Lifting in moderate rep ranges is great for improving our general health and fitness. We might use that workout for a few weeks or months, adjusting as needed depending on how we’re progressing, and then switch things up a bit to keep things fresh. On the other hand, even small differences in rep ranges could result in different amounts of muscle growth over the longer term, and that could apply even within moderate rep ranges. This type of hypertrophy is best accomplished by training with lower reps that are 80- 90% of a 1RM. ... Optimal Sets x Reps Range. It’s possible that doing a set of five reps stimulates about as much muscle growth as doing a set of six reps. And even if it doesn’t, the difference is surely quite small. We don’t necessarily need to do twice as many sets, but we might need to do a couple of extra sets. That said, the below guidelines can generally be used for athletes who have spen… And even within that shrinking rep range, different lifts respond better to different rep ranges, narrowing it further still. A lot of lifters live in the world of low-range reps because they probably think that women will get all damp-pantied over how much weight they're using and imagine what a wonderful mate such a testosterone-ish man would be, especially when it comes time to attach the plow to his frame and furrow the fields after the mule got lame or when the Visigoths came down from the mountains to plunder their land.Sure, keep on thinking th… If we look at a systematic review of 14 studies, we see that sets of 6–20 reps stimulate a similar amount of muscle growth per set, provided that we take those sets close enough to failure. As a result, it’s often better to use lower reps: 4–10 reps per set. With this type of hypertrophy, not only does the area density of myofibrils increase, but there is a significantly greater ability to exert muscular strength. If we’re trying to gain muscle size, it probably makes more sense to spend most of our time lifting in moderate rep ranges. Or is it better to use a rep range that’s halfway between strength training and hypertrophy training? Some people’s lower backs get beat up with low-rep sets of deadlifts, whereas others get winded before they can finish a set of ten. The 5 Big Compound Lifts for Building Muscle. What Are The Rep Ranges For Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy & Myofibrillar Hypertrophy? This is the point that Mike Zourdos, PhD, makes in Monthly Applications in Strength Sport: While there isn’t necessarily sufficient evidence to say that the 15 reps would yield greater hypertrophy than the 6-rep example when sets are equated, without long-term data, it’s worth considering differential hypertrophy outcomes could occur over the very long term. Which rep range stimulates more muscle growth? Don’t Stick To A Particular Rep Range. Are 5×5 Routines Good for Gaining Muscle Mass? The goal is just to keep most of our training in the hypertrophy rep range. Plus, they’re also much easier to recover from. Marco Walker-Ng is the co-founder and strength coach of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell, and is a certified trainer (PTS) with a Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences (BHSc) from the University of Ottawa. It’s still a super new site. 6-12 repetitions known as the “hypertrophy rep range”, is employed by many a competitive bodybuilder to help them build extreme muscle size. You can build muscle with a … If we want to maximize the growth of our triceps, we also need triceps extensions. There’s quite a lot of evidence showing that we can build muscle quite well in higher rep ranges. According to others, such as Mike Israetel, PhD, sets of 5–30 reps are best for building muscle. Nobody is really advocating for it. And if we go any higher, we start to emphasize muscular endurance at the expense of muscle size and strength. That’s incredibly important for powerlifters, but for people who are more interesting in becoming bigger, stronger, fitter, and better looking, that benefit disappears. Here what 7 experts and our in-house expert, WBFF Pro fitness model and digital editor, Altu Kop had to say. But you can imagine how those workouts could get quite long. Not necessarily. And I think you’ll get some new gains, yeah . The idea being to start with just a few reps in reserve and finish our final set without actually hitting failure. Doing 5×5 on the bench press might stimulate the same amount of muscle growth as doing 3×12 on the bench press, yes, but we also need to consider that these lower-rep sets require longer rest times, that they can be harder on our joints, and that we need to do more total sets to get an equivalent benefit. For that, we would need to build bigger hips, spinal erectors, and forearms. 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. Including burn out sets. heavy singles, doubles and triples) for their main lifts. Should You Do Isolation Lifts to Build Muscle? You can indeed build muscle with 5×5 workouts. Kino rep training is performed by starting with lighter weight, doing about 10-15 reps (for legs, sometimes 5-8 reps depending on the exercise). You say, “In this study, the participants lifting 2–6 reps needed to do 24 sets of the squat and bench press to build as much muscle as the participants doing 8–12 reps for just 13 sets.”. 6-8 Reps - Produce the best medium between myofibril and sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. How much muscle growth do we lose, if any? Practically speaking though, 7 sets of 3 reps will take you an age to plough through because your rest periods will be longer too. 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: 8 reps with 225 pounds, 3 reps in reserve These studies aren’t doing that. And if we want to be able to pull our bodies over things, we can do chin-ups. There’s nothing wrong with lifting in lower rep ranges, but it might require doing more sets to stimulate an equivalent amount of muscle growth. If we look at the overall research, we see that sets of 1–3 repetitions, and perhaps even sets of 4–5 repetitions, don’t stimulate as much muscle growth as moderate reps do. While the other 2 sets stimulated mostly stimulated strength? We also have researchers like James Krieger, MS, favouring sets of 8+ reps. I’m training him, he wants to do lighter weights and more reps mainly for his joints. Schoenfeld: We recently published a meta-analysis on the topic that clearly shows hypertrophy can be attained across a wide spectrum of rep ranges – … 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. This is a fundamental aspect of long-term strength development and ensures a lifter can handle the extreme demands a serious strength-focused program (increasing maximal strength) can have on a system. In myofibrillar hypertrophy, we see that the myofilaments expand, but the myofibers don’t change in size. Also, reading and researching on your articles, so going to follow other routines after that. How Range of Motion Affects Muscle Growth. According to experts like Greg Nuckols, MA, sets of 4–40 reps are ideal for gaining muscle mass. So, is there a hypertrophy rep range? For growth purposes the best "bang for your buck" rep range is arguably 6-8, or about an 80-85% max load, as it gives the ideal combination of recruitment and metabolic fatigue. Awesome!!!! 4 sets of 12 reps. Or it could mean doing 4 sets of 10–12 reps, starting with a weight you can do 10 reps with, trying to get more reps every workout, and adding weight every time you’re able to do 12 reps. That’s the approach commonly used in Reverse Pyramid Training programs. Check this out: https://outlift.com/hypertrophy-training-volume/, Here’s the summary at the end: “There’s no single ideal amount of volume for maximizing hypertrophy, but a good rule of thumb is to aim for 6–15 reps per set, 3–8 sets per muscle per workout, and to train our muscles 2–3 times per week. You can build muscle with a lower rep range. So, first of all, we do have some evidence showing that lower-rep sets don’t stimulate as much muscle growth: These findings indicate that heavy load training is superior for maximal strength goals while moderate load training is more suited to hypertrophy-related goals when an equal number of sets are performed between conditions. Which Rep Range is Best for Gaining Strength? Powerlifters measure their strength by how much they can lift for a single repetition—their 1-rep max strength. Great article. The most controversial question, by far, is where the lower cut-off is. This comes from resting 3 minutes between sets. For instance, someone who can bench 300 for a single is similarly strong to someone who can bench 275 for 5 reps or 225 for 10 reps. Perhaps more importantly, going from benching 185 pounds for 10 reps to benching 225 pounds for 10 reps shows a significant improvement in strength. Plus, the main benefit of lifting in lower rep ranges is that it gives us practice lifting close to our 1-rep max. Awesome information about reps. How about sets what has the best results. An intermediate bodybuilder might spend ten minutes doing 3×12 on the bench press and then another ten minutes doing 3×15 skull crushers. As we get stronger within that rep range, we’re getting stronger in general, too. For instance, instead of doing 3 sets of 12 reps (3×12), we might want to do 5 sets of 5 reps (5×5). Set 4: 8 reps with 225 pounds, 0–1 reps in reserve. Admittedly, though, the data is lacking on this. Biceps curls: 3 sets of 12 reps Squatting for five reps is much easier than squatting for ten reps. Tag Archives: myofibrillar hypertrophy 10 Secrets to improve your physique from a Bodybuilders playbook Part 2. But if we’re talking about muscle growth per set, better to use moderate rep ranges so that we’re lifting more total poundage each set. More intermediate content, and more general health, fitness, and strength content. Bench Press: 4 sets of 10 reps As a result, someone might spend half an hour doing their 5×5 on the squat, finish it already feeling a bit tired, and then have to grind through a 5×5 on the bench press and then row. His specialty is helping people build muscle to improve their strength and general health, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes. You can do that with 2–3 full-body workouts per week or with body-part splits.”. But what about our general strength? It seems like when we’re doing fewer than six reps per set, we have to match the volume—total pounds lifted—when comparing those sets with moderate rep ranges. The exception to that rule is powerlifting, where our strength is measured by how much we can lift for a single repetition. 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. If you’re doing 10-12 reps, make sure it’s the heaviest weight you can manage for that rep range. To focus more on myofibrillar hypertrophy, focus on the 3-8 rep range. Of all the studies comparing rep ranges for muscle growth, the most famous is the study by Brad Schoenfeld, PhD, that we covered in our strength training article. This type of hypertrophy is accompanied by strength gains since it involves an increase in the contractile tissue (Zatsiorsky, 2006). In strength training, doing five reps per set is a popular way to gain mass. It’s possible that doing sets of seven reps would eventually yield more muscle growth than doing sets of six reps. It’s possible that doing sets of eight reps could eventually stimulate more muscle growth than doing sets of seven reps. So it’s not that we can’t build muscle with 5×5 strength training programs, it’s just that hypertrophy training (aka bodybuilding) programs help us gain muscle size faster and more efficiently. Lateral raises: 2 sets of 20 reps. This is the approach we see in 5×5 programs, such as StrongLifts 5×5, and it’s why people will often argue that it stimulates more muscle growth than lower-volume programs like Starting Strength, which uses 3 sets of 5 reps (3×5). Practically speaking, you’re right. Powerlifters tend to lift predominately in the 1-3 rep range (i.e. It’s either calculated as total poundage lifted (as you’ll see in Schoenfeld studies) or as number of challenging sets (as you’ll see guys like Greg Nuckols using). Then increase the weight consistently across four or five sets. Lifting in higher rep ranges is so painful that most people won’t do it. Absolutely. The workouts become much, much more efficient. 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. We know that doing 6–20 reps per set stimulates a maximal amount of muscle growth, but what about doing 5 or 30 reps per set? Does that mean we should use a mix of lower and moderate reps? 2 Michael Gonzales. Myofibrillar hypertrophy is the main increase in strength that we see occur in most power-based sports (powerlifting, weightlifting, throwing implements). But don’t worry too, too much about always staying above 5 reps. 4-rep sets might not be quite ideal, but you’ve already done an 8-rep set, which is. When doing 4 sets of 8 reps can you go up in weight on each set for muscle growth. A bigger muscle is a stronger one, so lifting in rep ranges that stimulate muscle growth is the most efficient way to gain general strength. If you want a customizable workout program (and full guide) that builds these principles in, check out our Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program. Hi. In the section, “Are Low Reps Good For Building Muscle?”, the math doesn’t seem to be right. If you liked this article, I think you’d love our full programs. With that said, these differences in volume really only start to become significant when comparing rather different rep ranges. Rep Range Percent of 1 Rep Max Achieved Amounts of Hypertrophy; 1-5 Reps: 85-100%: Mostly myofibrillar, a little sarcoplasmic: 6-8 Reps: 75-85%: A near equal moderate amount of myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic: 9-12 Reps: 70-75%: Largely sarcoplasmic, some myofibrillar, a little endurance: 13-15 Reps: 65-70%: Mostly sarcoplasmic, some endurance, and a little myofibrillar By doing fewer reps—anything from one to eight is a good range—and focusing on heavier weight, you’ll cause muscle fiber damage. 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. , narrowing it further still increasingly miserable our isolation lifts where the reps. Explain what it means to say for sure ’ m training him, he wants to do lighter weights more... Light and heavy weights as different weights give you a very good chance stimulate. 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