The best rep range for muscle growth I What is the best rep range to build muscle

YouTube, what is going on? Welcome to the video. In this video, we're going to be talking about the best rep range for muscle growth, the best rep range to build muscle. What reps should you be doing? What sets? All that kind of stuff we're going to talk about in this video. So I don't have anything else to say. Let's dive right in. We're first going to cover kind of this rep scheme right here. You may be familiar to this. If not, I will go over this, but we're going to cover this right here. And I should have put like a question mark Down here at the bottom, like question mark. Um, so we're going to cover that really quickly. We're also going to cover again the higher reps, the lower reps, and which one should you choose if your goal is muscle growth, which pretty much everybody's goal should be muscle growth to an extent. Um, you don't have to become like a huge bodybuilder, but you know, if you do want to do that, I'm in the same boat, so that's awesome. Um, but everybody's goal to an extent should be muscle growth, and this is going to be A very educational video. So if you enjoy educational videos, if you enjoy learning, this video is for you. All right, so let's first kind of COVID this side over here. And again, you may have seen this before, but there's this general notion that certain rep ranges tend to fall into certain outcomes, certain stimuluses, right? So for example, we have 1 to 5 reps. That is typically your strength Typically, you're going to build strength in the 1 to 5 rep range. Again, this is just from preconceived notions and what you may have heard before. The hypertrophy phase, which for lack of— just for setting you up for success in this video, hypertrophy just means muscle growth. These 2 things are the same thing. That's why I put them in the same color. Hypertrophy rep range tends to be from 6 to 12 reps. Again, you've probably heard if you're in the 6 to 12 rep range you're going to be building muscle. Right. Cardio rep range, and this is more like the higher reps, the 12 to 20+ reps. That's typically lending more towards the cardio-based adaptations, endurance-based adaptations, because you're doing so many reps and the sets are getting very— I mean, if you're doing 20-rep sets, it's a very long set. It's more of like a cardio adaptation stimulus. That's typically what most people have seen, and if you have not seen this, This is typically what you will find. Here's what I will say, and you're gonna learn this as we go through the video. There is some merit to this, but when it comes to muscle growth, you can build muscle in any one of these rep ranges. Any one of these rep ranges, you can build muscle. Why is that? The number one thing, number one slash two things that you need in order to build new muscle is going to be you have to take your muscles close to failure, and you also have to create mechanical tension inside of your muscles while you're going very close to failure. So they've done studies on people taking their muscles very close to failure in the 1 to 5 rep range. They've done studies on people taking their muscles very close to failure in the 6 to 12 rep range, and they've also done again studies on the 12 to 20 plus rep range. All those people built muscle because if you're taking your muscles close to failure, you are going to build lean muscle. And that's also to say, again, just because you're in the 1 to 5 rep range, that doesn't mean you're not building muscle. Just 'cause you're in the 12 to 20+ rep range, that doesn't mean you're not building muscle or you can't build muscle. I think a lot of times people take these landmarks and they use them as like, all right, the cutoff is 5 reps. After 5 reps, you're not gonna build strength. Like, No, you're still going to build strength in the 6 to 12 rep range, or you're still going to build strength in the 12 to 20 rep range, or again, vice versa. You can still build muscle in the 1 to 5 rep range. And so we're going to talk about why these things are what they are over here a bit more, but I just want to make sure these things are not set in stone and they can interlap and they often do interlap. Like, you should be building strength in the 6 to 12 rep range. You should be getting stronger. You should be able to build muscle. Like, all these things Can, and to an extent do overlap. And again, like I said earlier, you can build muscle in any of these rep ranges. The requirement that you need to have is basically 3 things. It's going to be adequate volume, which if you're wondering what adequate volume looks like, I've done an entire separate video on how much volume you need in order to build lean muscle mass. And again, volume just more so meaning how many sets, how many reps. Stuff like that. So, well, we're gonna cover reps, more so how many sets per week. So I've done a whole video on that. I'll link it here above, so feel free to check that out. But the prerequisites are your volume, going close to failure, and having mechanical tension inside of your muscles, right? Now, let's talk about, since we can build muscle in all these things, and those are your 3 requirements, like, all right, well then what do I do? What's the best? What's the most optimal? It's probably why you're watching this video still, if you're still watching this video. Thank you. If you're still watching this video, you're probably looking to be the most optimal, right? Well, let's talk about it. Higher reps, right? Let's cover higher reps. Cool. You are gonna be able— you will be able to build muscle if you go close to failure, you have adequate volume, and you create enough mechanical tension inside of your muscles, right? So when it comes to higher reps, is that the best one? Well, let's think about it. When you are going higher rep sets, a few things happen inside of your body as well. Number 1, the higher number of reps you get to, and I've kind of alluded to this earlier, the higher number of reps that you get to, the longer the set is going to kind of, you know, go on, right? Because let's say you're doing a set of 8 reps versus a set of 20 reps. Inherently, the set of 20 reps is going to take you a longer period of time, right? So you're starting to get more of a longer set, which is kind of, you know, why this like endurance/cardio comes into play. But let's just say you're taking all these reps and sets and stuff. And you're going very close to failure and you have the adequate volume, all those things are in place for you to build muscle, right? A few things happen here. Number one, you are going to get more of a metabolic stimulus, more of a cardio stimulus, more of a metabolic adaptation when it comes to building muscle, right? So without getting too in-depth here, there's 2 main forms of hypertrophy, which is again just muscle growth. There's sarcoplasmic and there's myofibrillar. All right? Now, when you're doing these higher rep sets, typically what happens is you lean more towards the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. And again, I'm gonna explain all this. Essentially what that means is just there's 2 kinds, sarcoplasmic, myofibrillar. The sarcoplasmic is essentially like you're building the ability to store more nutrients inside of your muscles, if that makes sense. So Like for example, inside of your muscles stores carbs and water, right? Those 2 things are stored inside of your muscles. When you have this more kind of like metabolic stimulus, this more kind of like metabolic hypertrophy adaptation, which isn't necessarily 100% correct, but stick with me for the sake of this video, you're gonna be able to store more water, store more carbs inside of your muscle, right? That would give you the illusion essentially of having a bigger muscle because you can store more things inside there. It's like if you had a bag and you just kept stuffing stuff inside there, the bag's gonna kinda grow, right? Myofibrillar, on the other hand, is actually building new contractile proteins, right? Actually having, let's just call it for the sake of this argument, more muscle tissue, right? You're actually building more contractile proteins, more muscle tissue. So when you're going for more of this higher rep sets, you're leaning more towards the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy, which again is essentially just kind of like Like you're able to store more water and carbohydrates inside of your muscle. You're not actually like building more muscle. You're just kind of building a bigger muscle, if that makes sense. And this is why sometimes like people often when they do this type of training, they often like build muscle or it looks like it, but then like when they cut their carbs or cut their calories or whatever, they often lose it really quickly because it's really just getting your muscle to store more things inside of it. It's not actually creating new muscle tissue, new contractile proteins. Stuff like that. And so that's kind of a number one kind of drawback from it. 'Cause if you wanna build muscle, like I'm sure you want the muscle to stay there, right? Like you want it to be solid concrete. You don't want it to go away. Right? So that's kind of the first, uh, the first kind of scenario there, why that might be a drawback. And then number 2, when you're doing such high reps and so much volume and so much work, what happens is you're putting a lot of stress and pressure on your nervous system because it's just a lot to recover from. Again, think about, you know, doing 4 sets of 20 reps versus 4 sets of 6 or 8 reps. It's just a lot more work that your body has to go through. Also, take this into consideration. Let's talk about workouts and programming. If you're doing 20-rep sets, well, I mean, for you to actually get the workout done and get all the volume you need, you're probably going to have to drop down the recovery time because you can't recover as much because the workout would take you twice as long. Right. Let's say you're doing 4 sets of 10 reps versus 4 sets of 20 reps. You're extending your sets longer, so then the workout's gonna take that much longer as well. So from a practical standpoint, it's also kind of tough to make sure you're gonna get the whole workout in. But also then even kind of going back to what I was saying, stress on the nervous system. You're doing all this work and then not letting it recover. Doing all this work, not letting it recover, right? And when it comes to actual work during the actual workout, We said you have to take your muscles close to failure, right? If you're doing these very, very, very, very, very high sets, I'm sorry, high reps and high sets, again, it's gonna be very hard to recover from. It's gonna take a really long time. You're probably, unless you have like 4 hours to spend in the gym, probably gonna cut your recovery time. That's gonna then lead it to be harder to actually— that was kinda cool. That's gonna lead it to get harder to actually get to failure, right? Pushing yourself close to failure is now gonna be harder 'cause you're not fully recovering from these sets. And so, It just puts a lot of stress and pressure on your nervous system, which again, the more stress and pressure that you have, not only from a muscular standpoint, but from a nervous system standpoint, a whole systematic standpoint, your body has to recover from those things. Because remember, the way you change is you put a stress on your body, your body recovers from that stress, and you adapt to that stress, right? If you're missing the recovery step, you're never going to get to the adaptation step. And when talking about Building muscle. That's the adaptation. Muscle growth is the adaptation. So if you can't recover from that, whether because you're not recovering long enough in between sets or you're not recovering good enough in between workouts, or you're not recovering enough from a system standpoint, from a nervous system standpoint, you're going to miss that adaptation step. And so for those reasons combined right there, that's why I would say higher reps might not be the way to go. 12 to 20+ reps might not be the way to go because It just kind of puts you behind the 8-ball that much more. For all those reasons I kind of just said right there, again, it's more of like a sarcoplasmic versus myofibrillar hypertrophy. It's more of a metabolic stress as opposed to solely a hypertrophy stress. You are going to get some more cardio adaptation based in there. Again, it just kind of makes it harder to, number one, push intensity, number two, allow for proper recovery, so on and so forth. That's why I might kind of stick away from— and again, we're gonna talk about this at the very end, but that's kind of one thing to consider for higher reps. Now let's talk about lower reps, right? Let's talk about the strength rep range, the 1 to 5 rep range, right? Again, you can build muscle here as long as you're having adequate volume, pushing yourself close to failure, creating mechanical tension, right? Now here's the thing, a few things. Number 1, for you to be able to accrue Enough volume, again, volume is sets and reps, for you to be able to accrue enough volume for you to be able to build muscle, you're gonna have to do a lot of volume. So like, let's say for example you're doing 3 reps, for you to accrue enough volume in that period of time period where, you know, you're getting these reps that are producing your body to go very close to failure and you're creating enough mechanical tension inside of your muscles, If you're doing 3 reps, man, you're going to have to do 5, 6, 7, 8 sets because think about 3 sets of, let's just call it 8. Think about 3 sets of 8 versus 3 sets of 3. You see how much less volume that is? Again, it's not just about the sets and reps. I really want to make sure we are very clear on that. But think about how much more mechanical tension can you create inside of your muscles, example, when you're doing 8 good solid reps, for example, as opposed to 3 3 reps where if you're doing 3 reps and you're going very close to failure, it's like the, I mean, the load is going to have to be insanely high, which the load is just the amount of weight you're using. The weight's got to be insanely high and it might be sometimes hard to control. And it's like, uh, you know, those kinds of things, right? So for that reason right there, for you to be able to accrue enough volume in this rep range, it's, it's going to be tough. Like you're going to have to do way more sets. You're going to have to probably spend way more time in the gym as well. Um, And then kind of piggybacking right on top of that, like I said earlier, you're using very, very, very heavy load, right? Because to push yourself close to failure for 3 reps, like, you're lifting very close to your 1 rep max, right? When you're doing that and you're doing so many sets, because you have to do so many sets to accrue the adequate volume in order for you to build lean muscle mass, and again, if you don't know what volume is, like, go check out that video I talked about. But for you to accrue enough volume with this super heavy load, with all this volume you're doing, all these sets and and stuff, your connective tissues and your joints take a beating, man. Like they, they just take a beating. Like you doing 3, 3 heavy, you know, a heavy triple on, you know, call it rows or call it squats or call it deadlifts or whatever you want to call it. It's a lot. It's a lot for your body to have to take and endure. And it's a lot for your body to have to recover from. But like, you're just kind of beating your joints up and beating your tissues up and beating your ligaments up and that kind of stuff. And so it's just a lot of, stress being placed on your muscles over a period of time. And so when you're thinking about more of like the long-term view of things, you know, the, the lower rep range, although yes, you can build muscle there, you know, when talking about longevity, when talking about, you know, how much volume you would need, when talking about the, the recovery aspect, and again, talking about like a total body, you know, not only from like joints but also a central nervous system, like think about how Think about you going into the gym right now and doing heavy squats for triples, like 6, 7 sets of that week after week after week after week. Like, that's kind of daunting to think about. Like, your intensity physically and mentally is gonna have to be through the absolute roof for you to be able to do 7 sets of 3 on squats in order to grow your quads or your glutes or whatever you were trying to grow right there. Like, think about, like, just the toll that would take on you mentally and physically. So with all those things combined, the lower rep range, that's typically why, again, you lean more towards that strength-based work. It's more of a neurological-based adaptation as opposed to a hypertrophy-based adaptation, a physical adaptation of building muscle. It's not to say you can't do it, but for those reasons it might not just be the most optimal when it comes to building muscle. And so now that leaves us with the hypertrophy rep range, which is like, This is why there is some merit to this rep range. So you kind of heard me already say higher reps, maybe not, lower reps, maybe not. And this is why, again, like there is some merit to this, but this is the reasoning behind it. The 6 to 12 rep range, let's think about that, right? Well, at that point, again, our 3 main factors are enough volume, enough mechanical tension, and pushing our bodies close to failure, right? Those are your 3 main factors. When taking those things into consideration, enough volume, right? 3 sets of 8, it's not too bad. Again, I'm just using a random number, but let's just use 3 sets of 8. 3 sets of 8, that wouldn't take you too long in the gym. That's not really gonna— it's not— you're not using a weight, by the way, that's so heavy that you're just gonna absolutely trash your joints, but you're also not using a weight where it's so light that you have to do 20 reps in order to get close to failure. And so you're kind of getting that sweet spot there of, let's just call it 8 reps. You're kind of getting that sweet spot where it's not too heavy but it's not too light. It's not gonna beat your joints up and beat your connective tissue up, but it's also not gonna lead more towards this, like, more cardio-based adaptation where, you know, a set of shoulder raises takes you, you know, 120 seconds, right? Like, that's a very long set, right? So this rep range kind of gives you that little even ground, that little middle ground of like, all right, like, I can push myself really close to failure here. I can make sure I create mechanical tension. I can make sure I create enough volume. And that way I'm not beating my joints up. I'm not beating my connective tissue up. I'm going solely more for that hypertrophy-based adaptation. I'm not going so high in reps that I'm doing more of a cardiometabolic stress adaptation. I'm not going so low in reps that I'm doing more of like a neurological adaptation. I'm kind of going right in the middle where I'm getting a good hypertrophy-based adaptation from doing 3 sets of 8 reps as opposed to 7 sets of 3 reps, or let's call it 4 sets of 20 reps, right? You're kind of getting that middle ground there. And also, again, when talking about like the type of hypertrophy you're having, you know, the, again, sarcoplasmic versus myofibrillar, you're getting more of that side where you're actually creating new, you're creating new contractile proteins, you're creating new, new muscle tissue. Essentially you're, you're building actual More muscle, not just bigger muscles. You're creating actual more muscle as opposed to if you were to do this right here. Again, it's more or less just kind of like that. You're able to store more nutrients and more glycogen and more water inside of your muscles, which if you kind of like, let's say you stop working out or if you diet down or whatever the case may be, like you're going to lose that, right? Whereas you, you know, very, very, very hard to lose like actual lean muscle tissue. It's very hard to lose that. So That is yet again another benefit because again, the intensity that you're bringing, you're not going so high to where you're taxing your energy system to— again, without getting too in-depth, taxing your energy system, how your energy system works, and this means how ATP is created, which if you don't know what ATP is, it's just basically the energy for your body, how your body uses carbohydrates, how your body uses glycogen. When you get into more of these higher rep sets. Like it's going more at a, at a cardio-based adaptation, for lack of better terms. It's going more for a cardio metabolic-based adaptation as opposed to purely this more hypertrophy-based adaptation. And again, you're able to maximize the volume, you're able to maximize the intensity. So you're not going so intense in either direction where it's like this intensity of doing 7 sets of triples on deadlifts, going to leave you absolutely smashed from like a neurological standpoint. And again, not taxing so much to where when, you know, you're doing 4 sets of 20 reps, that's just so much work, so much lactic acid, so much stuff your body has to recover from that it takes you forever to recover, right? So again, kind of finding that sweet middle ground right there to kind of maximize your volume and maximize your intensity. You're not going so heavy to the point where like it's just burning you out and again beating yourself up, but you're not going so light to the point where like You gotta do 30 reps to get some work in, right? So that's why right there, getting stronger— because again, and I'm gonna touch on this really quickly here, getting stronger in the 6 to 12 rep range, that is typically speaking gonna be the best rep range for hypertrophy, the best rep range for muscle growth for those reasons. Now, that is not to say you shouldn't do these 2 things. And I wanna make that very clear. Like, there is a huge benefit to working in the strength range, for example, because Let's just say, for example, you're doing a flat barbell bench press and you're getting stronger at that, right? Or whatever exercise you want to do, right? You're getting stronger at that. So if you get stronger, well, guess what? When you go to do these rep ranges right here, you're able to lift more weight. Well, guess what? If you're able to lift more weight in these rep ranges because you're getting stronger, this rep range is going to be that much more maximized and you're going to be able to build that much more muscle because you're stronger. So when you're stronger, you can maximize this rep range a bit more as opposed to if you never did any of this work, which that was me, by the way. I was like, I'm never doing any strength work because I just want to build muscle and nothing else. It went on to backfire for me because my strength was kind of like plateauing a bit. And again, you can get stronger in the 6 to 12 rep range. You absolutely can. But if you are throwing in some strength work here and there, absolutely nothing wrong with that. And I do think it will help you. Now, of course, if your main goal is muscle building, you don't want to put in too much of this right here. A good kind of rule of thumb is like, and I believe Dr. Eric Helms in the Muscle and Strength Pyramids wrote this, but I'm pretty sure he wrote, if your main goal is, let's say your main goal is muscle building, 2/3 of your training programming should come from muscle building hypertrophy work, and then maybe 1/3 can come from the strength work, for example. So it's like kind of making sure you bias the muscle building, but if you do wanna throw in some strength training, throw in some strength training. That's what I would say for that right there. Again, when it comes to these endurance reps right here, having a metabolic adaptation is not a negative thing. Having a cardio adaptation is not necessarily a negative thing. It's just if your main goal is hypertrophy, well then again, you're going to more try to lean towards that hypertrophy range. When talking about creating a program, for example, which by the way, if you want help creating a program, I literally have an entire free video on here on how to create a workout program, so check it out. But when creating a workout program, you'll probably have a good mix of these things. You'll probably have some strength thrown in. You'll probably have some hypertrophy. You'll probably have some more endurance/cardio. And by the way, when talking about optimizing muscle building, sometimes it's just fun to do a set of, let's just call it 15-rep bicep curls and just feel your fucking biceps just Burn. Sometimes that's just fun. Is it the most optimal? Yes, no, maybe. Depends on your program, but having fun is a part of the program as well. So kind of take all this stuff into consideration. So which one to choose? Again, leaning more towards getting stronger in the 6 to 12 rep range. But again, and then going back to having fun, this just came up. If you love pulling deadlifts for 3 reps and just feeling strong as fuck, keep doing it. There is nothing wrong with you doing that. You can do that and still build muscle because you're working in hypertrophy work and that kind of stuff. And again, if you have a, you know, if you're following a good program, you should be able to do those things at the same time. I know for my clubhouse, which I'll put a link here below for the clubhouse, I know in my clubhouse, that's something we often do. It's like we, we often, um, have more of like this compound movement. Let's just call it deadlifts, for example, where, you know, we'll do 3, 4, 5 reps, just be strong. Strong and get strong and do all that fun stuff, and then, like, we'll kind of work into more of the hypertrophy section. And so, again, you can have a bit of both. Again, these aren't like, all right, this one sucks and this one sucks and only do this one, or vice versa, or whatever. You can and you should work in both, but what is the best? The best is going to be this kind of 6 to 12 rep range for all of the reasons we talked about earlier. I hope this video helped you. If it did, please feel free to give it a thumbs up and let me know below, and also subscribe to the channel, and also share it with someone who you think it might be helpful for. All right? Thanks, Eric.