Strength Traning Fatigue; How to incorporate accumulative fatigue management methods into your barbell strength training effectively
We all start barbell strength training or powerlifting for the same few reasons:
It's fun ✓
It gets us strong ✓
It's functional ✓
Initially, you can get away with the basic principles of progressive overload because of the Novice Effect.
The program is simple, the rate of progression is steady and fast, and you recover quickly.
But then something remarkable happens.
You stick with it long enough that you're no longer a novice. You no longer progress at the same rate as your friends. You recover more slowly and can't train the lifts as close together or as frequently as before.
That simple program you were following before just isn't cutting it.
It would be great if training were always smooth sailing and you could easily continue making progress without ever adjusting the program.
But, unfortunately, that's not how barbell strength training works.
There will always come a time when something in your program needs to change for you to continue making progress and keep getting stronger while balancing your injury risk reduction. You can also read our free PRS lifting manual here.
At some point, you'll deal with an injury even if you've implemented "injury prevention" strategies like mobility work, special warm-ups, or focused on addressing "weak muscles."
The art of getting stronger is a delicate balance between pushing the boundaries of training load (volume, intensity, and frequency) and recovery. To spark the Stress/Recovery/Adaptation (SRA) cycle, we have to cause a small amount of stress just above our threshold, essentially overreaching our bounds just enough.
A more commonly used term for the SRA cycle beyond the novice phase is called "overreaching."
Essentially, every training session should cause a small amount of overreaching that we then spend time recovering from. Overreaching produces a temporary depression in performance, expressed as fatigue, but given the right program, should dissipate enough (but not entirely) before the next training session or exposure to that particular lift.
The exciting thing is that once we get into the later stages of novice training and intermediate and advanced training, we're not going to dissipate fatigue regularly completely.
So as a result, late novice lifters start to accumulate strength training fatigue as they transition into an intermediate lifter, and intermediate and advanced lifters regularly train in a state of accumulated fatigue.
This is called functional overreaching.
Functional overreaching is the Stress/Recovery/Adaptation cycle layered on top of each other.
Once your ability to recover entirely between sessions goes away, functional overreaching is a necessary state of training to get stronger.
The standard methods for dissipating strength training fatigue are:
Train the Main Lifts less frequently
Add in planned or reactive deloads
Sprinkle your program with light recovery days
The problem we see with these methods is this: they interrupt your regular barbell training progression over time.
Remember when you were making steady progress as a novice?
Unfortunately, most people think that's a distant dream of the past once they're out of the novice stage.
They start to add in all different versions of the Main Lifts.
Then, they train anything but the lifts they care about in their "off-season" or "hypertrophy blocks," or add in deloads for a week or two when they could have used those two weeks a bit more wisely.
Why spend weeks training a front squat when you could be working on your competition squat?
Why spend a week deloading when that week could be spent continuing to drive you forward?
Why force a light strength training day when you could make better use of that time?
The biggest problem we see with many popular training systems, programs, or coaches is that their program design focuses on dissipating fatigue rather than managing it.
In the PRS system, we rarely use deloads, recovery days, pivot blocks, or take the Main Lifts out of any of our clients' barbell training programs.
Yet we continue to have extremely low injury rates in the barbell strength training and powerlifting space relative to documented injury rates in the literature.
Why is that? Because of our unique fatigue management system allows you to continue to train in that beautiful land of overreaching without crossing over to non-functional overreaching land where injuries and stalled progress steal your joy and love of the sport.
What is the PRS strength Fatigue Management System?
The PRS Fatigue Management System for strength training and powerlifting is an injury risk reduction approach to managing accumulated fatigue within and across training sessions.
It is the specific monitoring of relative training intensity with minor responsive tweaks to the program to keep the relative intensity on the lower end of functional overreaching.
In this way, training can be progressed linearly without the need to remove the Main Lifts from the program, plan or force deloads, or implement relatively non-productive light training days.
This Fatigue Management System is different from traditional autoregulation-type programming.
It combines planned, progressive, linear programming with Rating Of Perceived Exertion to make responsive adjustments within the training session and throughout the training program.
How Can We Measure & respond to strength training and powerlifting fatigue?
Accumulated Fatigue can be measured, tracked, assessed, and responded to via Rating Of Perceived Exertion.
While RPE is a subjective measurement tool, it's a quick, easy, cheap tool to help gather data on fatigue and translate it into a performance measurement.
The literature is quite inconclusive on non-biomarker measures of training fatigue. A significant drop in performance is the one agreed-upon indication of too much fatigue accumulation (or non-functional overreaching).
In which case, you've missed your threshold for change and have entered the orange zone.
The orange zone means stalled progress, loss of strength, or possible injury has ensued. Beyond the orange zone is the red zone which is considered overtraining.
Overtraining is not typically seen very often but is marked by significant and prolonged drop in performance, chronic and persistent strength training injuries, changes in sleep, hunger, desire to train, and immune function.
How do you know when it's time to make a change before it's too late?
what does "too late" even mean?
While the literature on measuring strength training & powerlifting fatigue is inconsistent and the only real indicator is sustained decreased performance, we don't want it to get to that point.
A sustained decrease in performance means we're in non-functional overreaching land.
Whether you're an athlete, coach, or clinician, there's one common thing that you'll benefit from: an effective monitoring system that indicates when something needs to change.
We want to make changes before we see performance consistently decrease, injuries arise, or feel run down and unmotivated to train.
We ultimately want to be proactive to avoid setbacks, optimize goal attainment, reduce the risk of injury, and promote longevity with training.
The benefit of having a specific way to log and track your training is that you can spot trends proactively and retrospectively and make adjustments for the future.
For example, if you end up injured and in physical therapy (because remember, injury prevention is not a thing and injuries are inevitable no matter what), the clinician should assess your training to support return-to-sport with recommendations for reducing injury risk in the future.
Start Managing Strength Training Fatigue With These Accumulative Fatigue Tips:
So the first order of business for making sure you don't accumulate too much fatigue is to track your training data.
You can do this in a few ways:
Pen and paper
Barbell Training Apps
A simple Google Spreadsheet
We recommend creating a simple spreadsheet as pen and paper won't create the conversions we're looking to track. The accessible barbell training apps out there don't track the conversions we're going to recommend.
Trust us; we've researched it.
You're going to make your own little Athlete Monitoring System to track training fatigue and responsively adjust training.
An athlete monitoring system consists of usable performance data tracked over time.
While it's helpful to track variables like absolute intensity (weight of the bar), volume, and tonnage, these ARE NOT performance indicators.
Remember, performance is the only supported means for measuring fatigue levels in the literature, so we want to track performance indicators and not absolute numbers.
We do this by tracking both objective and subjective measures that together will provide you with some key performance indicators.
3 Key Performance Indicators:
The 3 Key Performance Indicators we recommend tracking and monitoring to make appropriate training adjustments for reduced injury risk, sustained training progress, and no need to remove the main lifts or deloads are as follows:
1. Exercise RPE:
This is the assignment of RPE to each working set of an exercise. Generally speaking, you should track the RPE for the working lifts but include tracking any warm-up set over the RPE of 7.
Essential things we want to assess regarding Exercise RPE are:
Does the change in RPE from the first set to the last set fit the program's intention? If not, perhaps we should consider adjusting or increasing the rest time between each set if your schedule allows.
Is there a drastic difference between a single set relative to the rest? This could mean you need to warm up a little more, you got distracted, or there was a technical or equipment malfunction.
2. Average RPE:
This is the average RPE of all working sets for a particular lift within one training session and can monitor it from session to session to track how it trends.
In the PRS Method of Athlete Monitoring, we set specific Average RPEs appropriate for volume, intensity, and light day exercises combined with the Athlete Identity. Therefore, when we notice that the Average RPE of a particular exercise begins to exceed our Average RPE set point for more than 2-3 sessions in a row, it's an indication for change.
This is not a responsive adjustment to excessive fatigue. Instead, we use this proactive programming technique to catch fatigue before it becomes a problem. We change the rep scheme that supports continued progression forward with a lower average relative intensity that is in line with the intention of the program.
Some changes you can make to proactively lower the relative intensity of an exercise without deloading or re-writing the whole program can be found in our Exercise Prescription article.
3. Estimated 1 Rep Maximum (E1RM):
E1RM is what we recommend you use as the gold standard for measuring training fatigue, functional overreaching, non-functional overreaching, and overtraining. The reason is that it's calculated by taking objective and subjective information and turning it into a usable piece of information.
You can calculate the E1RM by taking the weight lifted and multiplying it by 100. You then divide that number by the percentage of 1 Rep Max per reps lifted (see chart below), and you'll have your E1RM.
If you track estimated one rep max over time, the following trends should be monitored to reduce Powerlifting & strength training fatigue:
Upward Uninterrupted Trend: This is golden! You're making progress; fatigue is right where it needs to be to ward off injury, stalled progress, etc. You're in the yellow zone, or functional overreaching range.
Oscillating Trend Or Flatlining: This isn't great, but you can still save yourself. You're likely starting also to notice physical signs of non-functional overreaching, and you're in the orange zone. At this point, you may want to implement a deload for a week or two and then reset your program or start a new type of block. In a couple of weeks, generally 8-12 weeks, you'll be back at or exceeding your previous bests.
Continued Downward Trend: This is the red zone or dead zone. Unfortunately, the program has been grinded into the ground, and training fatigue has accumulated beyond a quick repair. You may be experiencing injuries, excessive exhaustion, hunger, anxiety, and feel extremely run down or even sick. When this happens, we need to spend a prolonged period in recovery, essentially a 4-8 week low-stress period, followed by reintroduction to volume and intensity. You'd benefit from a repeat novice program beginning at a relatively low intensity around 8-12 weeks after you catch overtraining.
In conclusion, to help you reduce strength training and powerlifting fatigue, we recommend that you track your Exercise RPE, Average RPE, and Estimate 1 Rep.
Tracking these 3 elements will help you avoid injury, burnout, and stalled progress in late novice, intermediate, and advanced barbell trainees and powerlifters.
This is why we firmly believe that everyone should start using RPE as soon as they begin barbell training to develop an understanding of it and use it appropriately when the time comes.
We understand that many people feel RPE should NOT be used with novice lifters, or even at all. Still, because of the immense value RPE provides us as a means for monitoring and managing fatigue, we'd argue that you MUST:
Learn it if you're an athlete
Use it with your lifters if you're a coach
Understand it if you're a rehab clinician who works with barbell trainees
For a complete guide on how to learn RPE as a lifter or support your athletes or patients in learning it as a coach or clinician, download our free 6-Point RPE Descriptor System ebook to guide you on learning RPE with four simple steps in four weeks.
Before we let you go, we mustn't negate the fact that there are other factors you should be monitoring.
For example, keeping tabs on nutrition, recovery, sleep, and stress outside the gym is crucial for making sure that the program as a whole is working; however, this is outside the scope of this article.
Regardless, nutrition, recovery, and sleep outside the gym will show up in the rating of perceived exertion and translate into E1RM.
So, if you're monitoring the three key performance indicators we discussed in this article, you're also monitoring those factors as well.