Understanding the Load/Max Reps Relationship

Last week, we spoke about INTENSITY of training and got into talking percentages of lifting.  With that, I got a lot of questions about Intensity and what is high intensity when working with lower weights.  It’s easy to know that if I can only do a movement one or two times with a resistance, its high intensity, or if I run a 400 meter as fast as possible, it’s high intensity.  But what if I’m doing 10 reps?

All lifters are familiar with the fact that they can only perform certain maximal number of reps with certain load on the bar. If we express load on the bar as percent of maximal load that could be lifted (% 1RM) and we assume maximal exertion on the last rep (no reps left in the tank) we get Load/Max Reps relationship. I call this process RELATIVE INTENSITY and ACTUAL INTENSITY RELATIONSHIP.  There are numerous tables that quantify this relationship, but for the purpose of this article I will use Dan Baker’s table for working out.

Using this table one can know how many maximal reps can be performed using certain load (% 1RM) and also, one can predict maximal load that can be lifted (1RM) using maximum performed reps and reconverting factor. For example, if one performs 10 reps with 225lb, his predicted maximum is 225 × 1.33 (reconverting factor), which is around 300lb. Please note that this table is different for different lifters and lifts, so take this as a rule of thumb and not locked into stone. But it can give you a pretty good indication of where you are when you are training.

On the same note, understand that if you do 10 reps of a certain exercise, and can’t do 11, you are working at 75% intensity – but the RELATIVE INTENSITY is 100%, because you could not do anymore.

So an endurance athlete can be working with a “power athlete” – the power athlete lifting 5 reps of an exercise and the endurance athlete lifting 20 reps of an exercise. The power athlete is lifting close to 85% of his max, the endurance athlete is at about 60% of his max, but BOTH ARE LIFTING AT 100% RELATIVE INTENSITY.