This post is about minimum and maximum effective dose. What they mean, how to find them, and why having the right people around you makes all the difference.
What We Actually Mean by Effective Dose
Minimum effective dose is the least amount of training stimulus your body needs to respond, adapt, and make progress. Maximum effective dose is the point at which more training stops producing a positive response and starts breaking you down faster than you can recover.
Both ends of that spectrum are problems. Too little and your body has no reason to change. Too much and your body can’t recover fast enough to change. Progress lives in the middle.
In my experience coaching across twenty to twenty-five years, three to four quality sessions per week at around RPE 8 — staying injury-free and consistent over a long period of time — will deliver more progress than either extreme. That sounds simple. It rarely is in practice.
The Problem With RPE Alone
RPE, or Rate of Perceived Exertion, is widely used as a measurement tool. On a scale of one to ten, how hard does that feel? It has real value — but I’m not fully convinced that most people are accurate enough in their self-assessment to rely on it alone.
What I find far more compelling is velocity-based training. The barbell doesn’t lie. Research suggests that a one-rep max in a back squat occurs somewhere around 0.25 to 0.28 metres per second — the intent and rate of force development captured in bar speed gives you objective data that RPE alone cannot.
If an athlete is prescribed four sets of three at a given RPE, and over three weeks the weight is consistent or gradually increasing, they’re in the right zone. But if in week three that same RPE suddenly produces a weight that is five, ten, or fifteen kilos below what they’ve been moving — something is wrong. Either they’re doing too much, or something outside the gym is affecting their ability to recover. Velocity tells you immediately. RPE alone cannot.
The Undertraining Problem Nobody Talks About
Overtraining gets most of the attention. But undertraining is just as common and far less discussed.
I see it regularly in our Ladies That Lift cohort. Members who come in, go through the motions, tick a box. And honestly, that’s fine — because showing up matters, and the social and mental health benefits of being in that environment are real and significant. Coming in and training at RPE 4 isn’t going to harm anyone.
But it won’t produce the progress they’re capable of either.
When you consider that every training session is an opportunity — the cost of undertraining becomes clearer. You’re leaving progress on the table that you could be making.
The accountability piece here is important. When athletes question their programming or their results, I will always look at the training first. But the honest reflection often lands somewhere else.
Intent in the session. Hydration. Sleep. Stress. Family. Work. These things are not separate from training. They are part of training. And they’re often the reason the numbers don’t move.
The Coach in the Room
Online coaching has its place. We’ve written about that before and I stand by it. But there is something a physical coach in the room provides that no remote programme can replicate.
A good coach reads people. Every session. The way someone walks in. Whether they’re tired. Whether something’s off. Whether today is a day to push or a day to protect.
That reading happens through genuine relationship. At Crazy Strength, we greet people. We check in. We ask how they’re doing and we actually listen to the answer. Not to know their intimate details, but because that information directly affects what we ask of them that day.
A member who hasn’t slept, who’s carrying stress, who hasn’t eaten well — that member needs a different session to the one who’s fresh and ready to push. A programme on a spreadsheet can’t make that call. A coach in the room can.
Coaching Effort Without Pressure
One of the things I’ve learned — and that newer coaches often overcomplicate — is that cueing effort doesn’t require fancy language or complex methods.
If you want someone to move faster, ask them to move faster. That’s it. Respect them as an adult. Give them a clear, direct instruction. Most people respond to simplicity far better than elaborate technique cues or motivational speeches.
What changes is how you deliver it. Some people respond to being called out in the group. Others need a quiet word to one side. Reading which is which — and getting it right — comes from knowing your people. That knowledge comes from relationship. And relationship comes from showing up consistently, caring genuinely, and paying attention.
Teaching Athletes to Coach Themselves
One of the things I feel strongly about is that a good coach should be working towards making themselves less necessary, not more.
There’s a pattern I see in less experienced coaches — and social media has made it worse — where the goal is to keep the athlete dependent. To be needed. That’s not coaching. That’s insecurity.
At Crazy Strength, we bring our athletes into the education process. We explain why we’re doing what we’re doing. We talk about velocity. We talk about RPE. We talk about recovery. We want them to understand what smart training looks like so that when they’re not with us, they’re still making good decisions.
My favourite question to ask a lifter after a set is simple: how did that feel? That question opens something. It teaches them to notice. To connect what they feel to what the data shows. To build the self-awareness that eventually lets them make their own calls.
Finding Your Dose
If you’re not sure where you sit right now, here are the honest questions to ask yourself.
If the answers point to undertraining — push a little harder. Find RPE 8 and spend some time there. If they point to overtraining or underrecovering — pull back. Protect the long term by managing the short term better.
Get a coach in the room who can help you figure it out. Not a programme on a screen. A person who knows you, reads you, and gives a damn about your progress. That’s what makes the difference.
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