The Number One Reason You're Not Making Progress in the Gym

Making progress in the gym is dependent on lots of different factors.

One of the most important (and most misunderstood) is making sure you’re working hard enough.

This can be hard to do when starting out.

How do you know you’ve chosen the right weight? Or that you’re training hard enough to see results?

Understanding RPE and RIR is a great place to start.

RPE and RIR Explained

RPE stands for Rate of Perceived Exertion and is a subjective measure of exercise intensity.

In other words, it’s a way of gauging effort for a given set.

Usually, RPE exists on a scale from 1–10.

An RPE 1 would be extremely easy.

An RPE 10 would be a maximal effort, where you can’t possibly perform another rep (also known as muscular failure).

RIR stands for Reps in Reserve. It’s the inverse of RPE.

The purpose of RIR is the same — to gauge effort— and it also uses a scale from 1–10.

The difference, however, is that RIR measures how many more reps you could have done before reaching muscular failure.

That is, the number of reps left in the tank at the end of a set.

So for example, you might take an exercise to an RPE 8, which would equate to an RIR 2, meaning you were two reps shy of failure for that set.

Likewise, an RPE 9 or RIR 1 means you could only do one more rep.

An RPE 10 or RIR 0 means by the end of that set, you would not be able to do any more reps for that exercise (without a massive breakdown in form or range of motion).



Adapted from Borg GA. Psychophysical bases of perceived exertion. Med Sci Sports Exerc 1982;14:377–381.  

Why is it Important?

Research shows that working sets should be taken somewhere close to muscular failure for optimal strength and muscle growth.

The actual number is debated, and probably differs based on individual factors, but it’s somewhere around 0–4 reps from failure.

So RPE and RIR provide us with a tool to ensure we are working hard enough to see progress.

Autoregulating your sets like this is also useful for other reasons.

Strength and hypertrophy gains don’t come from lifting a particular amount of weight, but from providing your system with a sufficient stimulus.

If you’re making progress, or just feeling particularly energetic or strong one day, you will need to lift more weight to reach that stimulus, and this method allows you to.

On the other hand, you might be low on energy, sick, lacking sleep, or just having a stressful week.

If so, you can reduce load, rather than trying to lift weights that were prescribed when you were feeling better.

Using RPE and RIR in Your Training

So, how does it work in practice?

Let’s say you’ve been prescribed a Flat Dumbbell Bench Press for 8–12 reps at 2 RIR.

You should select a weight that allows you to complete between 8 and 12 reps with good form, while still having two reps left in the tank.

Say you start with 15kg dumbbells and pump out 14 reps before you hit 2 RIR.

14 is above the prescribed rep range.

So what do you do?

Consider that set a warm-up, and choose a heavier weight.

You might grab the 17.5kg dumbbells and manage 10 reps at RIR 2.

You’ve hit the prescribed RIR within the prescribed rep range, so this is now your working weight.

Or, maybe you start with 25kg dumbbells and can only manage 6 reps before hitting RIR 0.

Considering you’ve fallen short of the rep range, you need to decrease the weight to be able to achieve the prescribed number of reps.

This method also provides a framework you can use to progress week-to-week.

Say next week you Flat Dumbbell Bench Press with the same 17.5kg dumbbells and hit 12 reps at 2 RIR.

Then the week after, 12 reps is a 4 RIR.

This is a sign that you’re making progress, and need to increase the weight to get yourself back in the prescribed RIR bracket.

Practical Application

Gauging perceived effort is a skill that will take time to learn.

When starting out, most people are pretty inaccurate at gauging effort and tend to think they’re working harder than they really are.

If you’re new to RIR, completing an AMRAP (As Many Reps As Possible) set can help guide you. Here’s how it works:

Pick an exercise that you can fail on safely and as a result of muscular fatigue, not other reasons such as skill or aerobic capacity. A machine chest press, for example, requires less skill and aerobic capacity than a barbell back squat.

Complete a set of 6–10 reps at an RPE 8/RIR 2 (two reps from failure)

Rest for 2–3 minutes, and then complete a set of as many reps as possible.

If your RPE/RIR was accurate, you should only be able to achieve two more reps on your AMRAP set.

If you’re achieving a lot more than that, keep practising —as with anything, the more experience you have, the easier it will get.