is 12 reps with 87.5% of your 6 rep max equal, less or more than 6 rep max

[hereforadvice]

didnt feel strong today so decided to go for reps not weight

ended up doing 12 reps with 87.5% of my 6 rep max

i wonder if that's lower, equal, or higher if you would calculate the one rep max of the 6 rep max and the one of the 12 rep max


1rep max calculators only let you go up to 10 reps so i need someone's experience to solve this question


i can't go to sleep if i dont know if my workout was good or useless

(by the way the 6 rep max was 160kg and the 12 rep max 140kg => 140kg is 87.5% of 160kg)

 

[moya]

how did you determine your 6 rep max? from working out or from a (worthless) calculator?... i would say less... simply because it is a lower ammount and the other muscle fiber types will come more into play... but there are calculators that go higher than 10, which are not considered accurate, however they would lead you to believe the 12 rep set is 'harder' i guess... though no way i would endorse that...

 

[hereforadvice]

6 rep max was based on actual 6 rep max

 

[stevesmi]

feel your muscles the next day.. if you can feel soreness/lameness when you press hard into them then you got in a good workout.

 

[SpyWizard]

in the 12 rep range you are not getting stronger you are conditioning the mitochondria was that your goal??

 

[Headholio]

Like others said, it's not a fair comparison. Your reason for muscle failure on the 6 rep vs the 12th rep are likely different (use/depletion of different muscle fuel, glycogen vs ATP/CP etc).

2 people could have the same 6 rep max, but if you take 87.5% of that weight, one guy could get 12 reps while the other guy gets 9. It depends on how well your muscle is trained for the endurance needed ( partly genetics etc.)

If both guys go to failure, it doesn't really matter if they got 9 or 12 reps, they both got benefit from the set. For one workout its not that important. As long as you went to failure or close to it, your muscles benefited. On the long term however, training sets of 6 gives different results than training sets of 12, obviously.

 

[DZLS]

i'm thinking you should know if your workout was good or "useless" while you were at the gym...

empirical data isn't going to give you the information you are looking for...

by the numbers you did more work (volume) with the 12 reps at 87.5% of your max, but was it the kind of work you wanted to do...

 

[stevesmi]

^^^ I agree.

and its not always about tearing your muscle fibers to shreds every time you hit the gym. sometimes your body is gonna be off, totally normal. can't set a new PR every workout.

 

[miked8c]

.0333 x Weight(lbs.) x reps + Weight(lbs.)


Have this thing memorized, while destroying the Planet Fitness's toilet before a training session with my pre workout ritual dump, I'll plug numbers into this formula to see what I need to rep out at today to beat last weeks numbers. Its great to go into a workout knowing what reps you need to hit, rather than just going in and figuring out if you made progress after the workout.


Having said that, 12 reps with one weight is a whole different animal than 6 reps with another. If you want to measure progress you need to be more consistent with the weight you are using our else it'll will be pointless trying to calculate your gains.