Anyway to measure RBE?

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Peak_Power

New Member
I'm just wondering if there is anyway to test/measure how much RBE you're muscles/connective tissue have built up throughout a cycle for a particular weight. The general rule seems to be keep doing 5s/negs until either your joints give out or you plateau, but "plateau" is such a subjective thing, is there any actual test you can do short of cutting your muscle open? I would just like a more scientific way of knowing I've plateaued, after say 8-12 weeks, rather than just going by feel.

Also I'd like a way to know if the weight I'm lifting is inducing hypertrophy or not, as Bryan says once RBE catches up to you, the weight you lift, no matter how heavy, will cease to be effective until you SD or increase the weight. Should lifting the weight start to "feel" different once it is no longer causing microtrauma? Should you be able to do more reps? etc. etc. Obviously the traditional ideas of "fatigue" don't seem relevant to growth anymore...
 
What they mean by plateau is a strength plateau. As you gain size you will gain strength. Once you can no longer progress (by weight) you have about 2-4 weeks before RBE catches up with you. So if you are not doing negatives and you cant push past your 5RM after 2-4 weeks enjoy some SD.
 
As far as I know, the heavier the weight you are using (relative to your own strenght, of course) the longer that weight will remain effective for you. There isn't really any timeframe that is set in stone with regards to RBE.
But yeah, generally if you are no longer making size gains and you can't add anymore weight to bar because your strength is not increasing, then RBE has probably set in. Sometimes you can do some tricks to get beyond it, like dropping volume and increasing intensity, but otherwise you have to deload/decondition to continue making progress.

Honestly, I don't think plateaus happen very often. I think it would be reasonable to have a 12-16 week long HST cycle with extended 5s and be able to keep increasing your strength the whole time before you hit a plateau - assuming you eat enough, obviously. You'd probably want to only increment once or twice a week once you hit the 5s as well, but I think it would work well.
 
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