Strength level for a particular exercise/movement is generally communicated in the form of an N Rep Max (commonly a 1 rep max — or 1 rm).. An ‘n’ rep max is the maximum weight you can lift for n reps. Which rep range stimulates more muscle growth? Done shoulder press 30kg for 3 x 20 reps. Usually would do 60kg for 3 x 4. Finally, what if we want to use a rep range that helps us gain both muscle size and strength? 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. So, is there a hypertrophy rep range? What often works better, then, is keeping the weight the same and pushing a bit closer to failure with each set. According to others, such as Mike Israetel, PhD, sets of 5–30 reps are ideal for building muscle. But lifting in lower rep ranges is quite pleasant and easy. My personal hunch is that low-rep sets (of around 3-5 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. How much muscle growth do we lose, if any? Lifting in moderate rep ranges is great for improving our general health and fitness. The first option is to rest longer so that you aren’t bleeding as many reps between sets. Among those variables are the total number of sets, reps (repetitions), intensity (how heavy the weight it relative to either to one-rep max or rate of perceived exertion), rest periods, exercise order, and frequency (how many times per week, typically). This is the problem that a lot of casual bodybuilders run into. Great article. Some people’s shoulders ache when they bench too heavy, others when they bench too light. The exception to that rule is powerlifting, where our strength is measured by how much we can lift for a single repetition. For hypertrophy, you are free to choose your rest interval. 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 we want to lift things overhead, we should be doing lifts like the overhead press. We can gauge our strength by how much we can lift in moderate rep ranges instead. 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. Funny that this is published. But sets of five reps are right on the cusp of being ideal for gaining muscle. So, when Jack says 80 kg is his 5 rep max, he means both of the these: a. he cannot add any more weight and perform 5 reps. b. he cannot perform any more than 5 reps with 80 kg. You can do that with 2–3 full-body workouts per week or with body-part splits.”. So although sets of 4–40 can be good for stimulating muscle growth, it’s often easier to build muscle if we spend more of our time lifting in the 6–20 rep range. Second, taking high-rep sets to failure is so painful that it can make people vomit, give up, or hate training. So instead of doing 6–20 reps for every lift, we want to use different parts of the rep range at different times. The 5 Big Compound Lifts for Building Muscle. TO RECAP, aim for 3-5 sets in the following rep rangers per exercise based on your goals: Endurance: 12+ reps per set. Different methods work best for different people. 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. While there are a number of ways to induce hypertrophy in the weight room, it seems that employing multiple sets with moderate loads (6-12 reps, 65-85% 1RM) and rest periods (60 seconds) creates the greatest elevation of testosterone and growth hormone (primary anabolic hormones); compared to heavy loads (1-5 reps, >85% 1RM) with long rest periods (2-5 minutes) and light loads (12+ reps, <65% 1RM) … Here are the basic guidelines: Two to four minutes of rest between sets is recommended for strength training. When looking to increase muscle hypertrophy, science has shown that one of the most important factors for … Hence, training each muscle twice a week is good for hypertrophy. Started working out since January 2020. 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). That tends to work quite well, and even if the numbers aren’t quite that perfect, you’ll probably be doing more than 5 reps on the third set. In an earlier article we discussed the definition of hypertrophy and how strength, power, and fitness athletes can benefit from training for hypertrophy at specific phases of the annual training program. You can do more sets if you are an advanced lifter. When looking at the effectiveness of a training program for building hypertrophy, we must look at the total volume across the entire week, month, or program. It’s just that for gaining muscle mass, using moderate rep ranges is much safer, more efficient, and easier to recover from, allowing us to stimulate more overall muscle growth. It’s easier to do the moderate rep range. ... and in further support of this positive relationship between training volume and hypertrophy is a more recent 2017 meta-analysis. Shane Duquette and Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS. Are High Reps Good for Gaining Muscle Mass? For instance, doing 225 reps for ten reps is 2250 pounds lifted, whereas lifting 275 pounds for five reps is just 1375 pounds lifted. Admittedly, though, the data is lacking on this. If our goal is to become generally stronger, we can usually do that more efficiently by lifting in the 6–20 rep range. The workouts become much, much more efficient. Good to have such a wide rep range we can use to build muscle. A muscle round is really a type of higher-rep hypertrophy specific cluster set. Typically, the rest period between sets for hypertrophy is 1 to 3 minutes. There’s quite a lot of evidence showing that we can build muscle quite well in higher rep ranges. That’s fine. Do most of your exercises in this rep range only. Hypertrophy (muscle building) set and rep schemes require moderately heavy weight that can be used to complete 8 to 12 reps with 1 to 2 minutes of rest between sets. We can do higher reps without being limited by our fitness, it doesn’t tend to hurt that much, and it might be safer. In strength training workouts, a fair amount of muscle growth can be stimulated with 5×5 routines, but it pales in comparison to the amount of growth that a bodybuilder can stimulate in the same timeframe. 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. Practically speaking, you’re right. Many people are simply interested in building bigger muscles. 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. That’s not completely crazy. For example: 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. The truth is, recent emerging research has indicated that this hypertrophy rep range is actually much bigger than most people realize . Hamstring Curl. 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. What does that actually mean? It may lead to over-training. It seems that muscle growth is maximized by doing 4–8 sets per muscle group per workout. Moderate-rep sets are not only more efficient per set, but they also allow us to perform more sets per workout and to train more often. Lastly, endurance set and rep schemes feature light resistance that can be completed for 12 or more reps. Awesome!!!! It’s not a popular style of training. Which Rep Range is Best for Gaining Strength? As we get stronger within that rep range, we’re getting stronger in general, too. 5×5 routines are commonly used during the mass phases of strength training programs because they allow us to lift fairly heavy (over 80% of 1-rep max) while still getting in enough overall volume to build muscle mass. This shows that the lower reps stimulated more muscle growth, when considering volume. Set 3: 8 reps with 235 pounds How Range of Motion Affects Muscle Growth. The views expressed on this site may come from individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the view of BarBend or any other organization. When reps are low, the number of hard sets is not a good proxy for hypertrophy. Repetitions make up one set, which rep ranges can go from 1 to, well, as high as your heart (and/or body) desires. More intermediate content, and more general health, fitness, and strength content. We do see diminishing returns as training volume climbs higher. However, lifting in higher rep ranges is a nightmare straight out of Bloodborne, especially when doing the bigger compound lifts. And third, higher-rep sets can cause a tremendous amount of muscle damage, making our workouts harder to recover from. 4 sets of 11 reps 70% x AMRAP (probably 1-2 reps) Rest for 2 minutes and repeat; Total Reps in Minimal Sets. That’s incredibly important for powerlifters, but for people who are more interesting in becoming bigger, stronger, fitter, and better looking, that benefit disappears. Next set, maybe you get 8 reps with 1 in reserve. 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. The “hypertrophy range” of roughly 6-15 reps per set may produce slightly better results per unit of time invested than low rep and high rep work. 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.”. If for maximum results of muscle hypertrophy i have to do from 8-12 reps, how many sets would be recommended for each exercise? Still mostly focused on building muscle, though. 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. J Strength Cond Res XX(X): 000-000, 2018-This review aimed to determine whether assessing the total number of sets is a valid method … However, on the whole, the advantage you get from working in the hypertrophy range isn’t nearly as big as people seem to think; maybe a ~10-15% advantage per unit of effort invested at most. Pyramid training can work, but it often makes more sense to reverse it, starting heavier and then stripping weight off the bar. Hence, training each muscle twice a week is good for hypertrophy. These studies aren’t doing that. Oh, remember that “caveat to all of this” I mentioned above? 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. Coaches would need to monitor training and recovery to see if this loading (15 total sets is too much volume) is too much to recover from over time. There are problems with doing sets of 20–40 reps, too. 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. Set 4: 4 reps with 255 pounds. Lateral raises: 2 sets of 20 reps. Take a look at some of our top workout building and exercise programming articles below! When we’re talking about small differences in rep ranges, the difference in muscle growth will likely be similarly small. Sets: 10-20 sets per week per movement pattern. Nonetheless, the below guidelines are generally accepted as the basis for nearly every single beginner and intermediate lifter, athlete, and sport. This is the EXACT SAME as the section above. Generally speaking, around 120-210 heavy reps / per muscle / each week. If you liked this article, I think you’d love our full programs. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. According to experts like Greg Nuckols, MA, sets of 4–40 reps are ideal for gaining muscle mass. When we’re doing sets of 1–5, the sets tend to be harder on our joints and connective tissues, they can have higher rates of injury, and they can take longer to recover from. Should You Do Isolation Lifts to Build Muscle? If doing 12-rep sets of squats challenges our fitness more than our strength, should we use a lower rep range? That said, the below guidelines can generally be used for athletes who have spen… If you want a customizable workout program (and full guide) that builds these principles in, check out our Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program. In the latest issue of Monthly Applications in Strength Sport, Greg Nuckols said that he suspects that sets of 3–5 reps aren’t as good at stimulating muscle growth as moderate-rep sets, but that they’re not that far off, either. Didn’t even know Outlift was a thing. A bigger muscle is a stronger muscle, yes, but we also need to make sure that we develop the relevant muscles. How to Add Training Volume the Right Way. 2. Thirty seconds to one minute of rest between sets is recommended for endurance training. 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. If we want to be able to carry stuff in front of our bodies, we might want to spend more time doing front squats. I’m training him, he wants to do lighter weights and more reps mainly for his joints. Every expert has different set/rep "rules." If you train every muscle 3 times a week, this would result in 40-70 reps and if you train 2 times a week, around 60-105 reps each workout. The problem is, we’re spending so much energy on so few lifts that it becomes hard to work all of our muscles. the popularity of bodybuilding versus strength training, the ideal training volume for gaining muscle size, https://outlift.com/hypertrophy-training-volume/. That means that to maximize muscle growth, we wouldn’t be doing five sets of five, we’d be doing 6–10 sets of five. Does this mean only that only the 1st set stimulated sufficient hypertrophy because it was in the 6-20 rep range? Reps range for hypertrophy: The ideal rep range for hypertrophy is 6-12 reps per set. 5. When doing 4 sets of 8 reps can you go up in weight on each set for muscle growth. 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