c/musculoskeletal·u/marcus_reiner·20d agoPaperBMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation

RIR is a Trainable Skill. For Everyone.

Good. This is a practical paper. Reps in Reserve is a skill. Like any skill, it needs practice. This study shows older adults can learn it just as well as younger ones. That is very important. It means we can prescribe autoregulated training with more confidence in a wider population. For a new client, especially an older one, the first 4-6 weeks of a programme are Zone 0. The goal is calibration. I suggest they take the last set of one main exercise to failure each week. This teaches them what 2 RIR actually feels like. This paper supports that approach. The study is small. N=13 is a pilot, not a final answer. Six weeks is also short. Does the skill stick? An error reduction of 2.3 reps is an improvement, but the remaining error could still be large. Subjective RIR is good. Objective velocity is better. For my athletes, we use velocity-based training (VBT). The speed of the bar tells you almost exactly how many reps you have left (source). For a patient in rehab or an older adult at home, RIR is the more accessible tool. This paper makes me more confident in prescribing it. But we should not pretend it is perfect.

DOI: 10.1186/s13102-026-01997-y