What Are Effective Reps? 

9:34 Motor unit recruitment peaks at ~5RIR on single joint exercises, work till slow velocity occurs, to maximize per fiber tension 13:39 Fiber motor unit recruitment increases up until ~80-85% 1RM (or 5 RIR) in single joint exercises 13:55 Full motor recruitment ocurrs 50/70-90% 1RM on compounds, from the very first rep of each set, only on prime movers. Within that range, motor unit recruitment doesn't increase on primary movers, but does on secondary ones, as %1RM increases.

Love the podcast! The issue of effective reps is part science and part art. Each of us have different thresholds of stress loads. Food - age - training history - stress all factor in. One of my issues is using a sliding scale of muscle activation based off of reps available. Somebody doing 5 sets of 8 each to failure will obviously stimulant hypertrophic gains. But at what cost? The training loads, especially for veteran lifters puts a huge amount of stress in the body. From my experience training close to failure and maybe one set to failure can work well. But again lots of variables exist. It’s also why programming is so important. Thx for the awesome information.

So what I'm gathering is that the lats are the most important muscle for the bench press

12:57 FAHVS reign supreme!

I’ve found that connecting with the muscle regardless of rep ranges always produces strength abs size for me. Purely anecdotal. I have noticed I grow more when I connect rather than not having a good mind muscle connection.

How does BFR with metabolic stress in the absence of true maximal tensional stress cause hypertrophy then?

What does that mean for ham curls, bi curls & tri prsdn ? Por favor

Greg that was a sick "FAHHHVE". Nailed it

Commenting for the effective recs of the algo mechanistic action to recruit more viewer units

what if you could time travel to only doing the last rep?

so if prime movers are activated on compounds pretty early but tension per muscle doesnt increase near failure, but you still have more hypertrophy from going closer to failure than further, doesnt this indicate that we still have so called 'effective reps' that give you better outcome. So training outside those 'effective reps' is practically sub-optimal. So for me concept is still valid from practical stand point.

The bit on compound exercises is less convincing. Isn't the limiting factor the weakest link, i.e. muscle, instead of the prime mover in the lift? So the effective reps idea applies to that weak muscle (also highly individual)...

I'm in the 7 rep sets club. I don't think they're magic but they have a great place in the program I've been using.

Greg a thing you should look up are the different kind of fatigues slow twitch fibres and fast twitch fibres experience when contracting fast. Slow Twitch fibres fatigue on fast contraction because actin myosin crossbridging is inhibited and therefore they produce less force which is also not important for the theory. Fast twitch fibres fatigue because of detachment process is inhibited which means only their contraction velocity is impacted but they still produce high levels of mechanical tension because myosin heads ability to attach to the actin is not impacted. This means that mechanical tension or force production of the fast twitch fibres of high treshold units is not lowered by peripheral fatigue within the set when approaching failure. Chris Beardsley wrote about it...

This discussion is a bit too abstract, and abstract is fine, but I'd also like your opinion on the effective rep theory and how to apply it in training. Personally I like to train smaller movements at the end of the workout to failure with limited rest between sets to go for that burnout. On bigger movements you are limited much more by recovery so things get a bit more complex.

Sir. Example 1)60kg weight 8 reps(RIR 0) so volume is 480 and 2) 37 kg weight 20 reps(RIR 10) but volume is 550. But because RIR 10 we don't get significant Hypertrophy at all even though 2nd scenario has more volume. So effective reps is Real thing.

greasing the groove works well despite never doing any rep close to failure

thumbs up if you do sets of 4

if effective reps isn't a thing then all those chinese people who cycle to work everyday would have quads like a bodybuilder..... they don't.