 Hey everybody, I'm Lance Coyke. Today we're discussing how to write your own workouts. We've already talked about the five basic training principles. Definitely review those if you need to. And last, we're starting to talk about the pieces that are required, the puzzle pieces to build the puzzle that is the workout. And we talked about training volume last time, that is doing more reps throughout a workout. Today, I want to discuss maybe the most talked about, maybe the most important piece of your program, and that is the intensity. So best way to measure your intensity is, in my mind at least, the rating of perceived exertion. So this is actually an acronym that people use, RPE, Rating of Perceived Exertion. What this is, is it's saying, this is how hard this set was. So I like to just use a 10-point scale, and I say, on a scale from one to 10, 10 being a really, really hard, how hard was that? And so if I'm training with a really high intensity, then I am going to be pushing myself towards those RPEs of 10 throughout any given rep range. So let's say I am controlling this program. I'm saying I'm going to do three reps every set, no matter what. And I'm going to gradually ramp my weights up so that I get to a weight that's really, really challenging, so that I get to an RPE of 10. And so I might work up, and I might do, I'm going to do eight sets. My first six sets are probably going to be six, seven, maybe eight RPE, if you're really good, and you're really tuned into what your body can do. You can get those to like nines or tens and still be able to recover and do your next set next time. But that's something you want to kind of look into. What else plays into intensity? So the speed at which you move plays into intensity. So if I take a weight that isn't the most weight that I can do, but I move it faster than I normally would if I'm going to do it for that many reps, or a heavier weight for that many reps, then I can still stress my nervous system maximally. And so a high intensity in this case, even though the weight is low, we might say the load is low, my intensity can still be high because I'm recruiting so much of my nervous system. Now the adaptation here is different. I'm not getting strength out of this. I'm getting something that looks a little bit more like power, a little bit more like speed, right? If I'm not using any weight, let's use three examples. So a heavy one rep squat, that is a strength thing. A kind of heavy four rep squat, that is still a strength thing, but if I move it really quickly, it becomes a strength power thing, strength dash power. That's kind of how we talk about things, or a speed dash strength, or I think that one would be like a strength dash speed. It's really confusing. The principle is I'm getting more towards power. I'm getting more towards a time demand and speed where I'm measuring how fast I go. And then if I just, instead of doing a heavy squat, what if I just do a body weight jump? Well, that is probably more of a power output kind of thing. I'm not really loading anything up, and I'm just trying to move as quickly as I can until my feet leave the ground. When I can't put any more force into the ground to jump any higher, I've kind of already determined how high I'm gonna go. Now, let's look at it another way. Let's say I have a newly through puberty female athlete who is, she's got this body that is now bigger, but she doesn't have the nervous system to go with it. She's really uncoordinated and doesn't really have the strength to support things. Now, if I do a body weight jump with her, that might be more of a strength, speed kind of thing because she has this heavy body that her body is not, her muscles and her joints and her nervous system are not really conditioned to working with. So for her, something of like a power training kind of implement might require unweighting her like throwing a band underneath her or putting on a little harness that pulls her up so that she's not quite as heavy as before. And that will allow her to move fast enough to actually train those power zones instead of strength, slow, slow speed kind of stuff, not fast speed kind of stuff. Hopefully those examples don't confuse you. This is a really complicated topic. One last thing, the other way to look at it is a percentage of your one rep max. So if you can do your best weight for 400 pounds, let's say a 400 pound squat, then I can use a percentage of that maximal weight to kind of determine where I want the rest of this to fall into place. A good example is Jim Wendler's 531 program for strength. Oh, sorry. Jim Wendler's 531 program for strength programs a percentage of your one rep max. So you test that one rep max and then you do three sets of five, three sets of three and then a set of five, three, one on weeks one, two and three. It's very simple and it's totally programmed for you. So you just, you decide or you estimate what your one rep max is and then you start training. And that is a really good way to tailor the intensity of this. So on your three by five week, your percentage of one rep max, the weight that you're using is lower. And then for the three by three, it jumps up a little bit and then for the five, three, one, it gradually jumps up as well. And that is a more stimulating, more challenging workout whereas the other two allow you to practice your technique. They still stress your system a little bit, but not so much that it's difficult to recover from. So your five by five week or your three by five week helps you recover from your five, three, one week. Just there's so many ways to skin this cat which is probably an offensive metaphor. But very, very important. Again, try to tap into your artistic side and do some experiments and see how your body responds to different training intensities.