On gym days where I intentionally train lightly (2 RIR on my 6RM) my brain compensates by forcing me to apply max effort anyway by magically shrinking my 6RM to my 4RM for that session -- how to fix?
Terms/definitions for beginners/lurkers:
6RM for a given exercise/weight combination, you can only perform 6 reps, even if a millionaire offered you a briefcase full of gold bars to hit that 7th rep.
2RIR means 2 "reps in reserve" which means you finish a set 2 reps prior to failure. For example you stop at 8 reps, but you could have gotten 10.
By default, I workout in the mornings about 2-3 hours after waking up. This weird paradox I've been experiencing at the gym all year on my intentionally-light training sessions (i.e. when I want to preserve maximum mental bandwidth for a cognitively demanding task later that day or the next day) is similar in spirit to the following empirical paradox:
- Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion
It's like my brain down-regulates my ability summon maximum strength output, which means if I want to leave 2 reps in reserve, I now must subtract 2 reps from the 4RM, which on paper makes it seem like I did 2 of my 6RM with 2RIR rather than 4RIR. It hurts my brain and makes zero sense from a logic/math perspective. I listen to tons of pop-science fitness podcasts, including Huberman. Seemingly, the key concept is intent/pacing and how your intent/pacing drives force production via a neurophysiological explanation that reads like technobabble nonsense when I asked chatGPT about it.
My first question is does this even happen to other people? Or am I just the unlucky one?
My second question is how to fix this problem? Are there any "mental form cues" that can restore my true 6RM? I do everything the exact same way. My pre-gym routine is always the same. (pre-workout powder similar, loud music while driving to the gym, mentally pumping myself up, etc..)
In fact, on my own gym notes, I document whenever my numbers are low (such as a poor night's sleep or had to do my beekeeping in 95-degree summer heat earlier that day). So for my light sessions, I just lie about 2RIR in my workout log rather than blaming "magical, mysterious process which shrank my 6RM to 4RM today".
Update -- upon feeding this post into ai, I should make a possible correction. It's plausible that I could do 2 more reps on my "light days" but I'm in the same agony doing my 4th rep on a light day as my 6th rep on a normal day. So I guess what my question truly should ask is why does my brain dump loads of physical pain/agony into my consciousness on the 4th rep of my light days but waits until the 6th rep on my normal days? And more importantly -- how to fix this stupid agony-dumping mechanism? I hate the fact that on my light days, I walk out of the gym equally mentally exhausted as my normal days, even though I trained at much lower intensity & lower volume. I don't compensate by doing more sets or cutting my rest time between sets. I don't choose my light days because I'm feeling less capable. I choose my light days based on future cognitive tasks and sparing CNS fatigue.
7 replies
Rather, on light training, the brain may previously perceive the approach as very difficult, although physically there are still 1-2 repetitions in reserve. Pain/agony ≠ real proximity to failure
My personal experience is that my physical output is largely motivation-based. If I settle for few reps, I get few reps. If I try hard, I get many. I need to keep trying hard to make progress.
You could try doing different (lighter) exercises on light days so you don't have to intentionally underachieve.
Right, but is there a way to "carry that motivation" to the gym and simply go home instead? In other words, if you knew you weren't actually going to do any exercises at the gym that day, would you be able to still bring maximum motivation to the gym with you?
My problem is eerily similar to Newcom's paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_problem
Basically, if you can walk into a room (with 2 available prizes) with the intention of collecting only 1 prize (such as $1,000 next to $1 million) , you can take 1 prize and leave, keeping the prize forever. However, if after you enter the room, you suddenly change your mind and choose to take home both prizes, you can keep both prizes forever. If your intent was always to take home both prizes before entering the room, you go home with no prizes.
But with my "light gym sessions", it's always me who has decided that it will be a light day. Maybe I can use a 6-sided dice and solemnly vow to convert my gym session to a hard day if the dice rolls a 6? Maybe that will give me a 5/6 chance of testing this theory for a light day and if my intent can be manipulated by a 1/6 possibility of needing to maintain sufficient motivation in case of an unlucky dice roll. It's worth a try, as long as I don't get unlucky by rolling a 6 on the very first attempt.
Basically, I can accept the premise in my title as true and treat the “magical, mysterious process" as a black box. I'll probably go this route just to see where it leads because now I'm curious with the whole dice roll probability thing. I want to know how my brain deals with a 1/6 chance and if it that slim of a chance works to circumvent the mysterious process, then next time I'll try a 1/36 chance. Else if it ignores a 1/6 chance then I will try a 50/50 coin flip.
Haha, I just don't do light days, only different days, so I always try to give my best.
But you should do what works for you, so if the die trick seems like fun, then I'd definitely try it!
Does rest time differ?
What about energy? Same food intake?
I provided an update and you actually asked the same 2 questions as ai. Rest time doesn't differ. Same energy. Same food intake. No difference other than me wishing to preserve mental bandwidth for an upcoming cognitively demanding task and intentionally lowering my volume per set by 1/3, changing no other variables.
Here is the update now appearing at the bottom of my post and here is the ai response to my update. At least this gives me something to test now. On my next gym session, I will experiment with a "lighter than light" session and only do 2 reps of my 6RM to see if my brain dumps agony on the 2nd rep. (which sounds ludicrous that the 2nd rep of a weight I can do 6 reps of would be agonizing) but it's a valuable data-point nonetheless.
I assume you don't experience this same phenomenon spelled out in my post? ai said it's common, but only for people who meticulously study their gym notes and have all their sets/weights/rep data memorized. This applies to me because I only do the same 5 exercises (seated shoulder DB press, bicep curl, french press, romanian deadlift, incline bench press) and my goal is consistency rather than strength or hypertrophy based on the reasoning of Andy Galpin and James Clear.
I only aim for hypertrophy, I don't do RIR or max training.
Workout is not linear. Sometimes I can do one or two reps more, soemtimes less. Doesn't really matter as long as I progress over time.