The Ideal Rep Range For Muscle Building

By Russ Howe


If you've ever wondered how to build muscle in the gym you have probably also asked yourself how many reps you need to do to get best muscle gain results. Today we are going to answer that question for you.

The majority of people who train are a little bit lost so if you're in a situation at the moment where you don't know what to do the first thing you should do is stop worrying. You aren't alone, that's for certain. But today you'll be well on your way to getting some results.

If you ask most men what their goal is it is usually very similar. They want to build a more powerful physique with less body fat.

The first step to achieving the body you want is to learn that your body will not change by itself. You literally have to force it into change. It's only concern is keeping you alive, it really doesn't care if you'd like to look different. In order to make it more powerful you need to force it to become so.

There are two main ranges of reps which will help you to determine what type of results you will get:

* Hypertrophy.

* Endurance.

Given that you want size and strength you should be trying to hit your hypertrophy zone. This means you should be aiming towards the eight to twelve rep range. This will ensure you fall within the correct zone for building a more powerful physique.

The other zone we mentioned is for muscular endurance. It's suited to those looking to build stamina as well as tone up, but it will not be a fantastic way to train for those more concerned with pure strength and size. That zone is made up of sets which end in the 15-20 range.

If you'd like to give yourself a confidence boost, we urge you to take a look around the resistance section the next time you walk into your local gym. You will see people training with seemingly no structure, going through the motions and, despite putting in effort while training, not seeing any results specific to what they want to achieve.

The majority of people don't learn the different training methods and as a result they don't make much progress. It's up there with common gym myths, such as women who are afraid to touch resistance machines for fear they'll get big.

Before we end today's class we also want to bring your attention to a second fact. This fact is the single most important aspect of your training, without it you won't get anywhere. We are talking, of course, about steady progression. Resistance training is something which your body is built to adapt to and, as we pointed out earlier, you will need to progressively challenge yourself more in order to keep forcing results from it.

The rep range we brought your attention to is a good way to do this. Many people ask us how much weight they should be using on a particular exercise and your rep range will determine this for you. For hypertrophy, find a weight which forces you to quit at around eight reps and then keep working with that weight until you get stronger. Once you can manage twelve reps at that level it's time to increase the resistance, forcing yourself back down to eight reps at a slightly heavier level and beginning the cycle again.

So now not only do you know how to build muscle but you also know how to push consistent gains from your body to avoid the plateau most people encounter and never break free from.




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