How Many Reps Should You Do for Strength?
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So you're not too sure how many reps you should do to help you build strong muscles? Well I can help you out in four words: Low Reps, High Weight (intensity). Personally, I had been doing 4 sets of 5 reps for almost all my lifts, but you'll more commonly be told to do something like 5 sets of 5.
For your strength training you'll want to stick around 4 to 6 sets and do 1 to 6 repetitions each set, with at least a minute of rest in between each set (this depends on what YOU need rest-wise). If you're using sets with reps as low as 1 - 3, then you'll need to do some extra sets (6 or more total), especially if you do multiple sets with this low of reps. But... but... you mean doing endless amounts of reps until failure isn't going to make me super strong? No, not really, all you'll get from that is endurance strength and that's not comparable to your max strength. You can mix it up though and do different sets with different reps, do whatever you want, something like:
- 1st Set (6 reps)
- 2nd Set (5 reps)
- 3rd Set (4 reps)
- 4th Set (3 reps)
- 5th Set (2 reps)
- 6th Set (1 rep).
Lower the weight for a count of two and then, with no pause at the bottom, lift the weight in a fast, explosive but controlled movement. Have fun with it, raise the weight each set if you use a pyramid like I just showed you. Do what makes the best strength gains for you, not some other guy. Keep reading and I'll tell you why this works.
The reason you need to do lower reps is because this will work the most amount of muscle fibers with each movement. You have three main types of muscle fibers: Type I, Type IIa and Type IIx. Type I are your smallest muscle fibers and they'll be what you're working hard if you do HIGH reps. These fibers last longer than any other fiber, but they're the weakest muscle fiber.
Type IIa fibers are a little bigger than Type I fibers and they're stronger. The downside is that they won't last as long. Then you step up to your Type IIx fibers, these are your biggest and strongest muscle fibers. This is where your brute strength will mostly come from. The problem is that in seconds your strength starts to drop off in these fibers. They're great for explosive movements of power, but if you do too many reps, you'll notice a steep drop off in strength after the first few reps.
You want to do lower reps with fast explosive movements as you lift the weight, so that with each repetition you're using the maximum amount of muscle fibers (Type I, Type IIa AND Type IIx fibers with each movement). But you can't go easy and expect to trigger your Type IIx muscle fibers; you need to be lifting heavy weights and lifting them fast (concentric phase). I'm not saying to go in and see what the biggest guy in the gym lifts; I mean a weight that's heavy for you but one that you can handle with good form. Your body will trigger your Type I fibers first until it feels the force is heavy enough to call in the big boys. So there's the basic idea as to why you need to lift at low repetitions with heavy weight.
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If you've done the basic 4 or 5 sets of 5 for a while and want some massive strength gains, then maybe you should start listening to people like Pavel Tsatsouline and Chad Waterbury. I was reading Pavel's book, The Naked Warrior, and I got to a section where he was talking about "freshness". He stressed that in order to train your body to be stronger you need to be doing each of your lifts when your body is fresh. Which would mean even lower repetitions and a nice amount of rest between each set.
There were tests done on a volunteer doing a bench press; they used a Fitrodyne unit to track the speed he moved the bar. Each time they tried it, by the time he got to his 3rd rep, he couldn't lift with the same amount of force as he could with his best rep. The speed he moved the bar started to decline at the third repetition every time and went downhill from there. They also noted that the best repetition for power output was usually the second rep. So you're fresh for your first rep and that rep gets your body warmed up for the second rep. Then when you go to do your third repetition, your muscles are already starting to lose their power. My thoughts would be that your Type IIb muscle fibers are slowly starting to give out at this point.
This is why Pavel recommends you do multiple sets of 2 for great gains in strength. That's right, only two repetitions each set; I guess that's the average number of repetitions used by Russian power lifters. You'll just want to do a higher amount of sets so that your overall rep volume is still high enough to work your body like it's use to. So for me, being that I'm use to doing 4 sets of 5, I'd want to do 10 sets of 2 to be working with the same rep volume. Volume is your sets times your reps; your overall amount of repetitions done. (4x5= 20, 10x2= 20) Please don't try to do 2 sets of 10 reps and expect that to work the same; you'll be training the wrong type of muscle fiber and really not getting much of a workout.
If you talk to Chad Waterbury, he'll probably tell you to do 10 sets of 3. He's had great success with this program for himself and others. Pavel and Chad both recommend very low reps with higher amounts of sets for the same reasons. Go ahead and read about the science behind Chad's program, he can explain it better than I can.
He recommends you do one compound exercise for 10 sets of 3 and then the rest of your exercises for that day would be 4 sets of 6. Also, if you want to add explosive power, add some low weight/higher rep exercises in every day or so. Do something like 3 sets of 10 but do your reps as fast as you can. This will help you blast through sticking points. I plan on putting Pavel's suggestions and The Waterbury Method to the test in the near future and I hope you'll give it a try too.
So in closing, four words: LOW REPS - HEAVY WEIGHTS.
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Comments
Interesting article. My body is made up mostly of slow-twitch muslce fibers. I've read similar items.
thanks for the info here im sure readers will find it useful ive added a link to my hub page on fitness articles
Quick question... If you are doing 5 sets of 5, does that mean that the weight stays the same for every set? Or is that increasing the weight for each? Thanks.
It really depends on what you prefer when you're lifting. Myself, I like to go up in weight in my later sets. So if I did 5x5 I'd start out with say 100lbs and if that feels easy then I might raise the weight after my second or third set. So people do the opposite and start out heavy, but I feel this can cause injuries if you're not warmed up enough. I use to keep it at the same weight for each set, but where's the real progress in that? Unless you're increasing your effort by pushing/pulling the bar faster each set.
good advice. 4 some reson nealy every 1 i talk 2 says hevy Weight low reps gets u big
I understand what you are saying about doing a low number of sets with heavy weight, but surely you can`t lift that heavy every workout all year long? What do you do to variate, and what do you do to progress?
Hey Frank, you can, but if you don't change your workout in some way during the year you might hit some stall points. There are many different variations of the same kinds of exercises and you can even do partial motions to work on different parts of each lift. Plus you can do other exercises that will help you on lifts you're having problems with. Doing the same thing over and over will only get you so far. You can change your reps around once you notice that you're not progressing the same as you did before, but you'll want to stay in the lower rep range to really hit the right fibers the whole time. You can vary from 1-6 reps and still be gaining some good strength. The number one thing that's going to keep you progressing is to keep track of what you're doing, what weights, reps and so on. Then you can go back and see what worked and what didn't, where you got held back. Then fine tune your program from there.
Good Hub this will definately help people get stonger. I totally agree with the information Chad Waterbury provides. The only negative which I think is important coming from an Exercise Physiology background is that type IIb fibres are only found in other mammals (such as rodents or cats). In humans they used to be called type IIb fibres but they are now known as type IIx. There seems to be great confusion with regards to this.
Cheers
Stephen
Thanks Stephen I'll change that!
Thanks for your quick answer, Bendo13! But... Chad recommend variating the exercise, load, sets and reps every workout, so how do you really progress when everything is changing every workout, including the load? Just add some weight randomly here and there?
Hey Frank,
If you're following Chad's program, what I'd do is this. Every once and a while, like say every month, go back and do the same exact workout you did to start. Then you can see how much you progressed. You can see if you're lifting heavier, more reps and so on. Otherwise you may be progressing with all the changes but it may be hard for you to realize it until you go back and try something you did before. Then you can be like wow, I went up 30lbs in this lift or I can lift the same weight 3 more reps.
It's good to change your workouts because then your body should never level out and hit a wall. But, like I said, if you're always changing it and never go back and check for results, then you may never know how far you've really come. Which means writing down what you did at the gym each time. I personally wouldn't recommend changing ALL those things every workout. If you feel like you can lift more, then add some weight or do an extra rep. It doesn't hurt to change the weight when you do a workout again or to do a different variation of the exercise or even to occasionally do an extra set or a couple more reps than before. But if you change every one of those aspects every time, it'll be harder for you to track progress even if you already are progressing. So I'm not saying it doesn't work to do it that way, but you need to keep tabs on your progress in some way.
I`m not gonna follow Chad`s program because it`s bullshit.
Haha fair enough Frank. I have yet to test it out myself, I just thought it showed what was talking about; keeping your muscles "fresh". If and when I do test his program out I'll be sure to write about it.
I am going to try sets of 3 but does this apply for all muscles? What about abs or shrugs?
Hey Mac Don, personally with the smaller muscles I try to keep a little higher reps with them than I do with my other lifts. Just seems to work better for me, I'm not sure what Pavel's or Chad's thoughts are on this. It might still work well for shrugs, but I'd probably use higher reps with your ab exercises.
how many times a week would you want to exercise each muscle group with this kind of workout?
Hey Finn, that can vary a bit but I like to do a lot of compound movements so then a lot of your muscles will get indirectly worked throughout the week. And then I'll only directly work each muscle group once or twice a week, especially if I'm really lifting heavy.
Cool thanks!
Brilliant article by the way, it's just the kind of thing I've been searching for for ages.
Thanks Finn! I'm glad you're getting something out of what I wrote.. I'll try to write more hubs once I get more time!
great article ... even thought many says that low rep like 4 and less are bad
but you're right
great article once again:)
10x
I always wondered how many reps should be done for strength, because I have been told that strength training is good for women who want to sculpt their bodies and lose weight with out the worry of gaining to much muscle. Thanks for the explaination.
first of all i like alot your articles, the are very usefull. i want to know the set and reps for my forearm and wrest strenght. whe i was working volume, i made 6 sets of 25 reps, but now i want strenght.
Thanks Nicolas..
If you want brute strength you'll have to use lower reps and heavy weight! 25 reps will tire out your muscles, give you a good burn and boost your endurance strength. You should try doing some heavy farmer's walks, maybe some reverse curls or wrist curls... that's if you want to focus mostly on your grip. I'll tell you my favorite exercise for building up a good grip: Deadlifts! These will work more than just your grip BUT you have to improve your grip if you want to keep deadlifting at higher weights. So if you start deadlifting heavy, at low reps, for a while.. I'm certain your grip strength will improve.
thankss, soo more or less how many reverse and wrist curls may i do???(sets and reps)
Hey Nicolas,
Personally I try not to do too many isolation exercises like that because your forearms are going to get worked during a lot of the other exercises you do.. especially if you do exercises like barbell deadlifts or even pull ups. (I like reverse curls too)
But if you really want to do them.. then I'd recommend you starting out with 6 sets of 6-8 (to keep you from using too heavy of a weight) and see how you like that. Start with a light weight because it's a small muscle and you don't want to injure yourself or perform with bad form. I say 6 sets so that you get a little higher volume and you will probably feel the lactic acid burn as you do this exercise.
Just focus on flexing your forearms hard as you do this and let the dumbbell roll down into your fingers when you're doing the regular wrist curls.
Also, make sure to do these last in your workouts so that you don't hold yourself back in any of your other exercises because your forearms are cooked.
heyy thank u alot, it realy helps me!!
the intructor of my gym told me that for working strength in my forearm i needed to do sets of 25 reps because that muscles was of resistance and if i do few reps like u told me, the muscle wont be activate. thanks for ur opinion
Just telling you what I've done for years to build strength in mine. Ask your gym instructor about the different types of muscle fibers. Sets of 25 will help you gain endurance strength and sure you'll feel the burn of lactic acid more but it's not going to build brute strength like lower reps will. The muscle will activate with lower reps as long as you're doing enough sets and enough weight to raise the overall volume. Just focus on your forearm muscles as you do the exercise and really squeeze.
Everyone's different Nicolas.. but read this. http://www.articlesbase.com/bodybuilding-articles/
A lot of my blanks have been filled by your article and makes a lot of sense. Keep the good work up!
Thanks AL, I plan to start writing some new fitness blogs soon.
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Mick says:
3 years ago
Thanks so much mate for this advice lll get right to it as i need to exercise on my muscles and my fitness cheers mate So in closing, six words: Thanks mate your a bloody champ...