Friday, June 14, 2013

What Is The Best Rep Range For Building Lean Muscle?

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.

First of all don't worry. If you're a little lost on your training and what you should or shouldn't be doing, one thing is for certain. You are not alone. In fact, most people are in the exact same situation, they just don't do anything about it and spend years going through the motions without seeing any results. Today, you separate yourself from that crowd.

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.

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.

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 endurance zone is usually associated with the fifteen to twenty rep range and is more suited to those looking to tone up and improve, of course, muscular endurance.

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.

And there you have it, guys. You now know the two things which many gym users never discover. You know how to build muscle with the right amount of reps for your goal and you know when to increase the resistance. Say hello to new results.




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