How Many Reps Should You Do To Build Muscle?

By Russ Howe


How many reps should you do to build muscular size and strength? Today we'll give you that answer and a few others as we help you on your quest to discover how to build muscle quickly and effectively with proven, science backed methods in the gym.

Firstly, while you may feel like you are the only person who is lost with regards to your training you certainly are not. In fact, you probably aren't even the only one at your gym in this situation, never mind the entire world. As a fitness instructor I meet hundreds of people per week who need help, so don't for one second think you are by yourself. Today you'll learn some progress producing facts.

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 human body only changes when it is forced into it. If you are not doing that, not progressing in your workouts, your body won't change. Why? Because it doesn't have to! How many people do you see in your gym who have been doing the exact same thing for months and don't seem to be getting any results? Quite a few, I imagine, because this is a common issue which most people never address properly. Your body adapts to your workout. Even though you're working hard, your body knows it can handle it. Why? Because you probably did the same thing last week and it can remember. To get change you need to force change.

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

* Hypertrophy.

* Muscular endurance.

The fact that you are reading this article, given it's title, tells us that you are here because you want to learn how to gain muscle and therefore you should be swinging for the hypertrophy zone. You should be aiming the majority of your sets at the 8-12 range.

If you were to continue pushing you reps, say, into the 15-20 zone, you would find yourself in the muscular endurance category. This would help you to tone up and really build up the stamina of whichever muscle you were training but it wouldn't work as effectively as the hypertrophy zone if your goal is pure size.

Most people can openly tell you what they want to achieve in the gym, what type of body they are striving for, but for some reason that's as far as it goes. They never actually tailor their workout plan to be specific to that goal. Now you know what you are doing, you will begin to notice this all the time in your local fitness center.

So you now know that the rules with weights have nothing to do with the popular gym mythologies out there. You know the ones we're talking about, right? Things such as 'high reps are just for women'. High reps are for those looking to build muscular endurance, regardless of your sex.

The second thing you need to do to make the most of hitting the hypertrophy zone is to progress. Your body's only job is to keep you alive, it does not care about your desire to build a more appealing look. It's not going to change unless you force it to change.

To force this change you need to consistently progress and one effective way to do that is using the 8-12 rep range. The moment you are able to perform twelve repetitions with a weight you should increase the resistance and use the system 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.




About the Author:



0 comments:

Post a Comment