How hard should exercise be?
Go hard or go home. Or go medium. Or light. Or stay home. It's up to you, really.
Effort.
This can be a bit of a touchy subject: there’s a lot of fitness professionals out there telling people they aren’t doing enough, working hard enough, not doing the right things. They’re doing it largely unsolicited, without knowing what or how much any of these people they’re talking to are doing, or without any real factual evidence for why more is better.
And to be honest, many people are already feeling overwhelmed with the stress of life, relationships, work, pandemic, racial and class disparities, so adding the stress of “you’re not doing enough with your exercise” is just piling on.
Keep that in mind when I talk about effort. It’s not a “you’re not doing enough” admonition. It’s not a “grind 24/7” platitude.
Effort =/= doing as much as fast as you can
Effort =/= doing easy things lots of times until you’re tired
Effort is the mental and physical effort we give to exercise and physical activity.
One of the core tenets of exercise is adaptation: the principle of adaptation refers to the process of the body getting accustomed to a particular exercise or training program through repeated exposure. Basically, if you do stuff, your body gets used to it and it gets easier.
But here’s the rub: to get your body to adapt, what you do has to be stimulating enough to overwrite the existing information your brain and body are operating from. If it’s not, then your brain/body defaults to what’s already in the “system.”
The stimulus needs to be enough to disrupt the body’s baseline. This is where effort comes in: to be able to handle increased stimulus, we need more effort.
The point I’m dancing around is that to be effective, exercise needs to be hard. It needs to challenge us. There needs to be enough stimulus to induce adaptation. It’s worth noting that hard is a subjective term, and what is hard can vary on a daily basis: something that was easy for me last week might be hard today.
There’s a lot of possible reasons why this might be, not all of which are scientifically understood. The amount of weight, repetitions, or even the version of the movement you’re doing doesn’t matter as much as the effort you’re putting into the action.
Yes, Tyler, this all sounds very subjective. I’d like some clarity, please
Conveniently enough, there’s a handy chart for effort. It’s generally known as RPE: Rate of Perceived Exertion. It’s a 1-10 scale that measures how hard an exercise is based on a Reps In Reserve (RIR) comparison: how many reps do you feel like you had left in the tank after finishing a set?
10 = no more reps
9 = 1 more rep
8 = 2 more reps
7 = 3 more reps
And so on. You can even get specific and use .5’s to add some nuance: 9.5 = MAYBE 1 more rep, 8.5 = MAYBE 2 more reps, etc.
The hardest part about implementing the RPE chart is figuring out what no more reps feels like. Do you throw a bunch of weight on a bar and see if you can do it? Do dozens of reps? How many reps should you be doing for a set in the first place?
An easy way to start playing around with RPE work is to do AMRAP sets: As Many Reps As Possible (sometimes written as AMAP - As Many As Possible). These are sets where (as the name suggests) you do as many reps as you can until your form breaks down.
Once you have a solid understanding of what your intention is with an exercise, and how to manipulate different factors to get the right form for your intention, then you can start to play around with effort.
Start with a few sets to get in the groove with the exercise. If you’re using weight, start light and work up to a reasonably challenging load. Once you’ve done some sets (3-5 sets is a good place to start), try an AMRAP for your final set. Do as many reps as you can until you can’t anymore - until you’re too tired, until your form breaks down, or until you mentally feel like you’re done.
You’ll be really tired. That’s OK. Remember that, because that’s your 10. When rating sets in the future, recall that moment of what it felt like, and rate according to that. An 8 should feel easier than that set, a 6 even easier. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be hard, but they’ll be slightly easier than a maximal effort set like that 10.
The amount of reps, weight, and ease of execution will change: sometimes a number that previously felt like an 8 will feel like a 10. That’s OK. The body varies day-to-day, week-to-week. What matters is that you’re giving that effort and not just phoning it in.
Most of the focused strength work you do in the gym should be at least a 7. Anything less is good for warming up, preparing the body, and using movement to help us feel good. There’s nothing wrong with low intensity movement - in fact, I’d say that should comprise MOST of the movement we do throughout the day and week. But when talking about EXERCISE - specifically exercise done to increase capacity, strength, and skill - high effort is integral to driving adaptation and progress.
Ultimately, you are the arbiter of what hard means to you.
This is an important part of the process - realizing what is a reasonable, doable, repeatable amount of effort for you to give in your workouts week in and week out. Forcing yourself to do something that feels unsafe and uncontrolled isn’t going to help the process. You’re the boss. Be honest with yourself on both ends - could you have done more? Was it too much? Find that sweet spot and you’ve got your effort threshold.