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Thread: Great intensity day after stomach virus...HOW????

  1. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Russ Holmes View Post
    Its been a long time since I saw the interview you did with Ed Coan so the details may be a bit fuzzy. As I remember it he said he never missed a set in training and always left reps in the tank.
    As I understand it RPE is really just a way to measure how hard the rep/set was. How is saying I thought that was RPE 8-9 so different from saying I think I had 1-2 reps left in the tank?
    Ed knows things that kids doing RPE don't know. And even Ed might have been wrong. You know when you have another rep. You don't know if you have 2 until you do them. More importantly, your warmups tell you nothing about how many reps you have in your work sets.

  2. #22
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    I am Paul’s aforementioned client. I was very reluctant to start Texas Method at the end of LP. As you probably know, TM has received some bad “PR.” I thought I’d share a few thoughts on why I chose to try it despite the overwhelmingly negative PR.

    (1) I’m a consumer. Though I’m appreciative of what the SS brand has done for me to *start* strength, I have too many constraints on my time and money to be blindly loyal to any brand. The competition’s program is sitting on my desktop. Paul knows this and he knew it when he recommended Texas Method to me. Paul also knew there was a decent chance I would fire him if I didn’t get measurably stronger on Texas Method. I appreciate that he had the balls to recommend an unpopular program to me. The unpopular, much-maligned program has made me stronger than I ever expected.

    (2) Before starting Texas Method, I weighed other options. I concluded, on my own (with zero input from Paul), that I was not ready to start an RPE-based program. After listening to several RTS podcasts and perusing the RTS powerlifting records, it was self-evident to me that the RTS guys are fucking badasses. I am not a fucking badass. I did not touch a barbell between the ages of 17 and 39. I’m a lawyer and father of two young daughters. I’m not in RTS’s league. I’m not even in their minor leagues. Prior to LP, my experience with pushing myself to the limits of my physical capacity was nil. I am still *starting* strength. Every time I get under a heavy workset, a very non-badass side of my brain runs through the list of reasons why I should set the bar down on the pins – it feels too heavy, I’m going to get hurt, I feel like shit this morning and didn’t get enough sleep. Yet I haven’t missed a squat, bench, or press rep in the 25 weeks I’ve been on Texas Method. (I missed a few deadlift reps after straining my back because of a “hitch” that Paul had tried to correct for weeks, which I stubbornly resisted until one day I felt the pain he had repeatedly warned me I would feel if I kept ignoring his advice to stop “hitching”). The reason I haven’t missed a rep is I’ve stuck to the “program” as a matter of blind faith. It's my only option. I don’t have any faith in myself because it still makes no sense to me that, each week, I can lift the same set/rep scheme that was difficult for me to lift last week, except with 5 more pounds on the bar. So instead of focusing on what makes sense to me or how I feel, I choose to place blind faith in Hans Seyle, the mystical SRA process, and my belief that two people I’ve never met, Andy Baker and Mark Rippetoe, wouldn’t have been foolish enough to put snake oil in a book with their names on it.

    (3) During 25 weeks on Texas Method, I’ve performed approximately 2,250 workset reps (approx 90 workset reps per week). Of those 2,250 reps, I’ve seriously questioned whether I could do another rep during at least 100 of those reps. But that doesn’t mean I’ve done 100 reps at RPE 10; in fact, I’ve done only two reps at RPE 10. One of the RPE 10 reps was my last rep of my last set of five squats: I knew it was an RPE 10 because it was inordinately slow, both of my nostrils opened up a river of blood, and, once I set it down, Paul said “it’s time to switch your squats to threes.” He *saw* what I *felt*, which confirmed it was an RPE 10. The other RPE 10 happened two weeks ago when I pressed 225 for 5 reps. Anyone who sees that last rep (it’s on the Horn Strength & Conditioning Instagram page if you’re curious) can see I’m shaking uncontrollably and lose my form on the last rep (the step forward). Conclusion: I’m still not a badass, but I have two intractable data points in my mind that I didn’t have 25 weeks ago which inform me what an RPE 10 truly feels like.

    (4) The nose bleed reference shouldn't scare people away. Overall, Texas Method has been “easier” for me than the last two months of LP were. I love Texas Method’s intra-week variation. The volume day (my Monday) can be a grind, but it is all downhill after that. Wednesday is essentially a day off (though I learn a lot about recovery each Wednesday because my Wednesday workout informs me of the toll that Monday's volume workout had on me). The much-vaunted Texas Method intensity day (my Friday) is not the scary monster people seem to think it is. Every rep I perform on Friday has already been “framed” (put in perspective) by what I lifted the preceding Monday. This Friday, I’m going to squat 470 lbs for two sets of three. It will not occupy any space in my head before then because this morning (i.e., Monday morning), I squatted 415 lbs for four sets of five. Four days from now, 470 will of course feel heavier on my back than 415 felt this morning, but it’s going to be “easy” by comparison because I don’t have to do nearly as many reps. Knowing this sets my mind at ease.

  3. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    Ed knows things that kids doing RPE don't know. And even Ed might have been wrong. You know when you have another rep. You don't know if you have 2 until you do them. More importantly, your warmups tell you nothing about how many reps you have in your work sets.
    I am just having a lot of trouble understanding why there is so much animosity towards RPE.
    The P stands for perceived. Ed never missed a rep, I believe that the only way he could do that is through how he "perceived" his sets and reps, and then making decisions based off that perception. He was using RPE, he just wasn't calling it RPE.
    I wasn't talking about the kids you mentioned or novices. You brought up Ed and others, and you doubled down when you said no-one can use RPE including those with 42 years of professional experience. People doing percentages adjust their percentages based on how things feel, people doing back off sets base their decisions on how things feel. They might not call it RPE but decisions in the gym are made all the time based on the perception of how difficult a previous rep/set/session was.
    I understood when you used to say RPE is not recommended for novices, but when I see you saying its not appropriate for experienced people (including Ed and those with 40+ years experience) to make decisions based on how reps/sets feel I start to wonder if there is something else going on here. Is this some philosophical thing or is it the term RPE that you object to?

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    But Dorian Yates was wrong, Ronnie Coleman was wrong, Kirk and Ed were wrong, and most importantly, we are wrong.
    This was sarcasm.
    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    And even Ed might have been wrong.
    This was not, and now I'm confused.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    You know when you have another rep.
    Thus, you acknowledge the existence of RPE 9.

    Now, what if I decide to do a set that leaves one rep in the tank but select a weight that's a little too light and at the end of it I feel that maybe there was more than one in the tank?
    I should make adjustments based off that feeling for the next set or next session, yes?
    We both know the answer, what I don't know is why I can't call it RPE 8?

  5. #25
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    I think people are talking more about The Bridge, which uses RPE prescriptively. Not really anything wrong with using it to describe how a set felt after the fact, but using it to select your weight/reps for the set seems pretty unreliable.

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Russ Holmes View Post
    Now, what if I decide to do a set that leaves one rep in the tank but select a weight that's a little too light and at the end of it I feel that maybe there was more than one in the tank?
    I should make adjustments based off that feeling for the next set or next session, yes?
    We both know the answer, what I don't know is why I can't call it RPE 8?
    So, not going to absolute failure = using RPE? What happens with those tables with percentages describing 11 reps @ 6.5 RPE? What about estimated 1 rep maxes? As far as I know, people were strategically avoiding sets to failure way way before RPE is invented, so why do we have to call that RPE?

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by Russ Holmes View Post
    Now, what if I decide to do a set that leaves one rep in the tank but select a weight that's a little too light and at the end of it I feel that maybe there was more than one in the tank?
    I should make adjustments based off that feeling for the next set or next session, yes?
    We both know the answer, what I don't know is why I can't call it RPE 8?
    Russ, you can call it anything you want. You can even pay a lot of money for it if you want to. But it's still bullshit, because it claims to quantify in the absence of data. Figure that out.

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ivan Stepic View Post
    So, not going to absolute failure = using RPE? What happens with those tables with percentages describing 11 reps @ 6.5 RPE? What about estimated 1 rep maxes? As far as I know, people were strategically avoiding sets to failure way way before RPE is invented, so why do we have to call that RPE?
    It's like you got my point, but then didn't.
    You don't have to call it RPE, you can call it whatever you want. RPE to me is just a way of measuring how far from failure you thought you were. I'm just confused by the animosity to those 3 letters.

  9. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Rippetoe View Post
    Russ, you can call it anything you want. You can even pay a lot of money for it if you want to. But it's still bullshit, because it claims to quantify in the absence of data. Figure that out.
    I haven't paid a cent for it.
    Is leaving one in the tank bullshit because it claims to quantify in the absence of data?

  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by Russ Holmes View Post
    It's like you got my point, but then didn't.
    You don't have to call it RPE, you can call it whatever you want. RPE to me is just a way of measuring how far from failure you thought you were. I'm just confused by the animosity to those 3 letters.
    You're missing the point. You CANNOT measure how far away from failure you were or are. Failure only happens when you fail. You have to fail to know, and therefore measure it. This is the equivalent of proving a negative. It is an error in logic, and we've already told you everything you need to know about why you are wrong. Until you actually fail, you don't know where this point is, because you might not fail. In order to KNOW what you can actually do, you have to try to do it. You don't know how many you left in the tank, because you cannot know this with any degree of certainty, and therefore you are not quantifying anything. Claiming you can predict failure is bullshit, because all of us have completed work sets we KNEW we couldn't do, if we merely had the balls to try. And programming based on bullshit is bullshit programming.

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