Reliability of the velocity achieved during the last repetition of sets to failure and its association with the velocity of the 1-repetition maximum.

BACKGROUND

This study aimed to determine the reliability of the velocity achieved during the last repetition of sets to failure ( ) and the association of with the velocity of the 1-repetition maximum ( ) during the paused and touch-and-go bench press (BP) exercises performed in a Smith machine.

METHODS

A total of 96 healthy men participated in this study that consisted of two testing sessions. A single BP variant (paused BP or touch-and-go BP) was evaluated on each session in a randomized order. Each session consisted of an incremental loading test until reaching the 1RM, followed by two sets of repetitions to failure against a load ranging from 75% to 90% of 1RM.

RESULTS

The reliability of was unacceptable for both BP variants (CV > 18.3%, ICC < 0.60). The correlations between and were small for the paused BP ( = 0.18) and moderate for the touch-and-go BP ( = 0.37).

CONCLUSIONS

Although these results suggest that could be a better indicator of the minimal velocity threshold than , the low reliability of and the similar values of for both BP variants suggest that a standard should be used to estimate the 1RM from the individualized load-velocity relationship.