How Many Reps Should You Do To Build Muscle?

By Russ Howe


If you're wondering how to build muscle quickly you are in the right place. Today we are going to answer one of the most asked questions in the gym: How many reps should you do when you are trying to build size and strength?

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.

Most guys are attempting to do the same thing you are. They want to build a more muscular physique, one which both makes them proud and gets you attention.

In order to get the right kind of results from your workouts, however, you need to know how to force your muscles to do what you want them to do. It will not grow by itself and this is where so many people go wrong. They don't force progress, but we'll go into that a little bit later.

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

* The hypertrophy zone.

* The endurance zone.

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.

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.

The next time you visit your local gym or fitness center take a quick look around. You will notice that not many people are training with a specific goal in mind, despite the fact that if you ask them what they want to achieve they will be able to tell you straight away.

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.

None of this information will do you any good of course unless you remember the golden rule of weight training. Some people call it progression, others call it overload. Basically, you need to force change from your body as we mentioned before. If you keep on doing the same thing your body will adapt and then simply stay in the same place.

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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