How to Tell if You’re Pushing Yourself Hard Enough in Your Workouts

How to Tell if You’re Pushing Yourself Hard Enough in Your Workouts

Effort is one of the most important ingredients for success in training—but it’s also one of the hardest to measure. As much as trainers might wish for a perfectly objective way to quantify effort, we can’t exactly hook everyone up to an EKG for every session.

That means effort is subjective. And when you ask someone, “How hard was that set?”, the answer can vary wildly from person to person. In this article, we’ll explore more reliable ways to gauge effort and explain why your results are directly tied to how hard you train.

Two Main Ways to Measure Effort: RPE and RIR

In the exercise science world, there are two common methods used to quantify effort:

1. Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) — a scale of how hard something feels.

2. Reps in Reserve (RIR) — a count of how many more reps you could have done before failure

Let’s break these down.

RPE: Rate of Perceived Exertion

RPE is the most common and beginner-friendly way to measure effort. It uses a scale from 1–10, with 1 being the easiest and 10 being your absolute limit.

Many RPE charts can include breathing cues, like how easily you can talk or how heavy your breathing feels. This is because the system was first designed for cardiovascular exercises such as running, rowing, and cycling.

While RPE can be useful for resistance training (e.g., rating a squat set from 1–10), it’s less precise than RIR when it comes to strength work.

RIR: Reps in Reserve

RIR stands for Reps in Reserve, meaning how many reps you could have completed after your set ended—while still maintaining good form.

• 1 RIR = you could’ve done one more rep

• 2 RIR = you could’ve done two more, and so on

Because most strength training is already measured in reps, RIR tends to be a more natural and accurate tool for tracking effort in resistance workouts.

This is why you’ll often hear trainers at Garage 1880 ask, “How many more reps could you have done?” It’s a simple yet powerful gauge of intensity.

The Catch: Experience Matters

RIR is an excellent tool, but it’s less reliable for beginners.Experienced lifters usually have a good sense of their limits—they’ve been close to failure enough times to know what 1–2 reps away truly feels like.

Newer lifters, however, often underestimate their capabilities. Without that experience, it’s common to stop a set too early, well before reaching meaningful intensity.

How to Use RIR Effectively

For most people, training within 1–3 RIR—that is, 1–3 reps away from muscular failure—produces the best combination of muscle growth and strength gains.

But here’s the challenge: how do you know what 1–3 RIR feels like?

No one else can tell you better than you can—but you’ll need some practice to learn your true limits.

A Simple Test to Check Your RIR Accuracy

Every once in a while, test yourself:

1. Choose a safe exercise, like a machine chest press or a selectorized leg press (avoid free-weight barbell lifts for this).

2. Do your first working set to what you think is 2–3 RIR.

3. Rest fully, then do a second set with the same weight. This time go all the way to failure (0 RIR), stopping when you literally can’t complete another rep with good form.

Afterward, compare.If you did significantly more reps than expected, it’s a sign you’ve been leaving more in the tank than you realized, which could be holding back your results.

In my experience, many clients surprise themselves—sometimes performing four, six, or even ten more reps than they thought possible.

The Takeaway

Learning what true muscular failure feels like is a key part of progress. Once you understand what 0 RIR feels like, you can better judge when you’re actually training in that 1–3 RIR sweet spot that drives results.

Effort matters, and the most meaningful improvements happen in those final reps—the ones that challenge you the most while keeping your form solid.