It found that the same amount of muscle growth from doing seven low-rep sets as from doing three moderate-rep sets. That caveat, of course, is that the group doing 7 sets of 3 reps gained quite a bit more 1-rep max strength, showing that low-rep training is indeed an important part of training for powerlifting.
The results of this study have been replicated several times study , study , study. One problem with these studies, though, is that they match training volume —total pounds lifted—instead of matching the number of challenging sets. If we look at a systematic review of 14 studies , we see that sets of 6—20 reps stimulate a similar amount of muscle growth per set, provided that we take those sets close enough to failure.
After all, perhaps an equal amount of muscle growth was stimulated by the first 3 sets, at which point no more muscle growth was stimulated.
We do see diminishing returns as training volume climbs higher. If we look at a study by Schoenfeld et al, we see that doing sets of 8—12 reps stimulates the same amount of muscle growth as doing sets 25—35 reps. It will hurt, yes, but you can absolutely build muscle that way. However, lifting in higher rep ranges is a fetid nightmare, especially when doing the bigger compound lifts.
Dr Schoenfeld noted that the participants doing sets of 25—35 reps were in excruciating pain and would often throw up after finishing their sets. Low-rep sets will stimulate muscle growth, but not as efficiently as moderate or high-rep sets. This makes strength training an effective but inefficient way to build muscle.
The most controversial question, by far, is where the lower cut-off is. Nobody is really advocating for it. But lifting in lower rep ranges is quite pleasant and easy. Squatting for five reps is much easier than squatting for ten reps. But are low reps good for building muscle? These findings indicate that heavy load training is superior for maximal strength goals while moderate load training is more suited to hypertrophy-related goals when an equal number of sets are performed between conditions.
Mind you, they were training their entire bodies, and the difference in muscle growth was only seen in their arms. If we compare muscle growth throughout their entire bodies, the effect disappears.
But even so, this remains an example of a study that at the very least found equal muscle growth between lower and moderate rep ranges. When reps are low, the number of hard sets is not a good proxy for hypertrophy. Rather, when reps are low, total volume should be calculated. And when we do that math, we see that the muscle growth being stimulated per set drops quite a bit. For instance, doing reps for ten reps is pounds lifted, whereas lifting pounds for five reps is just pounds lifted.
With that said, these differences in volume really only start to become significant when comparing rather different rep ranges. On the other hand, even small differences in rep ranges could result in different amounts of muscle growth over the longer term, and that could apply even within moderate rep ranges. And since low-rep sets tend to benefit from longer rest times and can be somewhat difficult to recover from, using lower reps comes with an opportunity cost.
Plus, the main benefit of lifting in lower rep ranges is that it gives us practice lifting close to our 1-rep max. A bigger muscle is a stronger one, so any rep range that helps us build muscle will also help us gain strength. However, if you define strength by how much you can lift for a single repetition, then sets of 5—10 reps are best for building muscle in a way that will improve your 1-rep max.
Many people are simply interested in building bigger muscles. I can certainly relate to that. When I was skinny , I was far more desperate to get bigger than I was to get stronger. Even just comparing the popularity of bodybuilding versus strength training, we see that bodybuilding is several times more popular:. But even so, most of us also care at least a little bit about improving our general health , general fitness , and general strength.
Lifting in moderate rep ranges is great for improving our general health and fitness. Lifting more total pounds per set, putting greater demands on our cardiovascular systems, and building more muscle mass are all great for our health and fitness.
But what about our general strength? Powerlifters measure their strength by how much they can lift for a single repetition—their 1-rep max strength. This is a special skill that we can practice by lifting closer to our 1-rep max. This can get confusing because bodybuilding and hypertrophy training have no official way of measuring strength.
No official lifts, no rules about how to perform them, and no 1-rep max test. For that, people often turn to powerlifting, thinking that they need to test their 1-rep maxes to see how strong they are. However, this can lead people to assume that heavier rep ranges are better for developing strength, whereas moderate rep ranges are better for developing size. Muscle size is almost perfectly correlated with muscle strength, so the rep ranges that are best for helping us gain muscle size are also the rep ranges that are best for helping us become stronger.
If our goal is to become generally stronger, we can usually do that more efficiently by lifting in the 6—20 rep range.
A bigger muscle is a stronger muscle, yes, but we also need to make sure that we develop the relevant muscles. For that, we would need to build bigger hips, spinal erectors, and forearms.
This is the problem that a lot of casual bodybuilders run into. To become generally strong, then, we need to become better at lifts that develop our general strength. If we want to be able to pick up heavy things and carry them around, we might want to do conventional deadlifts and loaded carries. If we want to lift things overhead, we should be doing lifts like the overhead press.
If we want to be able to carry stuff in front of our bodies, we might want to spend more time doing front squats.
And if we want to be able to pull our bodies over things, we can do chin-ups. So building general strength has more to do with building bigger muscles by doing the big compound lifts , less to do with lifting in lower rep ranges.
The exception to that rule is powerlifting, where our strength is measured by how much we can lift for a single repetition. For everyone else, though, we can measure our strength by how much we can lift in a variety of different rep ranges.
For instance, someone who can bench for a single is similarly strong to someone who can bench for 5 reps or for 10 reps. Perhaps more importantly, going from benching pounds for 10 reps to benching pounds for 10 reps shows a significant improvement in strength. For instance, you could stimulate a similar amount of muscle growth by doing 3 sets of 10 repetitions as you would by doing 5 sets of 5, keeping your workouts shorter or freeing up more time for other lifts. Now, most research shows that we build more muscle per set when doing at least 6—8 reps per set, and that may be true.
But sets of five reps are right on the cusp of being ideal for gaining muscle. My personal hunch is that low-rep sets of around reps are a bit less efficient for muscle growth on a per-set basis, but not quite to the point of needing to equate for volume load. Not necessarily. If we want to maximize the growth of our triceps, we also need triceps extensions. But you can imagine how those workouts could get quite long. Plus, this is assuming that muscle growth is maximized with just three sets per muscle group per workout.
It seems that muscle growth is maximized by doing 4—8 sets per muscle group per workout. When volumes start climbing higher like that, it can pay to have an easier and more efficient way to stimulate muscle growth. If we compare to how a bodybuilder trains, we can see the advantage of using moderate rep ranges. According to experts like Greg Nuckols, MA , sets of 4—40 reps are ideal for gaining muscle mass. According to others, such as Mike Israetel, PhD , sets of 5—30 reps are best for building muscle.
The hypertrophic stimulus and fatigue generated by each set between roughly 5 and 30 reps are about the same. Volume and intensity cause growth and fatigue, and when one goes up per set, the other goes down to preserve a roughly even effect. There are problems with doing sets of 20—40 reps, too. First, we need to take them closer to muscular failure to reliably provoke muscle growth.
Second, taking high-rep sets to failure is so painful that it can make people vomit, give up, or hate training. And third, higher-rep sets can cause a tremendous amount of muscle damage, making our workouts harder to recover from.
However, he notes that low-rep sets stimulate less muscle growth per set while inflicting greater stress on our joints, whereas higher-rep sets take longer and are quite a bit more painful. As a result, he recommends defaulting to moderate rep ranges when training for muscle growth. And even within that shrinking rep range, different lifts respond better to different rep ranges, narrowing it further still. But, as you can imagine, different lifts challenge us in different ways.
So with neck training, we might want to use higher reps: 15—40 reps per set. So instead of doing 6—20 reps for every lift, we want to use different parts of the rep range at different times. Lower reps tend to be ideal for the bigger compound lifts, giving us loose rep range recommendations for our five big hypertrophy lifts of, say:.
And then the ideal rep range climbs higher for assistance and accessory lifts, which are lighter, less fatiguing, and can sometimes tolerate a bit of technique breakdown.
Here are some loose recommendations for some common isolation lifts :. Genetics and personal preference will factor into what rep ranges you prefer, too. Doing around 6—20 reps per set is usually best for building muscle, with some experts going as wide as 5—30 or even 4—40 reps per set.
For bigger lifts, 6—10 reps often works best. For smaller lifts, 12—20 reps often works better. If you have sore joints, it can help to use higher rep ranges, doing 12—40 reps per set. If you want a customizable workout program and full guide that builds these principles in, check out our Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program. His specialty is helping people build muscle to improve their strength and general health, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
Our other two sites are more specifically about helping naturally skinny people bulk up, so with this site we want to go beyond that. More intermediate content, and more general health, fitness, and strength content. Still mostly focused on building muscle, though. You say,. This shows the low rep range to require less volume for more muscle growth. The workouts become much, much more efficient. If we challenge ourselves with the first set, our strength will typically go down a bit on the next set.
What often works better, then, is keeping the weight the same and pushing a bit closer to failure with each set. The idea being to start with just a few reps in reserve and finish our final set without actually hitting failure. For example: Set 1: 8 reps with pounds, 3 reps in reserve Set 2: 8 reps with pounds, 2—3 reps in reserve Set 3: 8 reps with pounds, 1—2 reps in reserve Set 4: 8 reps with pounds, 0—1 reps in reserve. Rest periods should be kept fairly short, since oxygen intake and lactic-acid removal shouldn't be limiting factors as you exercise.
Discovering how many reps you should do also tells you how much weight you should lift. The two are inseparably linked.
If you were to plot a graph, you'd discover a near-linear inverse relationship between the two: add more weight and you can do fewer reps; with a lighter weight, you can do more reps. I'm always amazed when I train with a new partner who has been stuck at a certain weight-and-rep scheme—say, dumbbell bench press with 80 pounds for 8 reps. I'll tell him to grab the 90s, to which he'll respond, "I can't do that!
Invariably, he'll handle the 90s, and with that newfound sense of strength even give the 95s and s a try. With time, you'll understand your personal strength curve and the relationship of weight to reps for each exercise you do.
Jotting your numbers down in a logbook or on BodySpace will help you keep track of your reps and weights used. This brings up an important point: You don't need to train in one rep range all the time. You might start a workout with a heavy compound exercise for 5 sets of 5 reps.
To focus on building muscle, you could follow that with a few exercises in the range. To finish the workout, you could even tap into your slow-twitch reserves and finish the session with an isolation exercise in the range.
This is important because as you get stronger, you'll want to lift more weight in the same rep range. When building muscle, once you can do more than about 12 reps on a core lift, it's time to increase the resistance by about percent.
The weight you choose along your strength curve should correspond to the number of reps you want to achieve, which matches your training goals. In that sense, your workouts should never be random, where you just grab any old weight; there is a best weight and optimal number of reps you should be doing. It just depends on which goal you want to prioritize!
Bill Geiger, MA, has served as a senior content editor for Bodybuilding. View all articles by this author. Workout 1. Incline dumbbell bench press. What comes with BodyFit? Instructional Videos Don't risk doing a workout improperly! How-to Images View our enormous library of workout photos and see exactly how each exercise should be done before you give it a shot.
Step-by-Step Instructions Quickly read through our step-by-step directions to ensure you're doing each workout correctly the first time, every time. Workout 2. Workout 3. Smith Machine Incline Bench Press. About the Author. Instead, you should introduce resistance training with one or two full-body workouts per week and add additional sessions after one to two months.
Before beginning any workout, a warm up period of five to 10 minutes of low-intensity cardio, such as cycling, plus one or two sets with light weights, warms up your muscles and helps prevent injuries. According to ACEM, successful bodybuilding requires two to three lifting sessions, per muscle group, per week and can be accomplished with three whole-body workouts or four to six split-routines per week.
Split routines occur when different muscle groups are worked on different days. As always, consult a doctor before beginning a workout program. Fitness Workouts Exercises and Workouts. Mandy Ross. Melissa Ross began writing professionally in , with work appearing in various online publications. She has been an American Council on Exercise certified personal trainer since Traditionally, bodybuilding programs utilize more sets than endurance or strength programs Reference 1. Video of the Day.
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