August 27, 2026 · Blog

Are You Actually Training Hard Enough? A Simple Guide to Reps in Reserve

Walk into any gym, scroll through Instagram or spend five minutes on fitness TikTok and you’ll find endless debate about the “best” exercises.

What’s the best squat variation? Should you bench with dumbbells or a barbell? Are machines better than free weights? How many reps should you do?

These things can matter. But there’s another variable that often gets overlooked: how hard are you actually training?

You can have a perfectly designed program, choose all the right exercises and turn up consistently, but if every working set is comfortably easy, you may not be giving your body enough reason to adapt.

This is where RIR, or Reps in Reserve, becomes useful.

What is RIR?

RIR is simply an estimate of how many more good-quality repetitions you could have completed at the end of a set.

Imagine your program says: Goblet Squat, 3 sets x 10 reps. You complete your 10th rep and stop.

The important question isn’t necessarily whether you completed 10 reps. It’s: how many more could you have done?

If the answer is “probably another 7 or 8”, that’s roughly 7 to 8 RIR. If you think “maybe another 2”, that’s approximately 2 RIR. And if you’re thinking “there was absolutely no chance another good rep was happening”, you’ve reached approximately 0 RIR, or muscular failure.

It’s a simple concept, but it can completely change the quality of your training.

Why does it matter?

Strength training works because we progressively challenge the body. Over time, we might increase the weight, perform more repetitions, improve technique or increase the overall amount of quality work we’re capable of doing.

But simply completing the prescribed number of repetitions doesn’t necessarily mean the set was sufficiently challenging.

Research into proximity to failure suggests that, particularly when muscle growth is the goal, finishing sets closer to failure can provide a greater stimulus. Importantly, however, that doesn’t mean every set needs to be taken to absolute failure.

In fact, regularly taking everything to failure can create additional fatigue and discomfort without necessarily producing better results. Research comparing failure and non-failure training has generally found that reaching absolute failure isn’t required to improve strength or build muscle.

The goal is therefore not “train as hard as humanly possible every session”. It’s “train hard enough to create the adaptation we’re looking for”.

A simple RIR guide

5+ RIR: Fairly easy

You finish the set knowing you had at least another five good reps available. There are times when this is completely appropriate, particularly during warm-ups, technique work, recovery sessions or when learning a new movement. But if every working set lives here, you may not be challenging yourself enough.

2 to 3 RIR: Challenging but controlled

You finish the set knowing you probably had another two or three quality repetitions available. For a lot of general strength training, this can be a very productive place to work. The weight is challenging, your technique still looks good, and you’re generating meaningful training stimulus without needing to completely exhaust yourself.

0 to 1 RIR: Very hard

You’re getting very close to your limit. These sets can certainly have a place in a well-designed program, particularly on certain exercises and at particular stages of training. But they don’t need to make up every set of every workout.

Hard training doesn’t mean ugly training

Getting closer to failure doesn’t mean continuing until your technique completely falls apart.

When we talk about RIR at RevoPT, we’re talking about good-quality repetitions. If your squat suddenly becomes half as deep, your deadlift position completely changes or your bench press requires someone else to lift the bar off your chest, those aren’t necessarily productive extra repetitions.

The goal is to challenge your capacity while maintaining the movement standards we’re trying to develop.

The problem with always choosing the comfortable weight

Most of us naturally gravitate towards weights we know we can complete. You might pick up the same 12kg dumbbells every Monday because you know you can comfortably perform 10 repetitions.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But eventually, your body adapts. What was once challenging becomes comfortable. And if you never increase the load, repetitions or difficulty, your progress can eventually stall.

That’s why progressive overload matters. Sometimes the right question isn’t “can I complete 10 reps?” It’s “how difficult was rep number 10?”

If you finish your final working set and feel like you could have completed another eight repetitions, that’s useful information. It might be time to progress.

You don’t need to destroy yourself to make progress

The opposite mistake happens too. Some people believe that if they’re not lying on the floor after every workout, they haven’t trained hard enough. That’s not the goal either.

Training to absolute failure creates more fatigue, and the evidence doesn’t suggest that failure is inherently superior to stopping just short of it for strength and muscle development. A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis also reinforces the broader point that non-failure resistance training can produce meaningful improvements in performance.

Good strength and conditioning isn’t about seeing how exhausted we can make you today. It’s about finding a training stimulus you can recover from, adapt to and progressively build upon.

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Want to explore what training at the right intensity looks like for you? Find out about the RevoPT Jump Start Program or get in touch with a university-accredited RevoPT coach today.