To build the explosive strength necessary for competition, athletes frequently use Phase 4, the power phase. Keep reading for a simple three-month periodization cycle that can be used by both gym novices and grizzled veterans.
Devote one month to each phase, gradually increasing resistance while decreasing the number of sets as the month progresses. After the completion of this three-month cycle, actively rest run, hike, play basketball, etc. In the interest of simplicity, we have not changed the exercises between cycles. Traditionally, however, the exercises do vary. Note how the number of repetitions changes per phase.
This will maximize growth by engaging the greatest number of muscle-fiber types. In the study, 10 trained men performed 3 sets of 10RM biceps curls and machine chest flyes. Each exercise was performed with a different rest period: 1, 2, and 4 minutes for recovery. The shorter rest periods 1 and 2 minutes hurt the number of reps the guys could bang out early on in the workout; it also lowered training volume over multiple sets for both exercises—so keep this in mind!
Longer rests may benefit you in the long run. For the rest of the moves, which are compound exercises , meaning they work more than one body part and muscle group, your target amount of rest will vary depending on your goal. Read this definitive guide , which can cater to the hypertrophy and strength phase above and more.
For access to exclusive gear videos, celebrity interviews, and more, subscribe on YouTube! The argument for low reps 5 or less to build muscle In weight training, one adage has stood the test of time: To get big, you have to get strong. The argument for moderate reps 8—12 to build muscle The time-under-tension theory leads us to our third suspect: 8—rep sets.
The final verdict on the hypertrophy rep range So how many reps should you be doing to build muscle? Case closed. How to Gain Muscle in Just a Week Follow these simple rules to build the most mass in the least amount of time. Lifting more total pounds per set, putting greater demands on our cardiovascular systems, and building more muscle mass are all great for our health and fitness. But what about our general strength? Powerlifters measure their strength by how much they can lift for a single repetition—their 1-rep max strength.
This is a special skill that we can practice by lifting closer to our 1-rep max. This can get confusing because bodybuilding and hypertrophy training have no official way of measuring strength. No official lifts, no rules about how to perform them, and no 1-rep max test. For that, people often turn to powerlifting, thinking that they need to test their 1-rep maxes to see how strong they are.
However, this can lead people to assume that heavier rep ranges are better for developing strength, whereas moderate rep ranges are better for developing size.
Muscle size is almost perfectly correlated with muscle strength, so the rep ranges that are best for helping us gain muscle size are also the rep ranges that are best for helping us become stronger. If our goal is to become generally stronger, we can usually do that more efficiently by lifting in the 6—20 rep range.
A bigger muscle is a stronger muscle, yes, but we also need to make sure that we develop the relevant muscles. For that, we would need to build bigger hips, spinal erectors, and forearms. This is the problem that a lot of casual bodybuilders run into. To become generally strong, then, we need to become better at lifts that develop our general strength.
If we want to be able to pick up heavy things and carry them around, we might want to do conventional deadlifts and loaded carries. If we want to lift things overhead, we should be doing lifts like the overhead press.
If we want to be able to carry stuff in front of our bodies, we might want to spend more time doing front squats. And if we want to be able to pull our bodies over things, we can do chin-ups.
So building general strength has more to do with building bigger muscles by doing the big compound lifts , less to do with lifting in lower rep ranges.
The exception to that rule is powerlifting, where our strength is measured by how much we can lift for a single repetition. For everyone else, though, we can measure our strength by how much we can lift in a variety of different rep ranges. For instance, someone who can bench for a single is similarly strong to someone who can bench for 5 reps or for 10 reps. Perhaps more importantly, going from benching pounds for 10 reps to benching pounds for 10 reps shows a significant improvement in strength.
For instance, you could stimulate a similar amount of muscle growth by doing 3 sets of 10 repetitions as you would by doing 5 sets of 5, keeping your workouts shorter or freeing up more time for other lifts. Now, most research shows that we build more muscle per set when doing at least 6—8 reps per set, and that may be true.
But sets of five reps are right on the cusp of being ideal for gaining muscle. My personal hunch is that low-rep sets of around reps are a bit less efficient for muscle growth on a per-set basis, but not quite to the point of needing to equate for volume load. Not necessarily. If we want to maximize the growth of our triceps, we also need triceps extensions. But you can imagine how those workouts could get quite long.
Plus, this is assuming that muscle growth is maximized with just three sets per muscle group per workout. It seems that muscle growth is maximized by doing 4—8 sets per muscle group per workout. When volumes start climbing higher like that, it can pay to have an easier and more efficient way to stimulate muscle growth. If we compare to how a bodybuilder trains, we can see the advantage of using moderate rep ranges.
According to experts like Greg Nuckols, MA , sets of 4—40 reps are ideal for gaining muscle mass. According to others, such as Mike Israetel, PhD , sets of 5—30 reps are best for building muscle. The hypertrophic stimulus and fatigue generated by each set between roughly 5 and 30 reps are about the same. Volume and intensity cause growth and fatigue, and when one goes up per set, the other goes down to preserve a roughly even effect.
There are problems with doing sets of 20—40 reps, too. First, we need to take them closer to muscular failure to reliably provoke muscle growth. Second, taking high-rep sets to failure is so painful that it can make people vomit, give up, or hate training.
And third, higher-rep sets can cause a tremendous amount of muscle damage, making our workouts harder to recover from. However, he notes that low-rep sets stimulate less muscle growth per set while inflicting greater stress on our joints, whereas higher-rep sets take longer and are quite a bit more painful.
As a result, he recommends defaulting to moderate rep ranges when training for muscle growth. And even within that shrinking rep range, different lifts respond better to different rep ranges, narrowing it further still.
But, as you can imagine, different lifts challenge us in different ways. So with neck training, we might want to use higher reps: 15—40 reps per set. So instead of doing 6—20 reps for every lift, we want to use different parts of the rep range at different times. Lower reps tend to be ideal for the bigger compound lifts, giving us loose rep range recommendations for our five big hypertrophy lifts of, say:.
And then the ideal rep range climbs higher for assistance and accessory lifts, which are lighter, less fatiguing, and can sometimes tolerate a bit of technique breakdown. Here are some loose recommendations for some common isolation lifts :. Genetics and personal preference will factor into what rep ranges you prefer, too.
Doing around 6—20 reps per set is usually best for building muscle, with some experts going as wide as 5—30 or even 4—40 reps per set. For bigger lifts, 6—10 reps often works best. For smaller lifts, 12—20 reps often works better. If you have sore joints, it can help to use higher rep ranges, doing 12—40 reps per set. If you want a customizable workout program and full guide that builds these principles in, check out our Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program.
His specialty is helping people build muscle to improve their strength and general health, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes. Our other two sites are more specifically about helping naturally skinny people bulk up, so with this site we want to go beyond that. More intermediate content, and more general health, fitness, and strength content. Still mostly focused on building muscle, though.
You say,. This shows the low rep range to require less volume for more muscle growth. The workouts become much, much more efficient. If we challenge ourselves with the first set, our strength will typically go down a bit on the next set. What often works better, then, is keeping the weight the same and pushing a bit closer to failure with each set.
The idea being to start with just a few reps in reserve and finish our final set without actually hitting failure. For example: Set 1: 8 reps with pounds, 3 reps in reserve Set 2: 8 reps with pounds, 2—3 reps in reserve Set 3: 8 reps with pounds, 1—2 reps in reserve Set 4: 8 reps with pounds, 0—1 reps in reserve.
Set 1: 10 reps with pounds Set 2: 8 reps with pounds Set 3: 6 reps with pounds Set 4: 4 reps with pounds. Pyramid training can work, but it often makes more sense to reverse it, starting heavier and then stripping weight off the bar.
That allows us to lift heavier weights while our muscles are still fresh and strong, and then burn ourselves on higher reps afterwards, often allowing for more total weight lifted.
Set 1: 4 reps with pounds Set 2: 6 reps with pounds Set 3: 8 reps with pounds Set 4: 10 reps with pounds. So can we add weight from set to set for muscle growth? Admittedly, though, the data is lacking on this. And even the research on Pyramid Training is pretty sparse. Can someone please explain what it means to say rep range? What does that actually mean? Saying that the hypertrophy rep range is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6—20 reps means that sets ranging from 6 reps to 20 reps can all be ideal for stimulating muscle growth.
Deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Bench Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Biceps curls: 3 sets of 12 reps Skullcrushers: 3 sets of 15 reps Lateral raises: 2 sets of 20 reps. This workout uses 2—4 sets of 6—20 reps, doing fewer reps on the bigger compound lifts, more reps on the smaller isolation lifts.
And when the reps are lower, we tend to do slightly more sets. Speaking of reverse pyramid training, another way to do sets in the 6—20 rep range would be to strip some weight off the bar each set, perhaps starting with pounds for 8 repetitions, then pounds for 10 repetitions, and then pounds for 12 repetitions.
So far, when I do weighted chinups for 3 sets, I get 8 reps on the 1st set, 5 reps on the 2nd set, and 4 reps on the 3rd set.
This comes from resting 3 minutes between sets. All sets are to failure with good form chest to bar. Does this mean only that only the 1st set stimulated sufficient hypertrophy because it was in the rep range? While the other 2 sets stimulated mostly stimulated strength? If so, am I better off reducing the weight on the 2nd and 3rd set only to make sure I never go below 6 reps?
There are a couple downsides to lower rep ranges for hypertrophy. That can be solved by doing extra sets, though, which is where the second problems comes in: lower-rep sets are more fatiguing and can be harder on our joints.
You could try 5-minute rest periods. That way when you do 8 reps, you have 2 reps left in reserve. Next set, maybe you get 8 reps with 1 in reserve. And then on your third set, you can do 8 reps with 0 in reserve. This is how we normally recommend that people train, leaving some reps in reserve, especially on earlier sets, and especially when so many reps are bleeding out from set to set. The goal is just to keep most of our training in the hypertrophy rep range. Awesome information about reps.
How about sets what has the best results. For example, sets of reps or is sets of reps have better results. That yields a training volume of 9—18 sets per muscle group per week, which is right about perfect for building muscle.
You can do that with 2—3 full-body workouts per week or with body-part splits. Thank you Shane for your response! Going to continue for another three weeks. Started working out since January Also, reading and researching on your articles, so going to follow other routines after that. Funny that this is published. But that weight is not optimal for strength building. When focusing on maximizing your strength, you want to train with even heavier loads, ones you can lift for just reps.
These very heavy weights provide the stimulus needed to grow stronger. In fact, that's how the biggest and strongest men and women in the world train—especially powerlifters. They throw around superhuman weights in competition, and you can bet they practice in a similar fashion. Train like a strength athlete: Strength trainers differ from bodybuilders, in that they typically avoid taking sets to muscle failure, which could adversely affect the nervous system.
Most of these individuals don't train heavy all the time, however. They cycle high-intensity periods heavy training with low-intensity periods to save their joints, reduce the risk of injury, and peak at the right time for competition.
Hence, they typically follow a or week periodized program that gets progressively heavier. That means doing sets of 5 reps, 3, and finally 2 and 1. The strength trainer also targets the fast-twitch fibers. His focus isn't just on building and strengthening the muscle fibers themselves, but also training the nervous system. Rest periods between sets for main lifts are fairly long—up to minutes—so that incomplete recovery doesn't inhibit succeeding sets. After the main multijoint exercise, additional movements are included to strengthen weak links in the execution of the main lift.
Your eye may be on getting as big or as strong as possible, but not everyone wants to pursue that goal. The classic example of the marathon runner, who runs at a steady pace for plus miles, is one geared toward improving muscle endurance. In the gym, that translates into using a lighter load for 15 or more of reps. Low-intensity training is typically considered aerobic exercise, since oxygen plays a key role in energy or production.
This allows you to maintain your activity level for a longer period of time. This energy process occurs primarily in slow-twitch muscle fibers, so performing low-intensity, high-repetition training builds up the mechanisms within the muscle cell that make it more aerobically efficient. This type of training enhances the muscle's endurance without necessarily increasing the size of the muscle. Highly trained aerobic athletes can do lots of reps for long periods of time without fatiguing, but you won't typically see a sprinter's body on a marathon runner.
Focusing on muscle endurance means choosing fairly light weights that can be done for reps or more. Train like an endurance athlete: Most endurance sports aren't gym-based, so it's hard to duplicate their motions with weights. Rest periods should be kept fairly short, since oxygen intake and lactic-acid removal shouldn't be limiting factors as you exercise. Discovering how many reps you should do also tells you how much weight you should lift. The two are inseparably linked.
If you were to plot a graph, you'd discover a near-linear inverse relationship between the two: add more weight and you can do fewer reps; with a lighter weight, you can do more reps. I'm always amazed when I train with a new partner who has been stuck at a certain weight-and-rep scheme—say, dumbbell bench press with 80 pounds for 8 reps.
I'll tell him to grab the 90s, to which he'll respond, "I can't do that!
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