What Does Research Say? If you’re training a muscle or movement more than twice per week, make sure that you’re the most well-rested going into your hardest sessions, and intersperse harder sessions with easier ones so that you’re not accumulating too much fatigue. While I have my bro hat on, cheaty rows are a pretty effective accessory lift for improving your deadlift, but don’t tend to be a great lat builder. However, growth was halved with 20% of 1RM. Generation Iron Brands LLC
Reps as low as 4-5 reps can still produce robust muscle gain along with reps as high as 30-35. Using adjusted values, there were a few differences, but they were pretty small. Tri-sets are a … As a compromise between the two goals I've never heard it seriously questioned although I don't believe anyone claims it's best for strength or best for hypertrophy No, not quite. Strength and Physique Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis Master List, Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window), 0.68, and the average effect size in the moderate rep measurements was, 0.71. Excluding that one study, the average effect size was 0.85 for high reps and 0.99 for moderate reps, and the trend toward significance disappears. High quality sets refer to those that employ exercises that are likely going to be limited by the muscle you’re trying to train, through the longest range of motion you can maintain with safe form, taken within 2-3 reps of failure*, and performed when you’re adequately recovered from your previous set (generally around 1.5-2 minutes of rest for isolation lifts, and 3-5+ minutes for heavy compound lifts). J Strength Cond Res 31(12): 3508-3523, 2017-The purpose of this article was to conduct a systematic review of the current … What I want to do in this article is examine that middle zone: the “hypertrophy range.” Is training in that general range the best way to build muscle? Let's look at this question both scientifically and practically. Accordingly, doing higher reps matches the demands of prolonged muscular endurance. We're all different, so do what works best for you. People often make the mistake of going too heavy and turning rows into a hip hinging exercise more so than a lat exercise. There are three rep ranges that correspond to the three biomotor capacities: strength, muscle building, and endurance: Strength training entails lifting heavy loads for low reps. However, this was strongly influenced by a single study discussed here. Influence of two different modes of resistance training in female subjects, The Effect of Different Resistance Training Load Schemes on Strength and Body Composition in Trained Men, Share this on Facebook and join in the conversation, Effects of Different Volume-Equated Resistance Training Loading Strategies on Muscular Adaptations in Well-Trained Men, Muscular adaptations in response to three different resistance-training regimens: specificity of repetition maximum training zones, Resistance Exercise Load Does Not Determine Training-Mediated Hypertrophic Gains in Young Men, Strength training at high versus low external resistance in older adults: effects on muscle volume, muscle strength, and force-velocity characteristics, Effects Of Low- Versus High-Load Resistance Training on Muscle Strength and Hypertrophy in Well-Trained Men, Gross Measures of Exercise-Induced Muscle Hypertrophy, The Effects of 4 and 10 Repetition Maximum Weight Training Protocols and Neuromuscular Adaptations in Untrained Men, Volume-Equated High and Low Repetition Daily Undulating Programming Strategies Produce Similar Hypertrophy and Strength Adaptations, Maintenance of Myoglobin Concentration in Human Skeletal Muscle After Heavy Resistance Training, Low-Load Bench Press Training to Fatigue Results in Muscle Hypertrophy Similar to High-Load Bench Press Training, Neuromuscular adaptations after 2- and 4-weeks of 80% versus 30% 1RM resistance training to failure, Hormonal Adaptation Determines the Increase in Muscle Mass and Strength During Low Intensity Strength Training Without Relaxation, Early Phase Muscular Adaptations In Response to Slow-Speed Versus Traditional Resistance Training Regimens. PROS: Can be the perfect balance between placing mechanical tension and metabolic stress on your muscles to produce hypertrophy. Extremely high rep (40+) sets: These sets are too long where excess central nervous system fatigue reduces the fibers recruited, so when you reach failure, some fibers remain under stimulated or not stimulated at all (5). Too heavy, too often tends to beat up people’s elbows and/or shoulders, and a lot of people find that higher rep sets seem to be limited more by their anterior deltoids than their pecs (bench or incline), lateral deltoids (overhead press), or triceps (all types of pressing). The Rep Range Continuum Lifting moderate to heavy weights for 6-12 reps is optimal rep range for hypertrophy. You can still gain strength with light weights/high reps and moderate weight/moderate reps, but strength gains are generally better with heavy, low-rep training. Using adjusted values, there was effectively no difference in this comparison. 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. Powerlifters tend to lift predominately in the 1-3 rep range (i.e. 50% hypertrophy rep range (6-12 reps) 25% endurance rep range (12-15+ reps) I like to start my workouts with a heavy compound exercise, then switch to hypertrophy for the second and third exercise then change to 12-15 reps for the last isolation exercises. ... but on average the ‘hypertrophy range’ did slightly better than high reps or low reps. However, while nearly all rep ranges build similar amounts of muscle per set, how they fatigue you is quite different. No Hands, No Problem! The Exception to the Rule . Your goal while working in this rep range is to lift a heavy enough weight so that you are failing at, or before the 6 rep mark. 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. None of these differences reached formal statistical significance. However, 0.062 is about what you’d expect from a completely random data set. The truth is, recent emerging research has indicated that this hypertrophy rep range is actually much bigger than most people realize . 50% hypertrophy rep range (6-12 reps) 25% endurance rep range (12-15+ reps) I like to start my workouts with a heavy compound exercise, then switch to hypertrophy for the second and third exercise then change to 12-15 reps for the last isolation exercises. Very low rep (1-3) sets: These sets even though they’re extremely heavy, seem to be far too short to match the hypertrophy of other sets (4). If you read a mainstream bodybuilding magazine, you will see that nearly every program recommends training in a moderate rep range around 6-12 or 8-15 reps for muscle hypertrophy. Evan Singleton Does 805 Lbs No Hands Deadlift! For example, if you do 2 quad exercises, you can do a lower rep barbell back squat and a higher rep leg extension during the same workout or within the week. In addition, lower rep sets have a higher risk of injury because any deviation in form shifts more unintended stress on certain structures of your body. However, I know it would make some people’s eyes glaze over, so I made it a separate post.). Here are a few other studies on this topic, excluded for reasons explained here: Mangine, Two by Tanimoto (one, two), Holm, Leger, Lamon, Alegre, and Kraemer, Greg Nuckols has over a decade of experience under the bar, a BS in Exercise and Sports Science, and a Master's in Exercise Physiology. Maximizing hard sets within a training week depends both on what you can best recover from between sessions and how you structure your training week. If training one lift hard is going to interfere with another lift (for example, squats and deadlifts), either try to do them in the same session so that you have time to recover before doing them again, or try to put as much time as possible between your hardest session for one and your hardest session for the other. Again, the weight needs to be light enough that you can work the target muscles and train the movement effectively instead of turning the exercise into a balancing act, but they also need to be heavy enough that metabolic fatigue within the set isn’t going to start making balance problematic toward the end of the set. Haun, Cody T, et al. The participants had four years of training experience on average. Sets of 5-10. So, if you’re doing 15 sets per week of exercises focused on a particular muscle, that would mean getting 9-10 of those sets within your personal “hypertrophy range,” along with 2-3 heavier, lower rep sets and 2-3 lighter, higher rep sets. Since the original version of this article was published, three more studies have come out comparing the effects of training in different intensity ranges: The first by Morton et. In other words, the actual hypertrophy rep range seems to be much broader than the one proposed in the traditional continuum, similar hypertrophy is observed across the 5–40 rep range … “Differential Effects of Heavy Versus Moderate Loads on Measures of Strength and Hypertrophy in Resistance-Trained Men.” Journal of Sports Science & Medicine, Uludag University, 1 Dec. 2016, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27928218. Everyone used to believe that the sweet spot for hypertrophy was 8-12 reps, anything less than that only built strength, while anything more only improved your muscular endurance. He’s held 3 all-time world records in powerlifting in the 220 and 242 classes. As we covered in our strength training and hypertrophy training articles, there’s no strict hypertrophy rep range, and we can technically build muscle with reps ranging anywhere from 4–40. One of the most popular recommendations is to do 8 – 12 reps for muscle hypertrophy. What is interesting, however, is that somewhere in the 8-12 rep range still appears optimal for inducing muscular hypertrophy because it strikes a … Saxofficial 194 views. One group did 3 sets of 8-12 reps for all exercises, and one group did 3 sets of 20-25 reps for all exercises. Conversely, you can build absolute muscular endurance (how many times you can move a set load, regardless of your 1rm) with low rep and moderate rep training, but you can build a lot more with high rep training, and high rep training is generally the only way to improve relative muscular endurance (how many times you can lift a certain percentage of your 1rm). A true 5-rep max done often can be brutal if you have weak joints. However the reason 8-12 is generally what you want for hypertrophy is because doing that rep scheme you can get a lot of time under tension which as we know is important for hypertrophy. These average effect sizes were not significantly different (p = 0.37). However, hypertrophy is not specific towards a certain performance. If you’re performing your sets with good form, using a weight that’s around 75% of your 1RM in the 8 – 12 rep range, then your muscles are naturally working under sufficient time and tension optimal for muscle growth. Low Load: High Repetitions | 3 sets of 12 reps (36 total reps) 4. You can build muscle with a lower rep range. More Than 15 Reps Capillary density increases with little Sarcoplasmic growth with rep ranges above 15. In other words, after your warm-up sets—which are never taken to failure—you should select a load with which you can complete at … Some people and some exercises just seem to do better with higher reps or lower reps. Sets of 3-8 for people with a strength sports background. They also completed 4-5 reps at 88%-90% of their max for the upper body. For other people, sets of 12-15+ will just crush them metabolically, especially for exercises like squats and deadlifts, meaning they can’t get in much high quality work after a couple of hard sets. Powerlifting & Strength Conventional wisdom led us to believe that low-rep ranges (1-5) build strength, moderate-rep ranges (6-12) were best for hypertrophy or size, and high-rep ranges (more than 12) develop muscular endurance. There were no significant differences between groups in gains of fat- and bone-free mass, leg lean mass, appendicular lean mass, type I muscle fiber cross-sectional area, and type II muscle fiber cross-sectional area. Let me explain as it will help you understand rep ranges better. At the end of the study, biceps and quad hypertrophy was basically identical with 40%, 60%, and 80% of 1RM. And what is the optimal rep range for hypertrophy? There was a trend toward significance (p = 0.082). Additionally, the r^2 value of 0.074 means that only about 7.4% of the differences in muscle growth can be explained by differences in rep range used. Effects of Drop Sets with Resistance Training on Increases in Muscle CSA, Strength, and Endurance: A Pilot Study. Lasevicius, Thiago, et al. Al: Effects of Varied Versus Constant Loading Zones on Muscular Adaptations in Trained Men. tl;dr – in the past 7 months, three new studies have been published that very much fall in line with the bulk of the previous literature and the analysis in the original version of this article: As long as sets are taken to failure or near failure, muscle growth is very similar between all rep and intensity ranges. This study in particular showed lifting the concentric with maximal explosive intent resulted in almost double the bench press strength gains (6). Higher rep sets produce more neuromuscular fatigue (6). It can offer approx. If you’re training hard and making performance increases, it doesn’t matter much which rep range you stay in. Maximizing hard sets within a session is also why stopping 2-3 reps shy of failure – especially on heavy compound lifts – is generally a good idea; a set to failure generally takes more out of you than a set stopped a bit earlier and limits how much more quality work you can handle. Effects of Drop Set Resistance Training on Acute Stress Indicators and Long-Term Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength. When I talk about “light weights” or “high reps,” I’m generally talking about loads less than 60% of your 1rm, for sets of 15 reps or more. “Human Tendon Adaptation in Response to Mechanical Loading: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Exercise Intervention Studies on Healthy Adults.” Sports Medicine – Open, Springer International Publishing, Dec. 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4532714/. Sacrifice full range of motion: as always, never ever sacrifice full range motion! 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