HN Explorer

Ask HN: What's your experience with the 85% rule, in the gym

3 points by sirobg ↗ HN
Reference: https://twitter.com/FitFounder/status/1690364931252830208

Asking this independently from your goals: weight loss/gain, strength, endurance and so on.

Make sure to specify the context of your experience though.

9 comments

[ 12.0 ms ] story [ 632 ms ] thread
LatteLazy
When did Twitter start hosting small articles?
warrenm
if you're a paying user, your post limit is quite long
ativzzz
I go to the gym for personal health and long term strength gain, so a notion of pushing myself some percent amount is irrelevant. Easier to stick to a simple, rough workout plan. I'm not a pro athlete so what the article talks about doesn't matter to me at all - that's mostly for the mental game of max performance
sangpal
Almost every serious lifter is familiar with RPE (rating of perceived exertion) and RIR (reps in reserve). If you reach failure on an exercise, you experience a greater amount of fatigue than if you stopped one rep shy of failure. This allows you to then train the same muscle sooner and you end up building more muscle overall (the muscle gain at RIR 1 & RIR 0 is negligible). But, you need to be able to accurately gauge RIR, which is quite difficult for new lifters.
sirobg
Thus in your opinion the advise to train to failure that we see so often isn't as optimal as training with 1-2 RIR? Assuming you train often and that you gauge RIRs accurately most of the time.
sangpal
Training to failure once a while is fine, but it is simply not possible to train at a high frequency and go to failure regularly. I personally do not prefer to train to failure more than once every two weeks per muscle group. I advise people that are new to the gym (between 6 months to 2 years of training) to go to failure frequently so that they may accurately gauge what 1 RIR feels like.
computerman1337
Have not heard about 85% rule, but in this context it sounds like just a spin on Pareto principle or 80/20 rule which in turn has been spun in every possible way with regards to fitness (google 80/20 fitness and see how many articles you find).

Anyways, I strongly recommend you listen to Prof. Andy Galpin's six part series (https://hubermanlab.com/dr-andy-galpin-how-to-assess-improve...) which addresses fitness in general term and outlines how to train for different outcomes (adaptation) to achieve a combination of Skill/technique, Speed, Power, Force/Strength, Muscle hypertrophy, Muscular endurance, Anaerobic capacity, Maximal aerobic capacity and Long-duration training. The subsequent episodes goes into all these areas in detail and serves as a knowledge base for further exploration.

I've yet to come over a better general approach and foundational knowledge information. There are probably equally good resources out there (e.g. books). This is in stark contrast to the broscience filled internet. Too often, it seems like advice is given without taking into account the individual and what you want to achieve. Fitness forums are great, but they are often concentrated on a niche part of fitness. E.g. people who care about Strength/Power/Hypertrophy don't care about Running etc. and vice versa.

Another general tip, which is talked about in the podcast series, is to continuously to work "Agile" (heh). In other words, use a feedback loop every month/ 10 weeks to see if you are progressing towards your goal. If not, see if you stuck to the plan. Check what's missing and reassess.

sirobg
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!