What is it?
Reps In Reserve or RIR is used as a subjective measurement of your distance from failure during an exercise. We define failure as being unable to accomplish another rep with quality technique. This is also known as “technical failure”. Remember when I said each exercise is a skill in itself? Well “Quality technique” means abiding by the technical standards of each exercise. More on that later.
RIR describes how many more reps you could have completed if you hadn’t ended your set.
Example 1:
John performed a set of 8 reps on the Leg Press.
The most he felt he could have done is 12.
John had 4 reps in reserve, or 4 RIR.
Example 2:
Jane performed a set of 10 reps on the Cable Lat Pulldown.
She doesn’t think she could have completed any more.
Jane had 0 RIR.
Standardizing Technique
Example 3:
John is performing a set of 8 pull-ups with 2 reps in reserve.
Around rep 4 he realizes the set is more difficult than he anticipated.
In order to accomplish his goals, John shortens his range of motion by keeping a bend in his elbows so he does not return to the starting position and does not pull herself up all the way.
Here, we cannot count any repetition past 4 because they are partial repetitions. Continuing the set with partial repetitions hurts John in the short run AND the long run because each rep is inconsistent so we don’t have a reliable unit of measurement to determine how strong he actually is.
Having standardized techniques for exercises is important because there needs to be an accurate way to measure how much stronger John has become. If there is no standardized technique, then there is no accurate measurement of how much progress, if any, John has made. And now we don't know how many reps he should be performing during each training session.
What if I can't complete the programmed number of reps?
Example 4:
John is performing a leg press for a set of 10 with 3 RIR.
His rep speed slowed down around rep 6, he performs another rep (#7) and feels like he has 3 reps in reserve.
However, John sees that the program calls for 10 reps so continues performing reps until he completes his set of 10 with 0 RIR.
This error shouldn’t occur because RIR is more important than the reps the program calls for. As long as you’re close to your rep goal you should be fine. If you achieve 7 instead of 10, there’s no need to worry.
Applying RPE/RIR to Your Program
Starting the phase
When you first begin your program you should train hard but don’t go all out. Your loads should be challenging but you should be able to lift more. Your reps should also be challenging, they may even slow down (especially near the end of the set), and you may have to focus to achieve them, but you should be able to perform several more upon completion of your set. Ideally, at the end of the session, you should feel like you had more to give.
Progressing the phase
Every week after your first week you should give a little bit more effort. You can do this by adding a rep to each set, adding a small amount of load, or if you’re feeling saucy you can even add another set!
Completing and beginning a new phase
Continue this until you reach 1 RIR (9 RPE). This should be a really hard effort and you should have set some new personal records (PRs). From here you'll use the data that you’ve logged over the last phase to deload, start over, and build back up again. If you’re feeling especially fatigued from the last week of your training phase then you should reduce the sets, load, and reps and go extra light so you can recover before starting a new phase. At the end of the second phase you should beat the previous phase’s PRs!