What You Need to Know About Repetition Ranges
What is the best repetition range for your workouts? This is a question that is often discussed and has many rumours surrounding it. Generally, the distinction is made between low, medium and high repetitions. Below, you’ll find a brief description of each of these rep ranges along with their strengths and weaknesses.
Lowest Rep Range
This range is anything from 1 to 6 or 7 repetitions. Training in a low rep range means using a high weight-load. In this repetition range, the weights will feel heavy, even during the first rep of the first set.
The greatest benefit of training with low repetitions is that they stimulate the greatest strength increase. Note that I wrote “strength” and not “muscle size”, though. If muscle size is what you’re after, then low repetitions aren’t the ideal choice.
Of course, doing fewer reps takes less time than doing more repetitions. This has it’s own benefits and drawbacks: While it saves time for your overall workout, this also means that your muscles are under stress for a quicker period of time. This, in turn, can mean less growth stimulation.
Perhaps the greatest drawback of low repetition ranges is that there’s a greater risk of injury, due to the high weight-loads. Especially with free-weight exercises and towards the end of a training session, when you’re already worn out, you have to take care not to strain yourself when lugging around such heavy weights.
Medium Rep Range
This rep range is between 8 and 12 repetitions. This is every bodybuilder’s favourite repetition range, since it’s been shown frequently that doing 8-12 reps is best for hypertophy (increase in muscle size). You won’t see the strength gains you get from doing lower reps with higher weights, but you’ll certainly look like, you’re growing stronger.
Positive and negative aspects of this rep range are quite obvious: If you’re after bigger muscles, this is the rep range to go for. If functional strength and greater muscle-performance are more important to you, then lower repetitions are better suited.
High Repetition Range
Anything above 12 or 15 repetitions is in the high rep range Doing more than 12 reps of an exercise will usually take longer than 30 seconds and that’s about where the threshold lies for what can be called “strength training”. If your muscles are under continuous (or almost continual) stress for longer than that, then, biologically speaking, you’re already entering “cardio training” territory.
This is not to say that high repetitions are useless, though. If you are using low weights and doing more repetitions, your body simply has to recruit different resources to keep you going.
One thing that needs to be addressed is a common misconception: High rep ranges do not build “lean muscles” rather than “bulky muscles”, as is often claimed. High rep ranges simply activate less muscle growth, but you can’t really influence the shape of your muscles with a particular way of exercising.
Bottom line: For the majority of people, medium repetitions are the best choice, since lower repetitions require more experience and safety precautions due to the weights, and high reps stimulate less growth. Having said that, it’s actually also a good idea to switch between different repetition ranges from time to time, as diversity in training is very good for your overall fitness.
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