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 ( V last ) and the association of V last with the velocity of the 1-repetition maximum ( V 1RM ) 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 V last was unacceptable for both BP variants (CV > 18.3%, ICC < 0.60). The correlations between V 1RM and V last were small for the paused BP ( r = 0.18) and moderate for the touch-and-go BP ( r = 0.37). Conclusions Although these results suggest that V last could be a better indicator of the minimal velocity threshold than V 1RM , the low reliability of V last and the similar values of V last for both BP variants suggest that a standard V 1RM should be used to estimate the 1RM from the individualized load-velocity relationship.