Should Adults Lift for Less than 5 Reps Per Set? - #AMR382

Mike Boyle had a great discussion on Instagram several weeks ago about adults lifting to failure and using low rep schemes.

It sparked a lot of arguments among people about which approach is best and whether there's always an answer to this question.

We discuss whether adults should lift to failure on low-rep schemes in this week's episode. 

We'll go over what we do at Champion, how we mostly agree with this, and why we may work low reps for a very certain population for a specific reason.

To see full show notes and more, head to: https://mikereinold.com/should-adults-lift-for-less-than-5-reps-per-set/ 

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Transcript

Show Intro And Free Course Plug

SPEAKER_03 0:53

On this episode of The Ask My Rhinal Show, we talk about whether or not adults should be lifting with low rep schemes less than five reps per second. The Ask My Rhinald Show. Helping people feel better, move better, perform better. Before we get to the podcast, I wanted to make sure you knew about my free online course on the introduction to performance therapy and training. If you want to learn how to get started optimizing and enhancing performance, this is the course for you. Head to micrandall.com slash performance. Sign up today. Welcome back, everybody, to the latest episode of the Ask Mike Reynolds Show. We are here up in Boston, champion PT and performance, answering your questions. Anything you want to talk about, head to micrunnell.com, click on that podcast link and ask away. Uh let me see. Who do we have today? We have Brendan Gates, Anthony Videtta, Dewesh Podell, Dave Tilley, Kevin Coughlin, and Lenny McCrina. Len, do we have a couple of new students to introduce to the audience today?

SPEAKER_06 2:03

We do excited. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:04

I can tell very excited.

SPEAKER_06 2:05

Trying to figure out who we have for students. Sorry, guys. Let me guess. Um we have Brian Santos from Duke University, the Duke. Um not a fan. Sorry, Christian Leitner in uh Bonnie Girl. And Meredith Fagan. Not you, Brian. I'm a not a fan of Duke. I'm a fan of Brian. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:22

And I like Brian. Brian's done great. Yeah, he's in solid.

Team Roll Call And Banter

SPEAKER_06 2:27

New York Institute of Technology. I think it's in New York. So uh welcome Meredith and Brian to the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 2:34

I don't think I've ever heard that you don't like Duke, Len. Like and you're going back to 1991? Is that what you're doing?

SPEAKER_06 2:40

Yeah, yeah, I like Ren Hill. I mean, you've got like the Bobby Hurley, Christian Leitner era. I don't know, it's just kind of whiny.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

I it's like I feel like the turn the page phrase comes up right now. That was 40 years ago. My lord, nobody listening was born back then. Nobody knows who Christian Leitner is. Exactly. That's amazing. Meanwhile, Brendan Gates is a Duke alum and just sitting there not even saying a word.

SPEAKER_07 3:06

Yep. No, Jason Tatum, like we don't support Jason Tatum nowadays. We support Jason Tatum. Yeah, we support Jason Tatum's grand. I don't know. Yeah. It's like Jason Tatum, Brian. We got some great alumni.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Interesting helping.

The Listener Question Explained

SPEAKER_07 3:23

I think it but yeah, yeah, it's very useful.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Crazy, crazy. Anyway, all right. Uh, what do we got for a question today? Who's reading today? Who's up?

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Um, we got Mac from Boston. He says, Hi, Mike and team. I noticed a recent series of Instagram posts by Mike Mo Mike Boyle that you commented on. He was stating that he does not prefer to have adults that are training with him perform less than five reps per set during their lifts. I'd love to hear the team at Champion's thoughts on this. Do you have your adult clients at Champion perform sets with repetitions less than five when working on strength?

Why Low Reps Rarely Fit Adults

Beyond Powerlifting: Broader Fitness Goals

SPEAKER_03 3:58

Awesome. Great job, Meredith. Um, has everybody seen the Mike Boyle Instagram series? Uh did everybody yeah, everybody checked it. Oh, so I see oh, I forgot. Kevin's not on Instagram. That's right. Kevin's real. Uh the gist of it is right there. But yeah, I mean, you know, Mike, he's he's you know, uh strong-minded, but like also like with so much experience that like it's hard to not listen when he says something. That's that's my take. And I kind of commented that to him is like, you know, when Mike speaks, I you know, I think there's a lot we can all learn from that. So I I don't wanna I don't want to go too far with that. But yeah, there's like a big series, like he he had posts for like several days where he just kept going. And you know, the internet trolls just keep you know, chirping and you know they're arguing on whether or not adults, right? So not competitive power lifters and stuff like that. So honestly, us, right? Let's be honest, us, right? Should we be doing more than five? And like, you know, I mean, we all do it sometimes, right? And then we all probably regret that we did it sometimes, right? When we, you know, we are back at sore and stuff. But um, I don't know. You want to what why don't we throw this and just start with Dewesh, right? Just straight from the gym. You know, Dewesh is our you know, sports performance, our director of our gym. But basically, you know, but what what are your thoughts here? And you know, and I think then us old timers maybe can can jump in because I think we can relate to the question a little bit more. But Dwesh, what what's your initial thoughts? What's our approach of championing? Because I think that's what people want to hear too, is like other thoughts. Like, are we in agreement? Are we close? Are we are we off? Like, what do you think?

Tonnage, Hypertrophy, And Strength

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah, I I would say, I mean, this is something that I've definitely evolved over time a ton, all right. I think most young strength coaches, and I know Mike Boyle's kind of admitted to this too, is like early on. I feel like you get so into the powerlifting world because that's where most people start, and you know, you kind of start basing a lot of your philosophies, you know, out of that model. Um, and you start having everyone do heavy sets of two and three, and sometimes even like one right maxes and stuff. And I think slowly you start really realizing like what general fitness is all about, and honestly, well, even just overall fitness and performance is all about. Um so I would say I've come to the point now where like I wholeheartedly agree with that statement from Mike. Um, and I'll take it even a step further and say I would I would agree for it a lot, even outside of just the adult population. Like even our athletes, like we we really don't push super, super crazy heavy weights. Um, sometimes we'll go down to like a heavy set of three, but we'll do that for like maybe two, maybe four weeks total, and maybe that's like twice a year, and then we really back away and start working on a lot of these like athletic qualities that mean a lot more for their sport development and their athletic development. Uh, but kind of hanging on to the question for for adults, like I I really don't see a need to push adults to super super heavy weights past five reps because their their goals are so general, right? Like a heavy set of three, a heavy set of two, heavy set of one is like a very specialized goal that you're basically telling us that you want to be a competitive powerlifter. So unless someone comes in with that goal, I don't think I need to be that specific in my training to attack that specific of a goal. We can really just focus on having a good baseline ability to produce force, right? Be generally strong-ish, um, improve cardiovascular output, be generally fit, you know, cardiovascularly, make sure that we're keeping an eye on mobility, stability, motor control, generate some power through lower half, upper half to like make it a lot more well-rounded rather than trying to make it all about let's get as humanly strong as possible at the age of 56.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Right. Especially where how how many how many adults come to a gym or whatever, and it's actually their first experience, or maybe like you know, their their their their training age and their movement age isn't very good. Like, I mean, what what a I mean, doing like sets of twos and threes or something like that, and and you're you're barely even uh used to lifting as an adult, it just seems crazy.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Yeah. Yeah. So I would wholeheartedly agree. I'm I'm in the agree camp with my boy on this one.

SPEAKER_03 8:08

It sounds like Dwesh that you you feel like there's so many other things we need to work on anyway, right? Um, you know, it's like that takes time to just do you know five sets of three with you know adequate breaks in between and stuff. Um one clarifying question, and then we'll throw it around for some other opinions. Do do we really think it has something to do with how many reps, or is it just working to failure to an extent? And should we clarify that point a little bit? Like, what do you think, DeWash?

Risk, Reward, And Workload Progression

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Yeah, the yeah, the the reps actually don't matter. And you you can even look across to like hypertrophy research on this. Like, obviously, like coming up in strength conditioning, like we learned from the textbooks, like, oh, you want to improve hypertrophy, like you go six, you know, eight to ten reps or eight to twelve reps. Like, we actually have a lot of research coming out that's talking about like sets of five are just as good for hypertrophy, right? Which leads me to think that like sets of eight are probably just as good for strength, by the way. Right, meaning like mechanical tension is mechanical tension. Um, and then the other concept that I think is important for people to learn too is this concept of tonnage that we talk about. Um, when it comes to building strength, it's not just about on a set of squats or on like a singular rep of a squat, how much weight you have on the bar. Um, but it really is a total equation of sets times reps times load um across the entire session. So how much total tonnage and how much increase in tonnage week over week, um that's what's really gonna get you stronger, right? That's kind of the physiological adaptation that you're making. Because it's not like you're gonna, you know, make a crazy, crazy adaptation going from 335 on a deadlift to 340 on a deadlift, or that's probably got a very minimal amount of physiological adaptation that your body's making. Whereas if you go from two sets of 10 at 200 to three sets of 10 at 200, the exact same weight, now that total tonnage is significantly higher week over week. So I I think it's important to keep in mind that it's it's a lot less about total load per individual rep and it's total load per session or per week throughout a joint or throughout a body part.

SPEAKER_03 10:18

It that makes a lot of sense. And I always think like I'm always thinking, are there all are there, you know, there, you know, you don't want to say like anything's like never always on social media, right? Because this is just not too because I'm thinking like Lenny's been like doing like 20-pound goblet squats for like two, three reps for like you know, 10 years now, right? And I would say like it's been safe for you, right? Yeah, I don't think you've got past that, right? Like, am I am I wrong?

SPEAKER_05 10:42

Very, very doctor and spot on that.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Uh Dave, what do you think? Yeah, jump in here, buddy. I know you got some more.

Aging, Power, And Judicious Low Reps

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah, I thought it was funny because um I'm like 36, not 56, but I'm like the five by five king. Like, literally almost everything that I do for like deadlifting, squatting, benching is like a five by five because it's the perfect intersection of I feel like I'm doing something useful and I don't feel like crap after. Like I'm sore, I'm a normal kind of fitness-y tired, but like I can't think of the last time that I was like really banged up and sore for more than like two or three days. And maybe I'm just becoming like slowly an old fitness or boomer that do actual program for. But like I I very much view the lens of like, I want to be able to work out, be healthy, be fit, and not hurt. Like that's really all my goals are these days. And I think the vast majority of people who are working out in adult fitness for us and maybe at Boyles and other places are they want to get a good workout in and they're using fitness to then enjoy their life and have other things that they want to do. They want to hike, they want to maybe ski, they want to play, you know, games with their kids, and they don't want to have like, oh, my back's killing me because I like went out and like threw the football around and like did some like hiking with my family. And I think a lot of people on the adult fitness side that I just chit-chat with a champion, it's like I don't want to say that we're just like a checklist for them. Like they love being there, it's exciting, but it's not like, oh my God, I'm so excited to go like hardcore training for this goal and like I'm only focused on this one thing in the gym. We are very much a vessel to make their quality of life higher. And so with that being said, most people are just kind of trying to do what they need to do to be healthy and fit, and they don't want to have an injury associated with that. Um, and honestly, I think that a lot of the choices we make from the PT side, helping to advise on clients who are coming back and forth. It's all about the risk of like irritation or re-injury alongside that performance goal. So we're making a lot of choices based on like the risk to reward ratio. I have some of the gymnasts or some of the people that I think we work with that like could you deadlift super heavy? Sure, but we could also single like hip thrust and do some other hinge variations and get a lot of other opportunities there without going into a five, four, three, two heavy deadlifting single because it's just about risk. You know, it's about the risk of what is going to happen if we keep pushing and pushing. So yeah, maybe it's just me seeing myself become a boyo client or like a champion client, but five by five is pretty much universally how I hang out.

Edge Cases: Goals, Endurance, And Rehab

SPEAKER_03 12:59

You know, and I I want to reframe a little bit what Dave said too, because I agree with what Dave just said right there. He talked about risk reward, and I think this is a lot of time where physical therapists get crapped on a little bit by the strength and conditioning, is that we're we're too focused on risk and less focused on reward. I think the other way to phrase what Dave just said though is it's it's a workload progression. Risk reward is like it's a workload progression. You can work up to anything, but the majority of time, if you're jumping in with some crazy set rep schemes that are aggressive in there, your workloads aren't prepared for that. You're just nothing. Your body's not ready for that, your tissue's not ready for that, you haven't done enough loading to get to that point. You know, it's not just risk reward, it's risk reward at this point in time. And if that just means your workload's off and you do want to get to that reward, right? And you're willing to accept the risk, you just you just have to build that workload progression to get there, right? Because I I don't want the strength coaches to jump in and say, well, of course the PTs are gonna side with Boyle and say that you know he's right because you know we're conservative, but like we're not conservative, right? We push the envelope all the time. So um, so all right, Dan Pope just joined in. We're gonna throw him into the fire, the fire. We're commenting on the Mike Boyle post. I think I we we prepped you ahead of time on this. So, Dan, you're you know, you're in your 40s now, right? You 40. You 40 yet? I'm a 40-year-old man. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Yeah, that's right. I was gonna say I thought so. Um, okay, so you've been lifting your whole life. Talk talk to me about the evolution just real quick, like, you know, wrapping up this episode, because I want to hit like also like the concept we talk about a champion all the time. I remember teaching DeWesh this one, you know, his first week with us almost. Like, it's like, look, all you 24-year-old strength coaches think you should program all the 45-year-old moms, like how you want to lift, but that's just not realistic to our body. So tell me a little bit about like the evolution, you know, because you've experienced it, Dan. Like Boyle saying like adults shouldn't be dropping into single set, you know, like low rep sets. Like, what do you think from your experience and how have you evolved as a trainee? And what do you do with your clients and what would you recommend?

Nuance Over Absolutes And Closing

SPEAKER_04 14:54

I can see that for sure. I uh I thought a decent amount about this question beforehand. I think it's it's kind of twofold because as we age, one of the biggest things we lose is power. We know that uh as you drop your reps, you build more strength, you build more power. Um, it's probably important that we keep some lower rep sets into our patients' programs as we age, but I think you have to be much more judicious, right? Um, and as you age, it is a little unfortunate, but our bodies don't tend to handle as much stress as they once did, right? Um, and this is something I've talked to DeWesh quite a bit about. I do a lot of high rep sets now, and I stay away from lower reps. Um, I do from time to time. I may hit them maybe for a few months out of the year because I think it's still important. I feel like partially on being a bit of a baby, because you do see some people out there that are older, they're lifting heavy weights, and then you know they are doing a good job with it. Uh we know that the lower rep sets can be good, but I think you just have to be much more judicious and you have to be careful for prior histories of uh injuries, excuse me. So if someone has a history of low back pain and you're pushing heavy deadlifts, um, might not be the best thing for that person, or maybe you ramp them up very slowly and only hit it for a month or two and then go back to a higher rep set kind of scheme. So I guess to actually answer your question, um, I used to not think about um whether or not I could do low rep sets at all. I just always did whatever I thought was best for my goals. And over the course of time, the weights kind of forced me to think more about that. So yeah, I was a younger trainer, I would prescribe people whatever the heck I thought was best for them based on their athletic goals and needs. And now I think a lot more about their age. Um I'm sure I'm only 40, right? But I'm sure it doesn't get better as I age, right? Probably need to think about this more and more as each decade of life. So I think Mike Boyle is kind of polarizing with his opinions. And this is another one where it's like, well, there's some nuance there, but I do really like the idea of being careful about low rep sets as you age. So love it. Yeah, good stuff. Kev, what do you think?

SPEAKER_05 16:57

Yeah, I thought of a few use cases where I do think it makes sense to go lower rep with higher load. Um, I think one is obviously if it's the the person's goal and like they come in and they say they want to squat as heavy as possible, or they want, you know, like DeWetchet, if it's a power lifter, um, and I know like Dewey and Kaz have been going through a heavy bench press program. So, like, yeah, that you want to you want to, you know, we want Kaz to bench 300 plus pounds. He's he's doing low rep for some of that. And that's just something he wants to do for fun, right? I think the other thing is um thinking about endurance athletes, where if their running or training volume is very, very high, a lot of times they feel better in the gym. And I I would say this is true of people I've worked with, and just anecdotally myself, when when volume's pretty high, uh tissue damage seems to increase and you're a lot more sore between runs. Uh, but keeping, you know, in a in a safe way, keeping some heavy load, uh lower volume strength training sessions in in the programming, I think those athletes tend to feel a little bit better. And I think it can be done in a safe way, and that's not necessarily going to failure. Um, but maybe working at higher percentages of one rep max where it's kind of balancing out the high volume they're getting with running. Um, and then the last thing I'd say from a PT perspective, um, I've thought that with some of our knee patients when to clear them for returning to sport, we're really asking them to do a one rep maximal effort knee extension. And I do think that having some higher effort lifts in the gym like that, where they're used to exerting a very high effort, which is different than when you're lifting like eight to twelve reps. I feel like you don't get the same even like neural output. So sometimes I'll program, you know, maybe sets of three or sets of five for those folks where you know, not a max effort, one rep max to failure. Uh, but if they're far enough in their rehab and their movement quality is really good, I think sometimes those higher effort lifts uh prepare them for the testing a little bit better. So I think it's it could be important there as well.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Wow, that's a good one, Kevin. I like that. That was good. And I think that was as close to a mic drop comment as we could have got there from Kev. So I we're gonna wrap it up there. It was perfect. But you know, I think, you know, you know, when Mike speaks, you know, and I tell him this like all the time, when when Mike Boyle speaks, I listen because he's so experienced, and I've always thought that he's just got you know such a great sense behind him and and such practicality behind it. So I completely agree. I just I I just the only thing I would just I would just I would never say always or never, and you know, and I think Kevin just showed some great use cases as an example. Dan talked of some use cases, Dave talked. I mean, everybody talked about use cases where there may be some, it's just such a small percentage. And I think that's that's the main goal. So Mac, hope that helped. If you haven't checked out, check out Mike uh Boyle on Instagram and you can kind of follow that. Probably gonna be by the time this episode comes out, it's probably gonna be late to jump in on the conversation, unfortunately. But um, you know, I thought it was a great conversation, and I I think we're gonna see conversations like that over and over again. So, you know, uh, you know, stay tuned for that. But anywho, uh, appreciate everything. Head to Apple Podcast, Spotify, and make sure you subscribe so you get notifications of the next episode. And we'll see you in the next one. Take care.