Background: Male, 40, lifting seriously for ~6 months. Before that, about 2 years of aimlessly familiarizing myself with the gym and overcoming the intimidation of simply being there. I mainly visited the gym for the treadmills and would wander around the weight room for 15-20 minutes afterward but could never get into a flow state until earlier this year when I finally noticed my first real strength gains in January.
My reason for posting today is because I recently watched a youtube video providing a summary of the Schoenfeld meta-analyses on volume/intensity and effective reps. What I don't get is the experience of it. When I'm grinding a heavy triple, there's this narrow window of total focus and there's zero ambiguity of when I can do 1 more rep (or 0 more reps) because I have tons of experience at low-rep sets at ~90% of my 1-rep-max.
If I'm being honest with myself, I kinda hate doing sets of anything higher than 5, even on my favorite exercises. One of the most helpful things I've ever read in my life online from a fitness discussion & comments section was when someone said they mentally reframe Romanian deadlifts as kettlebell swings and that instantly clicked for me and has made me so much stronger at that exercise, nearly overnight. It becoming my 2nd favorite exercise (after seated dumbbell shoulder presses as #1).
What I'm hoping for today is to hear from more experienced lifters who actually enjoy that rep range of 8-12 or 6-15. Instead, I find it confusing, unfamiliar, and mentally uncomfortable primarily for these 3 reasons:
- no matter where I stop barring absolute momentary muscular failure, I always finish the set feeling angst of not knowing truly how many RIR I still had left in me. Not knowing whether I had 2 vs 3, or 3 vs 4 RIR, it is totally a trivial and unimportant issue yet it drives me crazy for no good reason.
- for longer sets, it stops feeling like lifting and starts feeling like a chore I'm waiting to finish, similarly to if your dentist told you to wear 20-pound weighted gloves and to brush your teeth until your wrists hurt.
- the difficulty in finishing your final planned rep (when you plan to leave 1 or 2 RIR) for a working set of 8-12 reps has a different type of mental difficulty than the difficulty I'm familiar with at working sets in my 6-rep-max range. The final rep of a short sets gives me the feeling afterward of having accomplished something significant but the final rep of a long working set gives me the feeling afterward that I'm punishing myself (perhaps because my brain does not connect the effort to the reward yet).
This is not a rant however, I'm just trying to look for some ideas on positive re-framing. Especially as I have branched out into other exercises where doing shorter working sets of my 6-max range do not make sense due to form issues when using weights that are at too high percentage of your 1-rep max (such as lateral raises or French presses).
TL;DR: I need help understanding how to enjoy (or at least positively reframe) my lifting experiences at the gym from lifters who enjoy performing their working sets in the 6-15 or 8-12 rep range as someone who exclusively prefers heavy triples and heavy singles.
Cant say I'll reframe you're viewpoint, but I'll at least share mine.
Depending on a lift i generally aim for 5-10 or 8-15 range, though it's not that set in stone and first set of any exercise will always be with higest weight and sometimes most reps as well.
I mostly aim to repetition range because my coordination sucks, yeah training has improved it, but it's still bad. So with sub 5 rep sets it's more likely that my form breaks down and i just hurt myself with bad form. With higher rep sets i can maintain better form even up until the last reps.
I do agree that it is kinda harder to gauge reps in reserve this way. It might be more noticable with pulling exercises when it starts to get harder and harder to maintain full ROM and eventually it becomes half repping. I just call it by that point. Or with squats when the Barbell no longer goes up and safeties save me, but still oftentimes the target muscle just refuses to work anymore.
Overall, i just don't even try to gauge RIR or RPE and i actually doubt that it can be accurately gauged by most people.
I just took the angry yelling mens approach form YT, Greg Doucette and his slogan "Harder than last time" and just try to beat last times numbers, of course while maintaining form, rep speed and ROM as consistent as possible. Reasoning is that i cant grow linearly indefinitely, so eventually ill just reach close enough to failure.
I just assume im close enough to failure to trigger growth, because lifts are going up over time and muscle size is growing over the years. So i guess it works.
Do you enjoy lifting? Do you have a favorite lift? And if so, how much do you enjoy it compared to getting an extremely favorable parking spot at a busy store due to perfect timing? (or finding $20 you forgot was in your jacket pocket from the week before)
My reason for asking is because I watch my past video recordings of my attempts at setting new 1RM attempts at my favorite exercise and even on my failures, I still look very giddy and excited before my attempt -- with a huge smile and an undeniable look of genuine excitement/enthusiasm that very few things in life give me nowadays.
Yeah i do enjoy lifting and it is the main highlight of my day, so yes i would prefer a decent lifting session to finding 20$ in the pocket of my jacket.
The overall experience, the routine nature of it, the strong emphasis on self reliance and having internal locust of control with it and being exhausted afterwards does feel kinda nice and calming.
I wouldn't say i have a favorite lift. I have preferred lifts and a subsequent list of replacements. While majority of primary lifts do have some reasoning behind why those lifts are chosen, but as I've gotten rather comfortable with the point of where i can't lift anymore then it's rather easy to just do one off replacements when the gym is full while maintaining similar end result.
I'm not that Expressionate individual, so i don't really get giddy or happy over anything, but my wife has said I'm more calm/relaxed and in a slightly better mood after lifting sessions.