Part 1 – Muscle Building
Here’s the never ending question about repetitions: “How many reps should I do?” The answer really depends on your goal. It’s really not an easy one-shot answer. Your exercises, reps and even sets center around your primary goal (fat loss, muscle building, muscle maintenance). Let’s discuss this in more detail so you can get a better perspective.
The Never Ending Question About Repetitions – Now Your Answer…
Muscle Gain Repetitions
Muscle is built through intensity, heavy weight, and proper form. It is also built with quality nutrition, proper rest, and natural supplementation. Let’s assume you have that nailed so we can dig a little more to really get your muscles to respond.
When we speak of quality training in relation to muscle gain, it’s a bit different than just mere muscle maintenance or basic fat loss. The operational element to building muscle is getting enough calories to power your training, as well as to feed your muscle post-training to prompt muscle recovery.
When you are training to build muscle you have to train your mind, as well as your body to move the weight because at least 90% will be mental energy.
To build large and dense muscle you have to target the Type II B muscle fibers, and those are recruited in the 4 to 6 repetition rage. This does not mean you can just choose any weight, start lifting, and expect to explode muscle.
The weight has to be heavy enough in order for you to reach complete muscle failure at the 4 to 6 repetition range. When you go beyond the 6-repetition range you are doing more endurance and muscle maintenance training, unless the set is taken to complete failure. Muscle failure is when you cannot possibly do any more repetitions within a set.
Question about Reps? Keep In Mind…
Excess reps, sets and exercises aren’t needed to stimulate muscle growth. You need to stimulate the muscle, not exaggerate it. Your goal when training is to tear down the targeted muscle group, then feed it, and let is rest so it can rebuild and grow into a stronger unit.
Constant badgering will not make your muscle respond, but it will send you into over training mode. With this, choose two different exercises for the targeted body part and limit your sets to 2 or 3 in the 4 to 6 repetition range.
Example of a Quality Shoulder Workout for Muscle Gain:
- Shoulder Presses – 3-4 sets of 6-8 repetitions to complete failure.
- Arnold Press – 3 sets of 6-8 repetitions to complete failure
- Rear Delt Row – 3 sets of 6-8 repetitions to complete failure
- Upright Rows – 3 sets of 12 repetitions to complete failure
This is surprising to many lifters, but is all you need to do is stimulate your shoulders to grow. Intensity is the key, not countless repetitions.
A study published by Ohio University used 32 men and split into 3 groups. Each group utilized a different repetition range in their training for an 8 week period.
- Group 1 used – 3 – 5 reps
- Group 2 used – 9 – 11 reps
- Group 3 used – 20 – 28 reps
With no surprise group one (3-5 reps) gained substantially more size and strength than the conventional 9-11 rep group and the higher 20-28 rep group.
Read Part 2 of The Never Ending Question regarding repetitions and fat loss
The Bodybuilding Rule…
Training + Eating + Resting = Muscle Growth
