Of the numerous and wonderful quotes that we have from Mike Tyson, arguably the most famous one was given to a reporter who had told him about a lateral fighting strategy that his opponent was going to employ against him (for the life of me I can’t remember which it was). Tyson responded, “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

The history of western philosophy dates back to the 7th century BCE and rarely has their been anyone to so pithily distill a universal truth as clearly and concisely as Iron Mike did in that very moment.

Tyson’s wisdom surprises most people, but as outrageous as he can be he is someone who is important to listen to. He knows what he is talking about.

I started thinking about the Tyson quote when I started to field more and more RPE questions. Keep in mind that our program is not built with the belief that everyone will do everything perfectly all of the time. When something says to do a lift 3×12 @ 9.5 RPE what I am asking you to do is for each set pick a weight that, at your twelfth rep, you will be at a point where you think you might be able to get one more lift with perfect form in but it is just as likely that you cannot. Further, on the second set, you will do it again but change the weight adjusting for the fatigue on both the muscle and the CNS and hitting the same RPE and then a third time.

Is this going to happen? Are you going to lock in just the right weight for exactly the 12 reps called for to hit that exact RPE? No. Pretty much never. If it ever does happen exactly right it will be one of those things that you laugh about and say “woah that was fucking awesome.”

So, I am having you use an impossible metric? No, of course not. I am going to torture you, but not in a way that you can’t manage. First the easy change. If you get to, say, the 9th of 12 reps and you hit the RPE then stop. You have hit the RPE. You might want to do a rest-pause….hold the weight for a few seconds at the top of the motion while you regain a little strength and get those lifts out…or you might just want to put it down and go to the next set. Either way, lighten the load by a little bit for the next set.

So what do you do when you do that 12th rep and you aren’t at the specified RPE? Do you stop and add weight? No. Until you hit that RPE you are not done with the set. Like Kai says, we are not weightlifters we are bodybuilders. Just moving x amount of weight y amount of reps is not the game we are playing. We are trying to great a very learn and densely muscled physique and to do that we need to get our muscles to the level of failure that the RPE calls for on each set.

In an ideal world a lift that is 3×12 @ 9.5RPE would be three sets of 12 lifts that each hit 9.5 RPE. The reality on the floor, the punch in the face that ruins the plans, is that this will almost never be the case. So use your rest pause, or crank out 2, 5, 6, 100 more reps and constantly change the weights around to get closer to locking in the RPE.

I do not want to go as far as to say that the rep range on each set is merely a suggestion, but I will say it is a minimum number of reps you should hit. Like the weight on the bar, the number of reps is going to be less important than getting to the RPE but you do want to get to the minimum as the volume also plays a role in growth and hypertrophy.

As always, if you have any questions feel free to hit me up in the comments section, by email or on telegram!

Grind On!