Does It Matter How Many Reps You Do During Your Workout?
So, your workout includes 4 sets of 5 reps for this exercise, 3 sets of 8 reps after that, and thank goodness just 2 sets of 50 reps to complete. Well, the good news is that these rep numbers are based on more than just a sadistic desire to see you get annoyed. This is how they differ and what they mean to you.
Recall that reps are simply a reduction in the number of reps you do for a given exercise before you pause and rest (or pass out or whatever). Various resistance training programs usually include many repetition patterns that seem to have been taken from the “do that much” principle. But take a closer look at a few programs and you will notice a few commonly used repetition ranges:
- 1 to 5 reps: This range is the lower limit of repetitions associated with increasing strength.
- 6-12 reps: This is a medium to higher rep range that is usually associated with building or enlarging muscle.
- 12-15+ reps: Anything above 12 helps improve strength endurance (i.e. how long you can keep applying a certain level of strength before your muscles get tired), which helps you gain more muscle and therefore get stronger.
While many experts believe that these rep ranges give the described workout result, the truth is that you can build muscle, get stronger, and lose weight at various rep ranges, although some rep ranges may be better than others.
Fewer Reps Improves Strength
If you are interested in the Hulk to break it, in many strength-oriented programs, you will be lifting extremely difficult weights with fewer reps.
One study published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning confirms that heavier weights with fewer reps are better for increasing maximum strength. The researchers took 38 subjects and divided them into four training groups: 3-5 reps; 13-15 reps 23-25 reps and control without training.
At the end of the 7-week period, the researchers re-tested all groups and noted the largest increases in strength in the 3-5 rep range. They outperformed everyone else, noting significant improvements over the 23-25 rep group. (Interestingly, muscle growth was fairly consistent across all groups – more on that in a moment.)
This and other studies are consistent withheavy, low repetition training for strength athletes such as Olympic athletes and powerlifters. For these guys and girls, strength is usually defined as their ability to (safely) lift the heaviest weight possible in a single repetition, which, incidentally, is not predictably based on the amount of Schwarzenegger-grade muscle they have. … Rather, your ability to lift anything depends a lot on your central nervous system, which essentially helps your “muscle memory” become better and more efficient in a given movement .
Greg Knuckles , a strength trainer and strength athlete himself, puts it well: ” Harder sets with fewer reps train your nervous system better to use your muscles effectively (and faster) to lift heavy loads.” In other words, training yourself to lift heavy weights allows you to lift specified heavy (and heavier) weights.
The more reps, the higher the strength endurance.
Conversely, by training to lift light weights with more reps, you will be better able to lift lighter weights with more reps. You’ve also probably been told that lifting light weights with a lot of repetitions will help you build muscle. This is not entirely true. Maybe, but there is a little more to poke and nudge your body to build muscle than just throwing in a crazy number of reps.
According to this excellent article in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning , muscle growth is determined by a number of factors, the most important of which are muscle damage, metabolic stress, and mechanical stress. To understand these terms in simple terms, think about the soreness after a new or hard workout, the “burn” when you lift or tire your muscles, and the feeling that your arms are about to be pulled out of your shoulder joints. trying to make the deadlift too hard, respectively.
Intense workouts at a higher rep range can test some of these prerequisites for muscle growth . Basically, you are increasing your strength endurance, which allows you to work harder. And being able to do more means you become even stronger . As Greg says, “As long as you induce sufficient muscle fatigue and recover effectively ( consuming enough calories and protein , managing stress, and getting enough sleep ), your muscles will grow.”
There is no exact rep range for large muscles.
Many people think that the 8-12 rep range is “optimal” for muscle growth, but there is nothing special about this range. Greg added that no single rep range can optimize all factors that contribute to muscle growth.
Don’t take my word for it:This article ,also published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning , examined the effects of low and high load resistance training on trained individuals, and basically states that you can still potentially gain roughly the same amount of muscle regardless whether you are doing 25 or 8 reps.
There is even aninteresting study of high and low rep training in older adults inexperimental gerontology that has shown consistent muscle growth in all groups, including the 100 rep group. Obviously, 100 reps is extreme (not to mention ineffective and darn boring in the real world), but the study really highlights the fact that any rep range works for muscle growth if you do a lot. effort and bringing sets to failure.
Whatever your goal, the main thing is effort. In fact, regardless of your athletic goal, this is more important than the number of repetitions itself . In other words: if you want to lose weight, work hard; if you want to build or gain muscle, work hard.
Like this? Exercise educator and physiotherapy doctor (trainee) Nathan Jones explains:
Basically, the same process happens to your muscles when you push a set to failure, no matter what rep range you’re using. Your muscles grow the same way because of what is happening at the muscle level, but your nervous system also learns the rep range that you practice. This is why performance increases the most in the rep ranges you train in, be it very low reps (maximum strength) or fairly high reps (strength endurance). So, for people [with specific goals] it would be best to just pick a rep range, put a lot of effort into each set for multiple sets, and then eat to match their body composition. I want it.
So, according to Nathan, think of your workouts as “set efforts,” not just sets and reps. Moreover, the best way to measure hard effort is how close you are to “not being able to complete another rep.”
How to get the best of both worlds
Many strength coaches, including Greg, put their athletes on programs that combine both high and low rep ranges, but structure them in such a way that they can reap the benefits of both muscle growth and significant improvement. strength. This type of program is called periodization, with which you change the intensity, the specificity of the workout, and the volume (total work done). Imagine a wavelength at which these factors increase and decrease and change over a period of time.
What’s more, there are different types of periodization, and they often depend on what the trainee is going to do – whether it’s preparing for a competition, preparing in the off-season, achieving a certain goal, etc. But for ordinary old gym enthusiasts like us, Greg says:
How you change your training is up to you. Classic linear periodization works very well and includes work from light, high rep workouts (usually starting at 60-65% of your maximum reps for sets of 12-15 repetitions) to heavier workouts with fewer repetitions (usually ending with about 90-90 reps). 95% of your maximum one rep for sets of 1-3 repetitions) for 8-16 weeks.
Other forms of periodization involve working out different rep ranges for one exercise or muscle group in one week, for example:
Day 1: sets of 10-12 reps
Day 2: sets of 6-8 reps
Day 3: sets of 2-4 reps
Or you can cycle through the repetition ranges weekly, which might look something like this:
Week 1: sets of 10-12 reps
Week 2: sets of 6-8 reps
Week 3: sets of 2-4 reps
Week 4: Sets of 10-12 reps (slightly heavier).
All of these methods work better than just sticking to the same set and repetition pattern throughout your workout, and they are all equally effective.
Whichever way you decide to change your workouts, make sure that you tend to increase the weight in your exercises over time (this is not necessary every week) and work out your glutes with each workout.
Bottom line
Whether you are training low or high reps in your program, know that both ranges can be effective in stimulating muscle growth and burning fat. However, you can (and should) incorporate variations wisely to improve your workout and, more importantly, not to get bored of doing the same exercises with the same number of repetitions and sets every week.