How many bench reps

However, low-rep training has one significant shortcoming: Muscle-fiber stimulation, and thus growth, is correlated closely to the amount of time a muscle is under tension. The time-under-tension theory leads us to our third suspect: 8—rep sets. At a cadence of two seconds on the concentric lifting action and two seconds on the eccentric lowering movement, your set will end up right in the middle of the optimum to second range for a given set of exercise.

Why is that range critical? Because when the set lasts longer than a few seconds, the body is forced to rely on the glycolytic-energy system, which leads to the formation of lactic acid. When lactic acid, or lactate, pools in large amounts, it induces a surge in anabolic hormone levels within the body, including the ultrapotent growth hormone and the big daddy of muscle-building, testosterone.

The increased time under tension also leads to more muscle damage, imperative if you plan on getting larger any time soon. Theoretically, the longer a muscle is contracted, the greater the potential for damage to the tissue.

The moderate-rep range, when coupled with a challenging weight, will also bring about a much-desired condition: the muscle pump. That tight, full feeling under the skin, caused by blood pooling in the muscle, has value beyond its ego-expanding qualities. Studies have demonstrated that the physiological conditions which lead to a pump activate protein synthesis and limit protein breakdown.

Thus, more of the protein you eat goes toward muscle construction instead of being burned off for energy. In a scientific twist of good fortune, the fast-twitch fibers appear to be the biggest beneficiaries of this phenomenon.

So how many reps should you be doing to build muscle? In the final analysis, substantial evidence argues that training in a moderate-rep range is the best way to build muscle mass. In other words, performing more exercise for the sake of variety will leave you doing too much volume, not enough quality work sets of a given movement, and limit overall chest growth…not to mention having you spending all day running around the gym.

Be sure to keep your weekly training volume the total of your working sets for chest between total reps. If you find out you are performing more than 20 sets per week, there is a very good chance you are doing TOO much and are actually diminishing your bodies ability to build new muscle mass. Instead, stay within those ranges and work to perform quality repetitions with a hyper-focus mindset of feeling the chest muscles stretch throughout the full range of motion.

Should You Train to Muscle Fatigue? While training to failure is sometimes acceptable, most of the time you should be training to NEAR failure. When performing movements, it is best to think about how many QUALITY repetitions you have left in the tank before you either 1 fail a repetition or 2 are able to complete a repetition but at the cost of proper form. Related Article: Strength vs. Sample 2-Day Chest Workout Routine The below workout program is a 4-week chest training routine that is geared for all levels.

This program is designed to increase chest strength and size. The overall training volume is 16 total work sets per week, at varying intensities to maximize muscle growth.

Choose a weight you can perform all sets for the prescribed weights. If you cannot perform repetitions for all sets with the same weight, go lighter. Once you can perform at least 10 reps every set with the same weight, you can increase the weight on the barbell in the next week. In the pause, be sure to keep the shoulderblades squeezed together, feeling tension in the middle of the chest.

Neutral Grip Dumbbell Bench Press 3 sets. For everyone else, though, we can measure our strength by how much we can lift in a variety of different rep ranges. For instance, someone who can bench for a single is similarly strong to someone who can bench for 5 reps or for 10 reps. Perhaps more importantly, going from benching pounds for 10 reps to benching pounds for 10 reps shows a significant improvement in strength. For instance, you could stimulate a similar amount of muscle growth by doing 3 sets of 10 repetitions as you would by doing 5 sets of 5, keeping your workouts shorter or freeing up more time for other lifts.

Now, most research shows that we build more muscle per set when doing at least 6—8 reps per set, and that may be true. But sets of five reps are right on the cusp of being ideal for gaining muscle. My personal hunch is that low-rep sets of around reps are a bit less efficient for muscle growth on a per-set basis, but not quite to the point of needing to equate for volume load.

Not necessarily. If we want to maximize the growth of our triceps, we also need triceps extensions. But you can imagine how those workouts could get quite long. Plus, this is assuming that muscle growth is maximized with just three sets per muscle group per workout.

It seems that muscle growth is maximized by doing 4—8 sets per muscle group per workout. When volumes start climbing higher like that, it can pay to have an easier and more efficient way to stimulate muscle growth. If we compare to how a bodybuilder trains, we can see the advantage of using moderate rep ranges. According to experts like Greg Nuckols, MA , sets of 4—40 reps are ideal for gaining muscle mass. According to others, such as Mike Israetel, PhD , sets of 5—30 reps are best for building muscle.

The hypertrophic stimulus and fatigue generated by each set between roughly 5 and 30 reps are about the same. Volume and intensity cause growth and fatigue, and when one goes up per set, the other goes down to preserve a roughly even effect.

There are problems with doing sets of 20—40 reps, too. First, we need to take them closer to muscular failure to reliably provoke muscle growth. Second, taking high-rep sets to failure is so painful that it can make people vomit, give up, or hate training. And third, higher-rep sets can cause a tremendous amount of muscle damage, making our workouts harder to recover from. However, he notes that low-rep sets stimulate less muscle growth per set while inflicting greater stress on our joints, whereas higher-rep sets take longer and are quite a bit more painful.

As a result, he recommends defaulting to moderate rep ranges when training for muscle growth. And even within that shrinking rep range, different lifts respond better to different rep ranges, narrowing it further still. But, as you can imagine, different lifts challenge us in different ways.

So with neck training, we might want to use higher reps: 15—40 reps per set. So instead of doing 6—20 reps for every lift, we want to use different parts of the rep range at different times.

Lower reps tend to be ideal for the bigger compound lifts, giving us loose rep range recommendations for our five big hypertrophy lifts of, say:. And then the ideal rep range climbs higher for assistance and accessory lifts, which are lighter, less fatiguing, and can sometimes tolerate a bit of technique breakdown. Here are some loose recommendations for some common isolation lifts :.

Genetics and personal preference will factor into what rep ranges you prefer, too. Doing around 6—20 reps per set is usually best for building muscle, with some experts going as wide as 5—30 or even 4—40 reps per set.

For bigger lifts, 6—10 reps often works best. For smaller lifts, 12—20 reps often works better. If you have sore joints, it can help to use higher rep ranges, doing 12—40 reps per set. If you want a customizable workout program and full guide that builds these principles in, check out our Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program.

His specialty is helping people build muscle to improve their strength and general health, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes. Our other two sites are more specifically about helping naturally skinny people bulk up, so with this site we want to go beyond that. More intermediate content, and more general health, fitness, and strength content. Still mostly focused on building muscle, though.

You say,. This shows the low rep range to require less volume for more muscle growth. The workouts become much, much more efficient.

If we challenge ourselves with the first set, our strength will typically go down a bit on the next set. What often works better, then, is keeping the weight the same and pushing a bit closer to failure with each set. The idea being to start with just a few reps in reserve and finish our final set without actually hitting failure. For example: Set 1: 8 reps with pounds, 3 reps in reserve Set 2: 8 reps with pounds, 2—3 reps in reserve Set 3: 8 reps with pounds, 1—2 reps in reserve Set 4: 8 reps with pounds, 0—1 reps in reserve.

Set 1: 10 reps with pounds Set 2: 8 reps with pounds Set 3: 6 reps with pounds Set 4: 4 reps with pounds. Pyramid training can work, but it often makes more sense to reverse it, starting heavier and then stripping weight off the bar.

That allows us to lift heavier weights while our muscles are still fresh and strong, and then burn ourselves on higher reps afterwards, often allowing for more total weight lifted.

Set 1: 4 reps with pounds Set 2: 6 reps with pounds Set 3: 8 reps with pounds Set 4: 10 reps with pounds. So can we add weight from set to set for muscle growth? Admittedly, though, the data is lacking on this. And even the research on Pyramid Training is pretty sparse.

Can someone please explain what it means to say rep range? What does that actually mean? Saying that the hypertrophy rep range is somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6—20 reps means that sets ranging from 6 reps to 20 reps can all be ideal for stimulating muscle growth. Deadlifts: 4 sets of 6 reps Bench Press: 4 sets of 10 reps Biceps curls: 3 sets of 12 reps Skullcrushers: 3 sets of 15 reps Lateral raises: 2 sets of 20 reps. This workout uses 2—4 sets of 6—20 reps, doing fewer reps on the bigger compound lifts, more reps on the smaller isolation lifts.

And when the reps are lower, we tend to do slightly more sets. Speaking of reverse pyramid training, another way to do sets in the 6—20 rep range would be to strip some weight off the bar each set, perhaps starting with pounds for 8 repetitions, then pounds for 10 repetitions, and then pounds for 12 repetitions.

So far, when I do weighted chinups for 3 sets, I get 8 reps on the 1st set, 5 reps on the 2nd set, and 4 reps on the 3rd set. This comes from resting 3 minutes between sets. All sets are to failure with good form chest to bar. Does this mean only that only the 1st set stimulated sufficient hypertrophy because it was in the rep range? While the other 2 sets stimulated mostly stimulated strength?

If so, am I better off reducing the weight on the 2nd and 3rd set only to make sure I never go below 6 reps? There are a couple downsides to lower rep ranges for hypertrophy. That can be solved by doing extra sets, though, which is where the second problems comes in: lower-rep sets are more fatiguing and can be harder on our joints.

You could try 5-minute rest periods. That way when you do 8 reps, you have 2 reps left in reserve. Next set, maybe you get 8 reps with 1 in reserve. And then on your third set, you can do 8 reps with 0 in reserve. This is how we normally recommend that people train, leaving some reps in reserve, especially on earlier sets, and especially when so many reps are bleeding out from set to set. The goal is just to keep most of our training in the hypertrophy rep range.

Awesome information about reps. How about sets what has the best results. For example, sets of reps or is sets of reps have better results. That yields a training volume of 9—18 sets per muscle group per week, which is right about perfect for building muscle. Train like an endurance athlete: Most endurance sports aren't gym-based, so it's hard to duplicate their motions with weights. Rest periods should be kept fairly short, since oxygen intake and lactic-acid removal shouldn't be limiting factors as you exercise.

Discovering how many reps you should do also tells you how much weight you should lift. The two are inseparably linked. If you were to plot a graph, you'd discover a near-linear inverse relationship between the two: add more weight and you can do fewer reps; with a lighter weight, you can do more reps. I'm always amazed when I train with a new partner who has been stuck at a certain weight-and-rep scheme—say, dumbbell bench press with 80 pounds for 8 reps.

I'll tell him to grab the 90s, to which he'll respond, "I can't do that! Invariably, he'll handle the 90s, and with that newfound sense of strength even give the 95s and s a try.

With time, you'll understand your personal strength curve and the relationship of weight to reps for each exercise you do. Jotting your numbers down in a logbook or on BodySpace will help you keep track of your reps and weights used. This brings up an important point: You don't need to train in one rep range all the time.

You might start a workout with a heavy compound exercise for 5 sets of 5 reps. To focus on building muscle, you could follow that with a few exercises in the range. To finish the workout, you could even tap into your slow-twitch reserves and finish the session with an isolation exercise in the range.

This is important because as you get stronger, you'll want to lift more weight in the same rep range. When building muscle, once you can do more than about 12 reps on a core lift, it's time to increase the resistance by about percent. The weight you choose along your strength curve should correspond to the number of reps you want to achieve, which matches your training goals.

In that sense, your workouts should never be random, where you just grab any old weight; there is a best weight and optimal number of reps you should be doing. It just depends on which goal you want to prioritize!

Bill Geiger, MA, has served as a senior content editor for Bodybuilding. View all articles by this author. Workout 1. Incline dumbbell bench press.