Are you pushing yourself hard enough in your resistance training workouts? Or maybe you're pushing too hard and risking injury or burnout? In this episode of the Coaching Corner podcast, I break down exactly what it should feel like to challenge yourself effectively during high volume resistance training to build muscle and get stronger.

I'll teach you how to use the reps in reserve (RIR) strategy and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) scale to gauge your intensity, what sensations to look for (like the burning in your working muscles), and how to find that sweet spot between challenging yourself and overdoing it. Plus, I'll share the red flags that mean you need to stop immediately and the signs that you're not pushing hard enough.

Whether you're just starting your fitness journey or you're looking to optimize your muscle-building workouts, this episode will help you train smarter and make consistent gains without burning out.

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Many people mistakenly think that they should push themselves in the same way in their resistance training workouts as they do when they're doing cardiovascular training. They make the mistake of thinking that the goal of resistance training is to keep the heart rate up so they will stay moving the entire time and not let their bodies have any true rest between sets of an exercise. Now, this way of working out is not necessarily bad, but it isn't very effective for helping you to grow muscle. Instead, it lends itself more towards cardiovascular fitness and burning lots of calories. But if your goal is to build muscle and get strong, keeping your heart rate up during your resistance training workouts is not necessarily going to help you. So let's take a look at what it feels like for you to challenge yourself effectively to towards building muscle and building strength in your resistance training workouts.

Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, aka Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for over 10 years and I've created this podcast to share with you tips and tricks to make the most out of your workouts and improve your fitness without shame and without burnout. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to judge how hard you're working in your workouts to make sure that you are pushing yourself enough to make gains while also avoiding pushing yourself to the point where you're at risk of injury or burnout. We're talking specifically about resistance training here, whereas in the previous discussion we talked about cardiovascular training. So if you are interested in learning how to pace yourself and challenge yourself just right in cardiovascular training, I highly suggest that you check out the previous episode of the Coaching Corner podcast. And before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video if you're watching on YouTube and subscribe to my channel so you always get the latest videos whenever they drop. And if you are listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the show so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.

We've previously talked about how to pace yourself and ensure that you're challenging yourself in your cardiovascular workouts. Today we're going to talk about how to judge how hard you're working and make sure that you're challenging yourself enough during your resistance training. In resistance training, our goal is to improve the strength or the size or the power that our muscles are able to generate, and this means that we have to take an approach that's slightly different from how we train our cardiovascular system. For the most effective way to do resistance training, you should be alternating between periods of intense bursts of effort with periods of rest where you're allowing your heart rate to come back down towards resting so that you can recharge your muscles and go for another set, pushing yourself with the amount of reps or the amount of weight or the amount of time that's needed to trigger muscle gains.

Now there are a couple of different styles of resistance training. Usually we start with high volume or hypertrophy focused training. High volume or hypertrophy focused training is lifting or performing resistance training with the goal of building muscle. This type of resistance training usually looks like performing an exercise for between eight and 12 repetitions before resting for 30 seconds to two minutes, and then repeating an exercise for eight to 12 reps. Again, and you'll repeat this usually for somewhere between two and four, sometimes five sets of an exercise. High volume training is the foundation for muscle building and muscle fitness training. It's what beginners should focus on when they're first getting started on their fitness journey. And it's also what more intermediate and advanced exercisers should do very frequently to continue to push themselves towards making muscle gain so that they can get stronger and perform better in their sports.

If you are on a fat loss journey, doing high volume training has a lot of benefits as well. Not only does it help you to build muscle, which helps to boost your metabolism, but doing high volume training itself earns more calories than heavier lifting sessions with fewer reps. It's generally a pretty safe way to train and it's a great way for you to learn your muscles as well. When you're doing high volume or muscle building training, one of the key markers that you're pushing yourself as much as you should is what a lot of people call a burning sensation in the target muscles. So for example, when you're doing bicep curls, the target muscle group or the working muscle here is the biceps muscles. And if you are using the right amount of weight performing eight to 12 reps, or what I usually recommend for my clients, which is 10 to 15 reps or maybe sometimes even as much as 20 reps, you should feel the biceps burning by the end of your set.

And usually I like for my clients to feel that burning happening in at least three of the repetitions and you continue to let the muscles burn as they get tired until the point where you feel like you can't do any more in a way that keeps good technique and when you feel like you could maybe only do one or two more repetitions before your muscles give out completely. Our goal with high volume training is to approach muscle failure. You don't necessarily have to go all the way to muscle failure unless you are assigned an amrap set as many reps as possible. Most of the time it's going to be good for you to leave one or two repetitions left in reserve and stop when you feel like you could only do one or two more. This will help you to avoid a risk of injury and to ensure that your body can properly recover after your workouts and what this feels like to approach muscle failure.

A lot of times people say that they feel a burning sensation in the working muscles and you know that you are doing it right. If you feel that burning happening in the last three to five repetitions of your set and then you end your set rest and then try again, the weight often will feel increasingly heavy as the set progresses and you'll find that you're not able to move as quickly like your reps are slowing down, your rate of motion is slowing down. This is something that you'll also experience if you're challenging yourself enough. You may also experience the feeling of your muscles getting fatigued and even what a lot of people call a pump, which is the feeling when your muscles get a rush of blood to them and they may actually look more swollen as well and you'll feel that rush of blood to your muscles often at the end of a really good set or in the rest period following an effective set.

You may find that your heart starts beating really fast and that you have to breathe faster towards the end of the set or during your rest period. As you recover at the end of the set mentally, you'll find that you really got to focus on finishing out the set towards the end. It's really hard for you to have your mind wandering on other things, especially as your muscles get really tired towards the end of the set. And when you think about the level of difficulty that you had while pushing towards the end of your set, you should have felt like that was challenging, but not that was easy and not that's impossible. You want to feel like you got a good challenge. A great way for you to monitor how hard you're working in your high volume resistance training workouts is to use the reps and reserve strategy.

So reps and reserve means that you're ending your set when you feel like you could only do a certain number of reps before your muscles give out and fail completely. Generally speaking, I often have my clients end their set when they feel like they could do only one or two more repetitions when we're really trying to build muscle, we might just end it when there's only one rep left in the tank. Sometimes we may go to where they have no more reps in the tank, especially if I'm trying to get a sense of how many reps they really can do because it is often hard for people to gauge how many reps they have left, especially if you are just starting on your fitness journey. It may be difficult for you to sense how many reps you have in reserve at the end of your set, and if that's the case, I encourage you to do an AMRAP set using whatever weight that you're using and perform as many reps as possible using the same rate of motion, usually about two seconds up, two seconds down in the exercise and go until your form breaks down or your muscles give out and you're not able to perform another rep.

The number of reps that you're able to do in an AMRAP set should give you a good idea of how many reps you'll have in reserve when you go to repeat that exercise using that weight or a similar weight. If you are deloading or reloading coming back from a period of time off from the gym, I'll usually recommend that you leave three reps and reserve at the end of your sets because you're likely going to be sore from your first workout back or your first workout ever. So you don't necessarily need to push quite as hard as people who have been training consistently for at least a few weeks. So if you're feeling sick, you're taking a deload or you're just getting back into it, feel free to leave three reps in reserve. Another way that you can gauge how hard you're working is to use a rate of perceived exertion.

With my clients, I usually use a scale of one to 10 where I'll ask them How hard was that on a scale of one to 10, one being super easy, barely any work at all, and 10 being maximal effort, oh my God, I couldn't do anymore. In general, what I like for my clients to do is shoot for an RPE seven or eight, sometimes nine. If we're doing an AMRAP set, that's going to be an RPE 10. A lot of times people will use reps and reserve and RPE interchangeably. So for example, if they are working at an RPE seven, that means that they have three reps in reserve. An RP eight means that they have two reps in reserve. RPE nine means one rep in reserve and RPE 10 would be zero reps in reserve. So if you are working at an RPE seven, eight or nine when you're doing your high volume resistance training, you should feel those working muscles burning again for bicep curls, that's going to be your biceps muscles.

But if you're doing squats, you should feel that burning primarily in your quadriceps muscles, in your thighs, and you may also feel it in your glutes and hamstrings when you're doing r DLS or good mornings, you should feel the glutes and the hamstrings starting to burn as they get tired. I encourage you to use your high volume training as an opportunity to get more familiar with your muscles when you're doing a high volume training set, practice naming and really paying attention to the muscles that you feel working. And if you feel any muscles stretching, practice identifying those as well because when you learn your muscles, it will help you with your proprioception or your mind muscle connection, which means that you will be better able to perform exercises with good technique and minimize your risk of injury while maximizing your gains. Now, when you're pushing yourself in your resistance training workouts, it's normal for you to feel some burning in the working muscles, and that's often the goal.

But a couple of red flags that you should look out for that are signs that you need to stop are sharp pains, especially in the joints. Acute pain is something we never want to push through. Burning is fine, but acute sharp pain is usually a sign that there's something wrong either with your technique or maybe you're using too much weight or maybe you just have an injury that you need to work around. So stop immediately if you feel any kind of sharp pain, especially in your joints. Also, if you are experiencing a form breakdown, you're not able to keep the same good technique through the entire set of an exercise. This is a sign that you need to stop. Do not continue to practice the exercise and perform bad reps with bad form because all this does is reinforces bad technique, which will put you at an increased risk of injury.

So if you're not performing the exercise with good technique or you're not able to perform the exercise with good technique, you should stop immediately. Reduce your weight, fix your form and reach out to me if you have any questions. Another thing that you should watch out for is any dizziness or nausea that you may feel between your sets. This is usually a sign that you're overdoing it and pushing yourself way too hard. You do not need to push yourself to the point where you feel like you're going to pass out in order to make muscle gains. And if you feel any extreme exhaustion like you just can't do any other exercises after you have done your set, that's also a sign that maybe you pushed it a little bit too hard. You should always feel like you have energy at the end of your workouts.

Leave some energy in the tank because your body's going to need that energy to make the repairs to your muscle that will help you to get stronger. You'll know that you're not pushing yourself enough if you feel like your sets are easy throughout the entire workout. If you don't have any muscle burn or any fatigue setting in, that's also a sign that you're not pushing yourself enough if you're not breathing harder by the end of a set, that's also a sign that you're not pushing yourself enough. And if you're finishing your workout and you feel like you just didn't really work, that's also a sign that you're not pushing yourself enough. So keep in mind that some muscle discomfort is important for you to push yourself, feel the burn, feel your muscles fatiguing and feel like you have to exert some effort. You have to work.

That's what we're doing when we're working out. That's what it takes for us to build muscle. We have to challenge it in order for it to get stronger. But at the same time, you don't have to push yourself to the point where you're feeling sharp pain, you're not able to perform the exercise with good technique or you're just exhausting yourself. You want to strike that sweet spot of an RPE seven, eight or nine, leaving one, two or three reps in reserve at the end of every set, and then taking your rest periods to recharge your muscles so that you can push yourself as much as you need to stimulate muscle growth. Follow these guidelines and your muscle building workouts, and I guarantee you, you will make gains. In the next episode, we're going to talk about what it feels like to push yourself in high intensity or heavy lifting resistance training. This is a style of training that's more advanced, and I don't recommend attempting heavy lifting unless you have been already doing high volume training for six months at least. But when you do go to start practicing heavier lifts, you're going to have to change your expectations of what it feels like to challenge yourself at a higher intensity of lifting. We'll talk all about that in the next episode.

Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of the Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you found this episode helpful, make sure to like the video on YouTube and subscribe to the channel so you always get the latest videos as soon as they drop. And if you are listening to this podcast, thank you so much. Make sure that you follow the show so you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. If you are interested in working with me one-on-one for coaching, check out the link that's in the show notes or the description of the video below. I am currently onboarding new clients, so fill out the form and apply work with me today. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure that you're taking good care of yourself. Eat your veggies, eat your protein, and drink some water, and I will see you soon.