something that generally speaking we would tend to make use of in the populations that we would work with. Basically, when I say that these things are related, they're essentially related because in each case what we're doing is we're managing proximity to failure over the course of a set. So what clusters will do is essentially they will stop a set with a fixed number of repetitions and then obviously, there'll be a short rest intra-set rest and then the repetitions will continue. So what you're essentially doing there is kind of stopping before you hit muscular failure in order to allow some recovery to happen and then continuing on with the set afterwards, picking up at a obviously kind of further point from failure to then continue on doing more repetitions. Reps in reserve obviously is exactly the same concept. So we do a set but this time we actually stop the set and take a full rest before doing another set. So it's kind of same kind of idea but a little bit of a different structure. And then velocity-based training is essentially reps in reserve governed by an external observation, which is that when the athlete is doing maximum effort on every single repetition, you get a gradual reduction in bar speed over the course of the set, such that you can kind of see when a certain percentage of velocity loss has happened. And if you want to do, you know, kind of fixed velocity kind of thresholds, you can say after 20%, 30%, 40%, whatever velocity loss, you can stop the set. Generally speaking, that corresponds with a, kind of fixed number of reps in reserve. So a certain percentage of velocity loss will give you, you know, in a given context will give you a certain number of reps in reserve. So you kind of use it as an external way of fixing the number of reps in reserve rather than asking the athlete to tell you how many reps they think they've got left. So it's kind of just the same kind of idea, except of course that you have to use maximum effort on every single repetition. Okay, that's the basic kind of structure. What does that mean physiologically? Physiologically, basically what we're dealing with here is the adaptions that we're trying to stimulate could be affected by how close to failure we're actually training in any given scenario. And that means we have to be aware of what adaptions we're trying to create with a given set and what that proximity to failure means for them. Generally speaking, if we're trying to stimulate increases in motor unit recruitment, we are better off using maximum efforts on every repetition anyway, at which point it actually doesn't really matter whether you're using clusters, reps in reserve, or obviously velocity-based training involves maximum efforts anyway. If you're using a set to stimulate an increase in recruitment, or if you're using a set to increase, well, obviously, other neural adaptions will be kind of more specific to load or kind of velocity, so that's probably not really relevant. But generally speaking, if we're using a set to stimulate increases in recruitment, then we are going to want to be using maximum efforts on every single repetition. So the reality is that whether it's a cluster or a rep in reserve set, or whether it's a velocity-based training set, actually is completely irrelevant. You will get the recruitment increases regardless. If you're not using maximum efforts on every rep and you think you're increasing recruitment, then okay, fine, proximity to failure now is going to make a difference. But honestly, I think that is a little bit of a sort of missed opportunity to trigger the adaption that you're actually trying to kind of produce. So really hypertrophy kind of is the one that really kind of matters in this conversation. So if you're using clusters, reps in reserve, or velocity-based training, you can end up stopping outside of that range, depending on your kind of starting load. So for example, if you're using a 10 rep max, you can find that if you're leaving a lot of reps in reserve, or if you're using velocity-based training, then you're going to end up stopping outside of that range, depending on your kind of starting load. So for example, if you're using a 10 rep max, you can find that if you're leaving a lot of reps in reserve, or if you're using clusters with that protocol, you can end up in a scenario where you actually end up not stimulating any hypertrophy at all. So very, very quick comment, because I've seen a little bit of bad press regarding stimulating rep theory recently. Stimulating rep theory is a hypertrophy model. Anybody who is arguing against the stimulating rep theory saying, "Oh, well, you're using the word stimulating and you're not talking about other adaptions." That's a bad faith argument. That's basically a word thinking bad faith argument saying, "Oh, because she used the word stimulating, I'm now going to argue that you should be accounting for the fact that motor unit recruitment gains could be stimulated." I'm like, "It's a hypertrophy model. The words don't matter. The concept is a hypertrophy model." So anybody who is arguing, "Oh, well, you should be including reference to other stimulating, other adaptions that are stimulated." That's a bad faith argument, which tells you everything you need to know about that particular kind of person. But if you're using a 10 rep max, you can find that if you're leaving a lot of reps in reserve, you're going to end up not stimulating any hypertrophy at all. So very, very quick comment, because I've seen a lot of bad press regarding stimulating rep theory recently. In terms of other arguments that are kind of coming up regarding the stimulating rep model. Obviously, the classic one is that people will go, "Oh, well, you know, if you're going to do a 10 rep max, you're going to have to do a 10 rep multi-joint exercise, which muscle is the one that's being stimulated?" I'm like, "Well, look at the limiting factor." I mean, limiting factor, that's going to be the one that has you kind of maximum levels of recruitment. Everything else that isn't a limiting factor, what you're going to find is it just has a lower level of recruitment. Is that going to be sufficient? Well, who knows? I mean, that's one of the limitations that we have with biomechanics. You can't really know, and it's going to differ between people. But for limiting factor, you're pretty much kind of on track for being able to treat that exercise as a single joint exercise. It's going to behave pretty much the same way. So again, it's like what kind of limitations we've got working with the model. But physiologically, it doesn't change the model, it just makes it a little bit more difficult to kind of work with practically. I'm just trying to think if there's anything else that's been popping up in terms of arguments against stimulating reps at the moment.
Speaker 2Yeah, there was everyone mentioning, "Oh, all reps are stimulating." Okay. Yes.
Speaker 1For something. Yeah. I mean, basically, all reps are going to be stimulating for fibers that are activated. I mean, that's ultimately the problem. If a repetition has got a low level of recruitment and those muscle fibers that are being activated in response to that low level of recruitment are fibers that we've already maxed out according to the size of the striated muscle. Then, yeah, they're being stimulated, they're being maintained in the sense that they are receiving a mechanical stimulus to grow. They cannot grow because they've hit their plateau in terms of size. Ultimately, that just means they stay the same size. That's why if we have an accident and we end up immobilizing a limb because we've broken a leg or an arm or whatever, that muscle around that bone then shrinks because we're not using it. We're not providing that stimulus for the day-to-day activity. That's exactly what's going on. So if we provide a stimulus up to a certain level of activity. Up to a level on fibers that are already maxed out, nothing is going to happen. They are receiving a stimulus, they are being triggered to grow, but nothing's going to happen. And that's kind of the problem that I think a lot of people have when they look at the model. They go, "Well, if it's slow velocity, then any time fiber is activated and you're moving slowly, then it must be receiving a stimulus. How am I not growing when I'm walking across the room?" You're receiving a stimulus to grow. If you had immobilized your legs prior to that point, and then you're walking again after a period of being immobilized. In a cast, you would be growing while you're walking across the room. That's exactly correct. But because now you've got to the point where those fibers have maxed out because they've been walking across the room for years, ultimately there's no capacity for them to grow. So there's no growth you're going to see from just walking across the room. But maintenance is being created by the fact that they are actually receiving a stimulus. Ultimately, I think it's really strange when I see people kind of sticking their head above the parapet and arguing against the stimulating rep model, when I've addressed all of these arguments for like the last five or six years, and far smarter people than them have kind of come after me on it and gone away with the tail between their legs. There isn't really anywhere to go on this. It's the only valid model in the entirety of the kind of exercise science community that actually makes any sense in the context of muscle growth. But there we go. Always going to be haters.
Speaker 2Yeah. The problem is that... Most of the people arguing have literally even said that they have only looked at maybe one or two infographics, and that that is the entirety of the model, and that's what they're addressing. Cool, yeah, if you're addressing one or two infographics from years ago, great, good for you. But if you're going to say you haven't read or listened to anything else on stimulating rep theory, then how are you even going to try to criticize it? Because like you said, you've addressed it all, so it's...
Speaker 1Yes, I have. I mean like... A couple of the things that pop up again and again and again, people go, "Okay, if it's a slow movement velocity that creates the mechanical tension on the fiber, how do you explain isometrics?" And it's like some kind of gotcha, and I'm like, "Are you aware that zero is a very slow number zero is a very slow velocity you know basically it's it's continuous like you can get really really slow dynamics and you go all the way down to isometric and it's exactly the same thing the actin myosin cross bridges behave in exactly the same way um you basically got a really really slow velocity and if you go the other side and start doing eccentrics the same thing applies at slow eccentric velocities you've got really really high crossover between the actin myosin as you get faster and faster and faster and start dropping basically into the really high end of the eccentric spectrum you are going to get again um the same problem that you get with high concentric velocities except you get the opposite issue with um in terms of uh the fiber force because a lot of the fiber force now is coming from titan and titan is viscoelastic so the faster you stretch your muscle fiber the more force it will produce but it's all passive so what happens is if you now go and look at the eccentric training literature what you'll see is that you've got a lot of the fiber force that's coming from the actin myosin cross bridges is that faster movement velocities in eccentric um kind of contractions cause less and less hypertrophy and more and more sarcomeres yes it's really really nice kind of even switch from one to the other adaption and it's because you're getting less and less crossover between actin myosin and more and more resistance from titan so the model actually works perfectly and every time they do these critiques i'm like you're literally making my point because anybody who knows any physiology will literally read that and go oh that's interesting so actually um it works both in concentric isometrics and also in um eccentric as well the entire model is is pretty continuous it works pretty much perfectly across the entire contraction mode spectrum um and then i think some people are getting upset about the fact that um stimulating rep theory doesn't give you five uh kind of um equal sort of stimuli on the five uh kind of repetitions to failure so like stimulating rep model is a physiological model that explains how muscle growth works the practical implication of that is that approximately the last five reps before a failure point in a set are going to give you you know kind of a stimulus for hypertrophy as long as you don't mess around with the physiology so for example if you mess like we're going to talk about this in context of clusters if you're doing a whole bunch of clusters you're getting really really out of breath because you're doing you know kind of start with a 10 or 12 rep max and you do a couple of reps then you kind of leave a short rest then you do another couple of reps and you're kind of really getting to a point where your cardiovascular system is being taxed because you're doing a whole ton of work and you're doing other repetitions then you're going to start creating reduction in recruitment from the supraspinal cnst effect stimulating reps model says that that is a problem now the practical output is that okay can we now say that your last five reps before failure are going to be all stimulating the same way that they would be if i did a single five rep max well not really because you're trying to blend practical models with physiological models the the stimulators model is a physiological model it says that you've got a high level of recruitment and a slow movement velocity you're going to have hypertrophy across the muscle but what that's relying on is that the um the approximated failure at the effort level that you're going to experience is giving you a high level of recruitment if you don't have a high level of recruitment but you do have a high level of effort because you've got supraspinal cnst effect perhaps because of cardiovascular sensations you are not going to satisfy the demands of the model um similarly if i've got a slow movement velocity but i've got a ton of calcium unrelated fatigue then again i'm not supplying the demands of the model because i've reduced tension even though i've got a slow movement velocity so um ultimately the physiological model is one thing the output practically is another thing you're going to be aware of the limitations of that when you're translating from one to the other and these critiques that are being done can't really do that and they get upset because they can't have something that they want that the model doesn't actually supply and it's got like it's got
Speaker 2great predictive value it's like if you try to quantify the stimulus you're getting from each rep and like a set of eight to ten it's like it's going to be a lot of work and it's going to be what are you going to get out of trying to like go over what's happening in those first few reps when really it's you know like nothing's happening in those first few reps nothing's happening like the only important ones are the last five maybe six so yeah like the model you can use it to predict how many of those reps you're getting that's pretty easy i don't it doesn't seem like something that should be so hard to grasp and this is the exact point and why it's relevant
Speaker 1for what we're talking about today because if we are constructing a workout plan with clusters or with reps in reserve or with velocity based training now we may be stimulating other adaptions as well like recruitment for example or if we're using these in a powerlifting context we might be trying to trigger improvements in coordination we'll come back to that later on but ultimately if we're trying to produce any hypertrophy in these situations we need to be aware of how many stimulating reps we're getting now if we start constructing cluster routines to stay away from muscular failure and we start further away than a five rep max if we start with a 10 or a 12 rep max and we start doing clusters we are basically delaying the point at which we're going to get any hypertrophy stimulus we're doing a ton more work before we get to the point where actually any hypertrophy is going to happen if we're using reps in reserve again we just have to be looking at that going okay well i need to make sure i'm within kind of that five rep zone so okay fine if i'm doing a 10 rep max whatever and i do eight reps i'm needing two reps in reserve that's not a problem i know i've got some stimulus maybe i might want to do a 10 rep max and i'm doing a 10 rep max and i'm doing a extra set but you know to kind of make sure i get the the kind of the level of volume dose that i want for the muscle growth in that particular workout but fundamentally i know i'm pressing over into that zone and velocity-based training has the same issue if i'm wanting to stimulate my hypertrophy i've got to make sure i'm within that number of reps of failure if i want that muscle growth stimulus to happen if i don't want the muscle growth stimulus to happen honestly i think there are better ways of training than doing that honestly if someone says to me i'm training you know i'm training for a 10 rep max i'm going to do a 10 rep max and i'm going to do a 10 rep max with velocity loss of x percent and i'm trying to stay further than five reps from failure i'm like honestly just do some jumps just do some fast movement training because you're going to get more more interesting adaptions being stimulated from that as well as all the ones that you're getting from i mean ultimately velocity-based training further than five reps in reserve you're doing more than five reps in reserve equivalent with velocity loss what you're really doing is power training that's what you're doing and we've been through this why power training makes no sense i mean it does give you some adaptions not many um but you know honestly heavy strength training close to failure and uh combining that with fast movements you're going to get way more benefits than kind of messing around in this middle zone so i'm not really a fan of that i think there are some really interesting applications of vbt but i don't think that that particular example where it's commonly used for example in soccer where they're doing like 10 20 velocity losses with like 10 12 rep maxes i'm like you're wasting your time it's not going to do anything well it is it's going to give you a strength gain in the exercise that you're doing it's going to give you some recruitment improvements improvements but it's not going to give you very much else and
Speaker 2that's the issue yeah there's a lot better better ways to go about it yeah exactly so um let's now
Speaker 1talk some uh kind of practical uh kind of uh make some practical comments um rob talk talk to us about how you would use um well let's do the easy one first i think it's the most important let's talk about reps in reserve so reps in reserve is something that's a big feature of the programs that we would tend to write um walk us through um the various different kind of reps in reserve um numbers that you would use and whether they vary at all with rep ranges or
Speaker 2populations or anything like that yeah so if i'm thinking of like programming for you know most athletes you know we could say like field sports like soccer things like that soccer basketball players whatnot they're not doing you know things like squatting deadlifting bench press for the coordination improvements or any of that so whatever movements they're doing really just going to be a focus on heavy loads you know maybe anywhere from like three to six maybe eight reps um usually four to eight range is kind of where i stick and then for them just leaving most of the time like a rep or two in reserve a lot of times it's two in reserve and that's just to knock off like the final few reps before failure avoid calcium ion related fatigue that would cause post-workout fatigue and then still get them good strength gains and like you were saying working in a range that is close enough to failure to be producing hypertrophy and whatever movements i've picked um the other side of that if it's like a power lifter maybe sometimes going a little bit further from failure especially on the main lifts so trying to get gains in coordination so still generally working around like a five rep max um but a lot of times we've talked about it before like that patient lifter model kind of the adjusted um hepburn so you know something like uh three to five sets of two to three at maybe two three reps in reserve something like that and then you're like oh my god i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do that um maybe hitting some heavy singles at three or four reps in reserve and things like that to be triggering increases in coordination increases in recruitment but other than that um that's kind of the farthest i'm going terms of reps in reserve and then for accessory movements to draft hypertrophy for you know any athlete power lifter field sports whatever it might be um then you know i'll usually go within like a rep from failure um still avoiding going to failure i you know basically never suggest that especially when you're trying to train multiple times a week and you have other things going on but um yeah so those would be like kind of the general guidelines i stick to when it comes to rir
Speaker 1that's really cool um let me just kind of repeat that in a um sort of a takeaway type format for people so um basically um a lot of the time with athletes you're working two reps in reserve uh to avoid that post-workout fatigue um with power lifters maybe you take that a little bit further away from failure, obviously working with heavier loads in that context and that gives you that coordination gains uh kind of capacity to get more quality repetitions in the workout and potentially more quality repetitions across the week as well but that's slightly less of a an issue um and then with uh kind of accessory stuff and more general populations you're just leaving maybe one rep and reserve is that fair cool i think that's really really cool um kind of um matrix actually i think that probably is is is a really good takeaway for people um so just kind of picking up on that coordination issue i think this is really where it links with velocity-based training um which i don't tend to ever really program um but velocity-based training i think a lot of uh it can be really really useful in powerlifting contexts and it can be really useful to allow um monitoring of the athlete during a workout um and making sure that they are still able to achieve coordination improvements because as soon as we start to get any kind of fatigue uh building up in a workout then the coordination possibility the improvement of coordination possibility goes out the window so i think it's a really really cool strategy for powerlifters to play around with i know some really really good powerlifting coaches who are using this a lot uh they're monitoring bar speeds really closely throughout workouts um over time watching what's happening with the athletes moving heavy heavy loads as quickly as they can and then just seeing how that trends across the workout when things start to go bad when the velocity starts to drop away then they kind of in an auto-regulation type way they'll be able to do that and then they'll be able to do that and then they'll be able to do that they'll stop the workout and then pick up again the next time i think that's there's some really cool kind of stuff being done there uh in that particular context um but i think it works because you're already in that five kind of five rep max zone i think that when you start using velocity based training with um soccer players and you're doing 10 rep maxes 12 rep maxes like we see in the literature yes you're going to get strength gains yes they're going to be coordination recruitment related um you're not going to get much hypertrophy and it's not really going to transfer very well to the sporting context once you've got your recruitment gains once you've got your recruitment gains once they're gone um you're not really going to see very much else so it feels like it's power training really i mean it's kind of just a modern version of power training with a bit more technology bolted on the front um which i don't i don't really see much use are and you don't tend to make a lot of
Speaker 2use of philosophy based training rub no no i mean personally like i i don't use it in my lifts um and if i have some athletes i do have some that like it you know they like to track their bar speeds and that but it's more it can be motivating which is cool i mean i should mention that i mean
Speaker 1if somebody is motivated by watching their bar speeds that's fantastic i mean let's use that i
Speaker 2mean that's great yeah yeah if they enjoy it like i never tell anyone not to but i don't really go out of my way to use it um you know just reps and reserve and if i'm coaching someone in person for long enough usually a pretty decent judge of where they're at and you know even like video footage and that is not people always talk about it being super hard to like know where you are at with reps and reserve or where a client is at and i just don't really agree that it's all that difficult you know after you've been working with someone for a bit gotten used to like the way their lifts trend and that um but i have had those arguments that judging rir is too difficult and you know not not very useful and i just
Speaker 1don't know where it's coming from the literature is relatively clear i think that it is one to three reps in reserve is very reliable i mean sure i mean if you're going beyond that then
Speaker 2it's going to get messy um and with very high reps but with with like low and moderate reps it's not it's not difficult and yeah like you said the literature suggests that it is not difficult but people i've had people argue that data indicates it is difficult and i'm like where
Speaker 1you getting that you want to send that over yeah i mean certainly within half a rep in reserve i mean i think it's it's relatively in that one to three rep uh one to three reps in reserve zone i think it's relatively relatively reliable um and i think honestly like you're saying um you know when you kind of sort of watch people or watch yourself doing a set um you should see those last two repetitions velocity just drops off a cliff you know i mean like if you can't tell that those last two you're in those last two reposition zone and i think you're not paying attention i mean it's it's really really obvious when you when you're into that last two reps but anyway it is yeah um i mean maybe maybe what's happening is that maybe what's happening is that people are looking at exercises that have a wide um variation in terms of the form that can be used i mean like um if you're doing biceps curls and you're allowing yourself to practically bend over backwards in order to you know kind of get another repetition then yeah you can start to mess around with that reps and reserves because you're changing the lift yeah you're actually changing you're changing the lift what you've done there is you've basically done a mechanical kind of drop set scenario where you've made the your last repetition or extra repetitions you've done a mechanical kind of drop set scenario where you've made the your last repetition or extra repetitions you've done a mechanical kind of drop set scenario where you've made the your last repetition or extra repetitions i mean like if you did the same exercise standing against a wall you probably find that you managed to get a much more accurate picture of your reps and reserve i think the same thing probably applies with auto multi-joint stuff where people are you know moving from bicep skills which is just my favorite example for that but like um you know kind of squats deadlifts bench presses if you're massively changing your form as you go through the exercise then you might be putting yourself in a contagious position to get that additional rep out then yeah you might find that your reps and reserve now doesn't really add up but that's because you're changing the lift i mean it's a different exercise cool okay so in terms of clusters then um i mean really for me a cluster is a really interesting strategy if we're in the five rep max zone already um but equally i think there are some practical um limitations on that so for me i'm not going to be able to do that i'm not actually a huge fan of clusters in a powerlifting context because of the setup i mean okay deadlift probably is a little bit an exception to this but um like for me bench and squat are actually fiddly to do with clusters i just don't like them because of the re-racking issue is that
Speaker 2something that you've kind of noticed yeah in general if i'm going to use it i use it more often on deadlift um certainly it's not like i haven't used it on squat or bench you know ways that definitely is much more rare but i'm going to use it more often on deadlift um but yeah like if you're unracking and re-racking constantly especially if you're not great like on a squat with your unrack and your walk out and things like that could definitely be an issue deadlift is pretty easy like you said i mean you just you drop the bar you wait a little bit you pick it back up so i do actually like clusters quite a bit on deadlift i used to do them myself quite a lot um and with clients but you know mainly i mean with clusters like you're saying it's interesting with the five rep max there's really only you know one thing you're going to do that is useful use your 5rm and you do you know usually i have people do doubles and you just do a few doubles with 30 seconds or so in between and you know that that's
Speaker 1it i usually the thing is though the thing is though the actual rest period is irrelevant
Speaker 2yeah yeah no the rest period doesn't matter it's just like you can go 15 you go 60 it's
Speaker 1as long as you're working with the 5rm weight so it really becomes a reps in reserve issue isn't it i mean all we're doing is saying we're doing we're doing three reps in reserve because we want some better coordination improvements so we want you know we're really trying to avoid post-workout fatigue we want to give ourselves a little bit more room to maneuver rather than just two reps in reserve we're giving ourselves three i mean like the actual rest period doesn't matter i mean this is i think the problem that we see when people start to go oh no i want to do my cluster sets with 10 rep max as i'm like well you that's just miserable because now you've got to create uh i mean ultimately you've got to be creating cardiovascular fatigue because um the metabolites will clear most uh well relatively quickly um as will all the cns fatigues uh related to the spinal mechanism so you're literally just accumulating cardiovascular sensations um which means that you're kind of ending up chiseling away
Speaker 2your recruitment level at the top end especially with something like a squat or something like that which i've seen squat and front squat and those for cluster protocols and i just i wouldn't you know with higher reps like you're saying like you know like a one we spoke about for the podcast was like the eight sets of five with three for us i'm absolutely mad yeah would would never suggest something like that i mean kind of looking at the opposite end
Speaker 1of the spectrum if somebody was to say okay well i'm going to i'm going to do a um i'm going to do a repetition uh a single repetition with a fire max and then i'm going to not rewrite the bar i'm just going to count 10 seconds and then i'm going to do another repetition um now i think that's an interesting strategy because you're dealing with the fiddly aspect of the re-racking but equally you're not really getting rid of i mean you you're kind of not really getting rid of the fact that you are in fact still standing there with quite a heavy load on your back so the recovery period isn't going to feel like a true recovery period so i think you might squeeze one more repetition out in that scenario i mean people can if they want to do this experiment they can do it they can tell me i'm not
Speaker 2doing that again but uh i mean if you do a squat set with like a five-round weight rough roughly five-round and you take a good amount of breaths between reps i mean i personally have done things like that and you know compared to going relatively quickly rep to rep i'll probably eke out one more yeah that's what i think yeah i don't think it's really very is it meaningful to do that now like you know if i'm like for some reason i want to hit a specific rep target like that day and I'll take 10 or 15 seconds just for reason sometimes for the final rep yeah like i'll get it when i probably wouldn't have do i think that's useful i i honestly don't i'm just usually doing it to do it yeah i agree um but of course
Speaker 1you know equally um clusters in machine contexts um could be really really interesting because now you've got complete um there's no fiddly aspect whatsoever you've got complete freedom to do whatever you want to do um i think that's where it becomes interesting i think if you wanted to um kind of crack through a whole load of extra stimulating reps um in a set period of time and avoid post-workout fatigue as well plus there's a really really interesting way of doing that because you could just throw you know kind of five rep max assuming that the machine you know that you're choosing is comfortable to do a five rep max on not every machine is going to be comfortable to do that but assuming you've got a machine that's comfortable to do a five rep max on you know you could literally i mean like a leg press i mean like single leg leg press i could do fabric max on a single leg press i could do two reps i could um take 30 seconds i could do another two reps i'll take 30 seconds and i could start to accumulate a whole bunch of stimulating reps with going nowhere near muscular failure so i wouldn't be expecting very much post-workout fatigue i think that's a really interesting strategy for somebody who's short
Speaker 2on time does that make sense to you yeah and i mean that's i was gonna say before that's kind of the only way i do it is i shoot for like 10 total reps i usually go 30 seconds between just and quick and i'll generally program it um for someone who's short on time or if they've just been doing the exact same thing for a long time and they've maybe suggested to me they might like a little variety well if i know that i still want to train that specific lift and still get a good amount of stimulating reps and not have it take very long like that's just an easy one to chuck in there most people find it pretty fun um i've done it myself on like a pendulum squat actually and other things and you know that it's easy enough it's quick so i do like that one but besides that don't really use any other cluster protocols sure i was just um laughing
Speaker 1then because before we jump to the podcast we're joking about the fact that um one of the uh kind of ideas that floats around is people flipping set and rep schemes around so like you know starting with four by ten which is a very popular kind of bodybuilding or has been in the kind of you know 2000s onwards in a popular bodybuilding kind of routine everybody just programs four sets of 10 is that well hang on what happens if we do you know kind of 10 sets of four um like well actually that makes no sense at all because what's going to happen is um uh assuming you're using the same load what's going to happen is that you're going to end up basically creating a ton of cardiovascular um sensations super spinal fatigue and you're going to do an insane number of reps miles away from muscular failure and maybe you might get a little bit of a stimulus towards the end of that workout but otherwise it's just a gigantic waste of time and um making people tired um and generally just kind of miserable but i was just thinking as you were as we were talking about that leg press example if you would say well okay well you know if i were to think of two two five rep maxes two sets of that would be a kind of standard um kind of two sets two sets um five rep max um in a workout for an athlete that would be a relatively common protocol um if you were to flip that around and say well okay well what happens if we do five doubles with a five rep max easy actually works perfectly and the reason it works perfectly is because of the load that we're using um so this really just comes back to this point which is that if you're not actually respecting stimulating rep theory then clusters aren't going to work for you whereas if you do respect stimulating rep theory and you take into account the practicalities of the exercise that you want to do it has to be feasible you know then actually everything works it's very very simple
Speaker 2the fact that people don't find it simple is crazy people are like going oh no i'm going to do
Speaker 1clusters with a 10 rep max and i'm going to do all these kind of extra kind of you know and i'm like you just all you're doing is delaying the point where you hit the the zone in which you're stimulating muscle growth and they go no no no time under tension no no no no no you know i'm just going to say that volume volume load or volume they go no i'm doing more volume i'm like no you're not
Speaker 2more volume more tonnage more time under tension you name it they say it
Speaker 1honestly just a gigantic word salad that gets nobody anywhere and ultimately it's because they they don't respect what's happening at the muscular level they're just like oh if i do more work i'm going to create more muscle growth i'm like marathon runners in mechanical terms do way more work than you do and they don't get they don't get anywhere near the kind of hypertrophy that we would expect based on the work done that they're achieving and they go oh no no that's different like it is tell me why
Speaker 2i could do it i could do a set of 10 with 225 on a back squat probably every 30 minutes for the entire day and accumulate so much enormous ridiculous yes and it would do literally nothing because i can squat 400 for 10 it's like yeah i feel terrible but i would do absolutely nothing it's like these are not hard concepts but what you notice is that that any anybody
Speaker 1who critiques the stimulating muscle growth is going to be like oh my god i'm going to do that model will not will not venture into that territory to explain why that doesn't work they won't they won't go there because they've got nowhere to go we'll say a single with 14 reps in reserve will grow we're having that conversation earlier in the week over whatsapp
Speaker 2that's funny so we're 29 reps in reserve then apparently i'm gonna have to do another another
Speaker 1go at this whole kind of um proximity to failure kind of literature i think and and walk people through it but anyway um practicalities let's finish with um you know kind of really clear guidelines because i think um the the matrix that you kind of um explained earlier is really really valuable to people so basically um the way that you explained it is that if if you're um programming reps in reserve um in a in a in a strength training workout generally speaking you're gonna have three separate uh kind of baskets or three three areas that you're thinking in terms of using reps in reserve you'll be thinking athletic uh contexts often you're going to leave two reps in reserve as a standard because that really does make clear that we're going to avoid post-workout fatigue and athletes have other things going on in the week so we really want to be very very careful with them so two reps in reserve is a really cool protocol across the board for everything that they're doing strength training wise um powerlifters you um can often go an extra rep reserve and use two reps in reserve because you're targeting coordination improvements you want to get more high quality work at closer proximity to their maximum load their one rep max so you want to be kind of maybe singles with as you said four or five rep maxes that kind of thing um and that gives that opportunity um with uh kind of accessory stuff or with general populations you're working maybe with one rep in reserve um you've got that facility to go close to failure maybe they're not athletes maybe they've not got extra stuff going on the week or maybe you know kind of um you're comfortable maybe it's a an exercise that isn't quite so damaging it's not a stretched position or whatever like that you've got that kind of basket open to you for you know maybe the machine stuff so i think that's really really cool kind of matrix is there anything you want to clarify on
Speaker 2that description no i think that's it and simple enough for people to use cool and then in terms
Speaker 1of clusters basically there's only one rule and that is you have to be using a five rep max that's the rule anything else is not worth doing because all you're doing is delaying the point at which you hit the stimulating rep zone so there's no point in doing clusters with anything other than the five rep max i've been around this so many times so many different permutations it's like just use that rule because actually after that you can kind of be you know i mean okay practicalities mean that you've got to use a certain you can't i mean like you're not going to use a five rep max on certain machine exercises it's just not going to be comfortable it might not even be feasible with the stack and the strength level of the person but you know practicalities um making it possible and i think um five rep maxes and clusters in machine context fantastic because um you can literally just hop on do a couple of reps take a rest you don't have to re-rack you don't have to mess around with the practicalities i think clusters with five rep maxes with anything technical other than a deadlift becomes really really tricky yeah cool anything else you want to say before we finish today i think we covered it pretty well and fantastic great stuff it was a good episode in which case we will be back next week with another episode
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