How many reps should we do?

One of the most common questions from beginners is how many repetitions should they do and with how much weight? The number of repetitions and weight are vice versa, that’s logical.

The main question that is being asked is whether it is better to do more repetitions with a small weight or small number of repetitions with bigger weight?

Answer: Depends on what. If the goal is muscle strength – it is better this first. If the goal is muscular endurance – choose another.

What is the goal is muscle growth?

Rep range

There is a  belief that 1-5 repetitions are for strength, 8-12 reps for hypertrophy, 15 and more repeats for endurance. However, scientific research shows that equal muscle growth can be achieved in each of these ranges.

Low weight and high rep

This results in great metabolic stress. Also, although the amount of tension on the muscles is not so great, time under tension is.

Big weight and low rep

This puts more tension on the muscles, but the duration of this load is shorter. Damage to the muscle fibers is also higher here.

Hypertrophy is about the amount of load and the duration of the load. In this article we have gone through the role of metabolic stress and damage to the muscle fibers so read it to repeat the basics.

Rep range and muscle fibers

There are indications that growth is specific to types of muscle fibers – large weight primarily cause type II hypertrophy and small weights primarily target type I muscle fibers.

Small weights target Type I muscle fiber.

This tells us that for the purpose of maximizing muscle growth, it is helpful to train with a large repeat range of 1 to 30+ repetitions in the series.

Wait, what are muscle fibers type I and type II?

Type I – fibers that are slow to contract, high durability, suitable for longer activities, slow fibers
Type II – fibers that have fast contraction, strong, less endurance, divided into two types, fast fibers

Conclusion

Now we have the classic range of 8-12 repetitions. Here we have enough tension to stimulate the entire spectrum of muscle fibers and the duration of the sets is long enough.

Make every training a bit harder than the last one.

It is important that we are never in the comfort zone and always looking to make our training a bit harder than the last one, so the body never manages to adapt.

Origina article: https://people2people.hr/index.php/blog/donatov-blog/79-raspon-ponavljanja-i-kilaza-sto-je-najbolje
Author of the original article: Donat Rupčić from Powerbuilding.hr

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