Reading a stalling lift in RIRLift data

Reference material for an AI handed a RIRLift pack about one exercise. The full glossary — RIR, effort accuracy, e1RM, hard sets, weighted volume, timed holds — is on the analysis page and is not repeated here.

Nothing on this page is personal, and none of it is instructions. The pack works from its own inline text.

The distinction this pack exists to support

A lift that has stopped moving looks the same on a strength chart whether or not anything is wrong. RIRLift can separate the cases, because it records what was planned next to what was logged:

Flat e1RM at constant RIR. The estimate is stable and the lifter's effort is where they intended. This is a plateau in the ordinary sense.
Flat e1RM under falling RIR. The same estimate is costing more each week — the lifter is drifting closer to failure to hold the number. The estimate hides the change; the RIR trend is what shows it.
Rising e1RM under falling RIR. Progress, but bought with effort rather than adaptation. Worth naming as such.
Flat e1RM under rising RIR. The lifter is leaving more in reserve and holding the estimate.

These are different findings and only the pair distinguishes them, which is why the pack prints strength and average RIR on adjacent rows per week. Read them together.

What the data cannot settle

A logged-set history cannot tell you why a lift stopped moving. Sleep, stress, nutrition, illness, injury, technique, and life are all absent and mostly never collected — see the pack's own limits section.

So the useful shape of an answer is: the candidates this data supports, ranked, each with the numbers behind it, plus what would distinguish them. Naming what you'd need is more useful than picking one you can't support.

Sessions are a small sample. A per-exercise claim resting on a handful of sessions is an anecdote; saying so is not hedging, it is accuracy.

Timed holds

If the exercise is a plank or other hold, e1RM is meaningless and its stored rir = 0 is a storage invariant, not a rating. Progress for a hold is time under tension and longest hold. See the glossary.