Comments on: Reps Per Set for Optimal Growth

By: Alan

Alan — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:43:18 +0000

I’m afraid Joe has misinterpreted Chad. Chad recommends that on each rep you attempt to accelerate the bar as fast as possible in the concentric phase – maximal voluntary muscle contraction! and by doing so you can recuit near 100% muscle fibre even at sub 80-85% loads. It doesn’t matter about the speed the bar is travelling at, what matters is the attempt to move the bar as fast as possible on each rep in order to get the most out of each rep. Why recruit 100% of muscle fibres only at the end of the set when you begin to fatigue when you can do it from rep one by applying as much force as you possibly can regardless of the loading?

What Chad actually recommends is stopping the set when you lose the ability to perform a maximum voluntary contraction – nothing to do with speed, and this is were Chad differs from other coaches.

There are alot of olympic lifters, powerlifters, bodybuilders and coaches all of whom recommend performing the concentric as fast as possibe and with good reason – muscles like it be it for increasing size and or strength

By: lylemcd

lylemcd — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:38:29 +0000

Jono,

An element of truth, an element of gibberish.

You can grow on low reps if you do enough sets and Ol’ers rarely go above 5 reps per set and get pretty decent legs (and sometimes upper bodies). And you can gain some strength with high reps.

Lyle

By: Jono

Jono — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 14:27:52 +0000

Hi Lyle,

I hope linking to websites is allowed in your comments, as I am certainly not self-promoting or anything, but just wondering what your thoughts are on this particular article (Link: http://www.tmuscle.com/readArticle.do?id=1764218), which states:

2-3: strength with little size gain

4-5: strength and size gains, but more strength than size

6-8: strength and size gains, almost equally

9-12: strength and size gains, but more size than strength

13-15: size gains, and some muscle endurance gains

16-20: muscle endurance gains, and some size gains.

How much of that is factual?
Eagerly awaiting your response!

By: caterina

caterina — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:53:38 +0000

I’m not very expert but I like training a lot!
I think your article is very interesting and well written.
Thank you!

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:58:44 +0000

I am simply wondering about this and the thought of muscle confusion, do they correlate?

By: Artie

Artie — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:01:54 +0000

How would that translate to TUT instead of reps? When talking about time under tension, we’d have to test 1 RM with the same rep tempo we wish to use for training, right?

By: Unaballer

Unaballer — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 09:34:38 +0000

IIRC the IART (Bryan Johnston (sp?)) idea is to test each exercise at 85% of 1RM and use that rep range for most sets as opposed to a cookie cutter 5-8 rep average. Seems to work well for me; I can do @5 reps with 85% for pecs but about 10 for tris, for example. Quads are higher still…

By: Marc

Marc — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 04:46:37 +0000

Is the ideal rep range assuming a single set? The reason I ask is that if my 8 rep max is 80%, my three sets of 8 max is probably less than 75% which would fall out of the ideal growth percent. If you are looking for a volume of more than 8 reps, wouldn’t the ideal rep range be more like 3-6? What kind of volume do you generally recommend in the 5-8 rep range?

By: Matthias

Matthias — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:05:40 +0000

@KIra:
In order to make a muscle contract you nervouse system sends pulses to your muscle. A single pulse leads only to a very short contraction. In order to get what looks like a constant contraction you nervouse system sends a lot of pulses (something about 50 pulses per seconds).
So a contraction of a muscle fiber actually consists of a lot of mini contractions. The next contraction starts before the muscle completely relaxed from the previous contraction.

In order to generate more force the frequency of these pulses can be increased to – I think – about 120 pulses per seconds. The mini contractions overlap even more and as a result more force is produced.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:04:08 +0000

Ok, I’m going to really try to not get screamy but I want you to go read the article again and the hypothetical question I posed at the start of it.

Here, I’ll reiterate it

“If you had to pick a single repetition range to train in for growth, what would it be?”

Now I’ve bolded a key word in that sentence that explains the confusion you’re having.

Put differently: in practice there’s no reason you’d limit yourself to a single rep range. Which is why I made sure to start this article by explaining my weird hypothetical question.

In practice, you will use different rep ranges (either in the same day or different workouts).

Lyle