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Summary
The video from Renaissance Periodization discusses the impacts of different repetition ranges on muscle growth. Dr. Mike examines high versus low reps and dispels the myth that high reps are ineffective for building size. Through a detailed analysis, the video covers the scientific literature, physiological rationale, and real-world practices to conclude that both high and low reps can contribute to muscle growth effectively. The choice between them should be based on individual goals, preferences, and conditions. The video also offers insights for beginners, intermediates, and advanced trainees to optimize their training approach according to their experience level.
Highlights
High and low reps both stimulate muscle growth effectively. 🎢
High reps often bring better muscle pumps and are safer on joints. 🚴♂️
Low reps provide greater tension per replication and are beneficial for strength. 🏋️
Scientific studies suggest optimal growth between 5 to 30 reps. 📊
Combining different rep ranges can optimize gains and involve varied muscle processes. 🔄
Key Takeaways
Both high (up to 50 reps) and low (as low as 1 rep) repetitions can effectively lead to muscle growth if executed properly. 💪
Individual goals and responses to training should guide the choice between high and low reps. 🎯
High reps can offer better pumps and less joint stress, while low reps may offer higher tension and quicker strength gains. ⚖️
A variety of rep ranges can optimize growth by engaging different muscular processes. 🍰
Beginners should focus on mastering form with moderate reps, while more experienced lifters can explore a broader range of reps for maximum efficacy. 📈
Overview
In this insightful video by Renaissance Periodization, Dr. Mike delves into the age-old debate of high reps versus low reps for muscle growth. He kicks off by debunking the myth that high reps don't contribute to size increases, using both scientific evidence and real-world examples to back his points. The video takes an engaging route through the physiology of muscle growth, explaining how both low and high reps can be effectively utilized in training.
Dr. Mike emphasizes the importance of understanding both the benefits and downsides of high and low rep training. He explains that while high reps can lead to better pumps and joint safety, low reps tend to maximize tension and strength increase. The evidence suggests that a balanced approach, utilizing a range from 5 to 30 reps, often yields the best results. The video encourages listeners to tailor their rep ranges to personal goal-specific adaptive responses.
The video finally addresses how trainees at different experience levels should approach their training. For beginners, mastering proper form with moderate rep ranges is advised, while intermediate and advanced lifters can benefit from exploring a wide variety of rep ranges. Dr. Mike suggests that change and experimentation are key components in optimizing one's growth, adapting over time as one becomes more advanced in their training journey.
Are Low Reps REALLY Better For Size? Transcription
00:00 - 00:30 High rep sets as high as 50 reps and low rep sets as few as one rep per set produce hypertrophy so on a theoretical basis the idea that High Reps don't cause gains in size we can throw away instantly and replace with may cause less growth in size than some other part of the rep range we can't say they don't grow any size because just categorically false because we literally have studies where we made people do sets of 50 and they still got more jacked it's tough to argue against results
00:30 - 01:00 hey folks Dr Mike here for RP strength and today's video topic is to ask and answer the question is it really true that High Reps don't build size nearly as well or maybe at all compared to Low Reps but going heavy is categorically Superior for putting on size than going light is that really true we're going to find out real soon we're going to approach this issue from a few different angles just to make sure we have a good completeness of thought around it first we want to talk about the physiological rationality knowing what you know about
01:00 - 01:30 muscle physiology uh what does it tell us about High Reps versus low reps and their proclivity to cause muscle growth after that we'll take a a scan over the summarized version of the scientific literature to dat to tell us what it tells us directly about High Reps versus Low Reps which is curious and funny um I'll get to that in a bit and then we'll talk about the real world of like what do real jacked people actually do it's a good idea to inform ourselves of that as well we'll talk about the downsides of both High and Low Reps because they have
01:30 - 02:00 clear upsides PS they grow muscle but the downsides are distinct and based on the nature of the downsides using one versus another now becomes a solvable problem which one should you use and what combination should you use Low Reps or High Reps can be nuanced based on your individual responses needs and certain conditions so then we'll talk about that lastly in choosing your approach about what you should actually do and at the very end as I do with some of these videos especially ones that which the topic is pertinent we'll kind
02:00 - 02:30 of do a real quick overview for folks who are beginners to training people have trained you know up up to about 3 years pretty seriously what they should get out of this intermediates folks have been training between three and seven years on average pretty hard and then Advanced folks folks have been training more than 7 years and really kind of know a lot what should they be focused on here so physiological rationale is first when you lift heavier loads it requires more tension production by the muscle in order to accomplish this lifting not controversial tension also
02:30 - 03:00 seems to cause muscle growth there are a couple candidate mechanisms couple of tension detectors so far discovered in muscle tissue more of them are discovered all the time and uh the body seems to be able to sense the tension that the muscle is producing or is being produced through the muscle and that tension kind of uh tells the other systems of the muscle that responsible for muscle growth like apes shit's happening might want to get some growth going and the more tension you expose the muscle to the more that growth Machinery is activated so heavy training is great heavy training absolutely grows
03:00 - 03:30 muscle the downside with higher rep training which is lighter think of sets of five as heavy and sets of 30 as light is that if you do one rep with your five rep max that's a crapload of tension and the muscles are screaming that whole rep hey muscle growth Machinery activate Power Rangers assemble there Scott the video guy did you ever watch Power Rangers when you were a little kid I was a little old for it but yeah I was a little old for it too but that doesn't mean the Pink
03:30 - 04:00 Ranger can't get it you feel me uh does that joke age well or no usually you Google these people and they're involved on like ep's island or some shit like that and you're like man nobody can have any good things anymore in any case Power Rangers assemble each rep of a set of five stimulates lots of muscle growth because the tension's so high but when you train with higher reps and thus lower weight each repetition is comparatively a whisper of muscle growth it's a grow muscle muscle's like what
04:00 - 04:30 the attention sensor is like yeah if you heard that good if not no big deal why no big deal because we'll say it again 30 repetitions means that you whisper something 30 times over if your friends trying to get you to understand something they can yell it a few times you'll get it or they can whisper it or say it quietly like 30 times and if you don't get it there's something wrong with you right so yes it's true that per repetition in a a high rep set you get
04:30 - 05:00 less growth stimulator per rep but and this is a huge but I'm talking about JLo and her prime type of h no wrong butt you can do more reps in fact you have to do more reps you do do more reps we're talking about High Reps versus Low Reps so yes every set that you do of five each rep in there is stimulating a lot of muscle growth but there are only five of them on the other hand sets of 30 for example every single rep doesn't produce a huge growth stimulus but
05:00 - 05:30 there's 30 of them and G whiz every single rep of a 30 rep set would have to be like one sixth as muscle growth producing and inducing as every rep in the set of five for it to equate on hypertrophy at the end of a working set it's a big deal so this is a bigger deal depending on how you stretch things out as well yeah 5 to 30 is the accepted range but we know that sets of 1 2 and three and four also grow muscle so if you're
05:30 - 06:00 trying to build muscle with singles if you're saying look it's all about it's all about tension all right fine sets of one cool but how does sets of one compare to sets of 10 sets of one close to your one rep max is as much tension as you're able to produce but just once huge message delivered once sets of 10 are still pretty heavy but you can produce 10 stimuli and not any one of those 10 is going to be as growth promoting As One allout Max rep but damn it's not like they're half off or
06:00 - 06:30 something or even a fifth or a sixth of the power it's probably more like 70 or 80% per rep so the amount of growth you get from a set of one all the way maximum to a set of 10 maximum is massively tilted in favor of 10 and that relationship as you go to 15 20 25 30 doesn't completely disappear it still holds to some extent and as you do sets of five or 10 for your high load condition and sets of 25 to sets of 30 for your High Reps condition there's a
06:30 - 07:00 little bit more equalizing there but on a purely predictive value or purely predictive heris off of Just understanding okay heavy stimulates a lot but High Reps stimulates a little but if you add up the High Reps it's more stimulus it's not abundantly clear at face value that higher reps should produce less growth because the volume the number of reps you do is so much higher with higher reps there would have to be a huge discount and eventually there is but that discount doesn't apply for sets of 15 or 20 or 25 nearly to the
07:00 - 07:30 extent to make those rep ranges produce less growth over time there's another thing here just on Theory the pump and the burn seem to be better with higher reps the perception of mind altering tension is not even close to the same you can't feel a crap load of tension with sets of 20 where the hell are you supposed to feel that from it's lightweight sets of five oh yeah every rep rips your shit up but on pumps and on the burn you get closer to the end of uh reps yeah higher reps do very very well and pump and burn
07:30 - 08:00 maybe indicators and not causitive of growth but they are correlated to growth and if you're getting a lot of pumps and burns from higher reps then it stands to reason that maybe even though they add a small fraction of growth to the tension component you know there's a lot of tension coming in from High Reps to begin with and some extra metabolite stuff and some extra pump stuff all of which has been linked in at least animal studies and some human studies to the mechanisms of hypertrophy you're starting think like man doubting High
08:00 - 08:30 rep training sets of well I'll say 15 to 30 reps as an effective growth modality starts to seem kind of odd because we already know from a volume perspective it crushes we already know that reps add up uh their hypertrophic potential it's not just all about going heavy once it's nonsense a set of 10 is much more hypertrophic than a set of one even both are taken to maximum and that logic doesn't automatically break down at 12 or 15 or even 20 just gets a little bit more muted and putting all together if
08:30 - 09:00 you knew what you knew only from just this physiology chat part of uh this video you'd be like Su why the hell are people saying that High Reps don't grow muscle nearly as effectively or at all compared to Low Reps why would people say that maybe they're looking at the scientific literature directly so let's examine that the good news about the scientific literature on Low Reps versus High Reps is that there have been a lot of studies done over the years decades really and so we have a large enough base of literature with enough diversity in it and enough replication and attacking the problems from various uh
09:00 - 09:30 slightly different perspectives different angles that we now have a pretty good sense of what's going on and here's what's going on kind of in uh three different parts multiple studies confirm the following three things first all rep ranges between sets of one and sets of 50 that's right 50 reps in one set dependably grow muscle in most of the groups maybe all of the groups that have been studied for sure ont trained folks and even folks that are pretty well trained what we would call intermediates that also works straight up as long as each set is brought close
09:30 - 10:00 to failure and I don't mean all the way I mean three reps away from failure High rep sets as high as 50 reps and low rep sets as few as one rep per set produce hypertrophy so on a theoretical basis the idea that High Reps don't cause gains in size we can throw away instantly and replace with may cause less growth in size than some other part of the rep range we can't say they don't grow any size because just categorically false because we lit really have studies where we made people
10:00 - 10:30 do sets of 50 and they still got more jacked it's tough to argue against results second point is that the highest growth per set seems to occur between sets of five and 30 rep what the literature has found is if you do sets of one two three uh reps per set or if you do sets of oh like 40 45 50 reps per set even if you equate the number of sets you're doing you get a little bit less impressive hypertrophy in very low reps and in very High
10:30 - 11:00 Reps sets of five close to failure all the way to sets of 30 reps close to failure is a very very difficult time in the scientific literature to even discern the two how uh what do I mean by that that means if I gave you a study or a few studies where they were comparing low rep groups to high rep groups low rep sort of fiveish high rep sort of 30-ish but I um had chat GPT go through and eliminate all labels from the document as to which one was five or
11:00 - 11:30 which one was 30 all you got to look at was the results the differences in growth and the graphs it would be very difficult for you to pick out which one was five and which one was 30 so can we confidently say that sets of 5 to 10 are more growth promoting on average than sets of 25 to 30 no we actually cannot because literature tells us that work set for work set they kind of produce a very similar amount of growth so similar that we can't tell them apart in most studies which is a really really big deal but it's also a big deal to note that you sets of 1 2 3 4 not ideal sets
11:30 - 12:00 of over 30 probably also not ideal on the one hand the problem with sets of 1 2 3 4 is just insufficient volume it's just not enough total repetitions over your workout to really scream enough muscle growth stimulus the problem with set of 40 50 Etc reps is that oh there's plenty of plenty of uh communication but the bandwidth is super super tiny and so each time your muscle like grow grow a little grow a little and your muscle on the other end are like what that that supposed to be growing what the hell's going on the tension is so low that it's
12:00 - 12:30 no longer nearly as robust of a per rep muscle growth stimulus much less robust like exponentially less robust so such that if you do you know if you're pretty experienced lifter and you somehow do a working set truly one set no my reps no pauses of 100 reps you're probably going to see very little growth because the tension is so small that it's just not registering and and tension probably works on an scurve like many of these biological processes do where if you have very low say sets of 880 70 60 50
12:30 - 13:00 40 you you you're down here registering very little muscle growth which is why when people run especially for months at a time they get into running they don't gain net amount of muscle usually about the same especially if they're pretty well trained before they might even lose muscle they're completely untrained they'll gain some but nothing crazy to write home about so it's shaped like an us so once you pass around that 40 to 50 rep range it starts going up when you get up to about 30 reps it kind of starts to top out a little bit and then at five reps it curves back over so that
13:00 - 13:30 doing any heavier training than five reps actually doesn't do you much good and then if you kept going sets of 4 3 2 1 there's actually a little dip at the end of the S where they don't produce as much hypertrophy so you get worse hypertrophy on that end and worse hypertrophy on that end but 5 to 30 is a really really awesome range literature confirmed scientific study confirmed lastly if we broaden our perspective of science to taking a look at studies in which they ask people hey
13:30 - 14:00 how do you train for hypertrophy they've asked powerlifters this weightlifters this bodybuilders this there's more than a handful of observational studies or really survey based studies and it turns out that people who got much bigger in the real world when surveyed they almost always did it with a combination there's no reason to get into camps heavy versus Light low rep versus high rep most uh people got jacked uh some used mostly sets of 5 to 10 um some used mostly sets of 15 to 30 but almost everyone used a mixture of the two a combination
14:00 - 14:30 and there might be something important to that combination we'll get to that in a sec so basically to to wrap up the science part all rep rang is between one and 50 grown muscle the best growth you see is in the 5 to 30 rep range and it's really hard to tell apart what's five what 30 and what's everything in between very very similar growth at least in studies and then in the observational literature people generally got big with a wide variety of range uh rep ranges why is that important because if you had studies on beginners training for three months at a time that said hey look sets of you know 20
14:30 - 15:00 25 and 30 work great super well compared to sets of 51015 but you look to the real world you a bunch of surveys with competitive bodybuilders powerlifters weightlifters and they were basically like yeah we never do anything over 10 reps and um I tried it before especially had a phase where I doing lot of sets of 15 20 I just didn't get any bigger I got smaller I got weaker I got tired if that was the case You' be like okay maybe for beginners it works cuz like a lot of shit works for beginners um you know maybe when there's an experiment that yelling at you you can really pushed a failure hard enough to get those last
15:00 - 15:30 few reps of the 30 reps set but in the real world maybe it doesn't work but in the real world it is used which brings us to the real world so we have a scientific approach to the real world and then we have just an observational approach to the real world couple of points in the real world discussion here first is that loads of amazing bodybuilders over the years have loved High repetitions Tom Platz was known for Ultra High Reps Jay Cutler did a bunch of High Reps Arnold fucking Schwarzenegger did tons of High Reps for the love of God why am I saying this
15:30 - 16:00 with such passion because there are folks in the uh Collective sphere of knowledge and understanding of hypertrophy the social media Etc and some of these folks kind of basically say like if you're not training heavy you're not training hardcore like the real big guys who got real big but the big guys who got real big also used High Reps and swear by them and Phil Heath is another one he used plenty of High Reps you go argue against Phil Heath's arms I don't know what you want from me but real bodybuilders do High Reps all the
16:00 - 16:30 time on the other hand tons of real bodybuilders over the years have used Low Reps very very effectively Ronnie Coleman joh uh Dorian Yates classic Johnny Jackson lifted immense amounts of weight four low repetitions and got Yol to shit so in the real world people are getting big doing the whole five to 30 range so when folks come in and say oh look you anything north of 20 reps doesn't work for size you got to be like based on what not based on physiological
16:30 - 17:00 inference it's not based on scientific literature which directly contradicts that claim and it's actually just not even based on what real bodybuilders do to get results in the real world we have a real big problem here why the hell are we saying this kind of stuff it seems just pulled out of a half for you personally very likely when you've trained through a broad variety of rep ranges you've probably had high rep workouts that give you a few things one killer pumps you can't even bend your legs insane perturbation basically
17:00 - 17:30 something's fucked up in a good way you have trouble walking down the stairs after a leg workout you're not like oh man High Reps don't work at all my right Brothers like you going to walk downstairs like I mean I was kind of going to wait 30 minutes cuz I don't want to fall like oh so your legs are unfazed well no they're really fucked up like but fucked up in a special way that doesn't make them grow like yeah man I don't know set five bro all right walk down the stairs like oh man fuck you guys that doesn't make any goddamn sense so you got the killer pumps gly p and later just to make sure you didn't miss
17:30 - 18:00 the beat insane Doms you do a couple of sets of 20 try this at home don't get rabo trying this shit but a couple sets of 20 full range of motion leg press will fuck you up beyond anything that you have witnessed in your life you will get a week long delay onset muscle soreness if you can tell me with a straight face you don't think that correlates to muscle growth hey fuck dope amazing but that's probably not the case because pumps perturbation
18:00 - 18:30 how messed up you get And Delay nonset soreness magnitude tend to be the best correlates of growth approaches if you think about it for a second it's like okay what grows people predictably more from the scientific literature going closer to failure okay that uh causes better pumps more perturbation and more Doms doing higher volumes yep causes all three um making sure that you're wellfed it causes all three huge pumps when you're wellfed when you're dieted down for a show you can't get any pumps and you don't grow much when you are controlling the Ecentric
18:30 - 19:00 when you're doing training at long muscle lengths and a deep stretch uh I don't even know of any kind of growth enhancing training modalities that don't result in bigger pumps gnarlier perturbation and more intense soreness and fatigue after and High Reps give you all of these predictably not for every muscle not all the time not for all individuals but most people have felt it so in the real world to write off High Reps is just nothing to do with growth whatsoever just not as growth promoting if curiously ignores a lot of proxies
19:00 - 19:30 for muscle growth a lot of people will respond and say you know pump and burn and and uh perturbation and stuff have nothing to do with growth but um yeah I think that I think uh because they correlate almost one to one to all of the best research confirmed training practices um I think it's highly likely that uh they correlate well to growth and that just wouldn't write off High Reps because High Reps seem to have a lot of shit going on that makes us makes us think hey some muscle growth is occurring here now mind you that's just part of the evidence the direct evidence
19:30 - 20:00 is that in the scientific literature people actually grow tons of muscle for High Reps so kind of a closed case now there are distinct downsides with both low reps and High Reps which opens up our conversation to how to use them best now that we know both work heavy weights I think sets a 5 to 10 for example they carry a higher acute injury risk with your probability of tearing your peack off the bone in a set of eight incline presses is category Al different than in a set of 15 than in a
20:00 - 20:30 set of 25 getting hurt with your 27 rep max on an incline barbell press is like you just had it coming I don't know what the fuck happened getting hurt with a set of 15 with your 17 rep max yeah you know shit happens but it's pretty heavy unlikely you'll get hurt but more likely than what's a set of you know 25 but if you do a set of five with your seven rep max but I actually don't want to even see you do inclines to sets of five I'm kind of like I want look is the probability of injury insanely small
20:30 - 21:00 absolutely it is but relatively compared to much higher reps it's not even in the same category so if you're really injury reverse maybe you're super dry dieting for a show something like that we'll get to the use cases in a bit maybe the acute High injury risk of low reps just doesn't make any goddamn sense especially if you know that you're going to get the same amount of growth from Low Reps as you are from higher reps but with a notably categorically lower risk of injury acutely from those High rep sets are we really going to ignore for them I don't know that doesn't seem
21:00 - 21:30 smart next heavier weights heavier loading sets of 5 to 10 Etc cause more wear and tear on joints and connective tissues chronically you do hack squats with sets of five six and seven your knees may feel a certain way after a few months you're not interested in feeling you do hack squats or leg presses with sets of 15 20 25 your soul is going to hurt but uh your knees are probably going to be okay relatively speaking because look over the month weeks months and years of training pounding heavy ass
21:30 - 22:00 weights consistently and never go high rep to let the body have a break especially but it's just going to beat your ass much further I mean look at the injury rates uh between powerlifters and bodybuilders if you look up the stats and they do exist bodybuilders are just the most safe of anyone and it's probably not entirely unrelated to the fact that just on average don't go as heavy you know when you're a powerlifter you doing sets of 1 2 3 four maybe up to sets of 10 but usually no lighter you're in that fucking range where shit just beats your ass and most powerlifters you talk to like how are your joints they're
22:00 - 22:30 like what do you mean like compared to what um Scott the video guy did you ever hear that Thomas Soul Economist joke uh this a joke told by economis Thomas Soul about other economists says uh an economist meets another Economist in the street and they're friends and one Economist goes to the other he goes hey uh so how's your wife and the other Economist goes compared to what economics jokes everything is a comparison pretty good right Burn Right the funniest kinds of of jokes are by technical experts in
22:30 - 23:00 economics but um yeah you know powerlifters you're like hey how are you joints compared to what like compared to when you start a powerlifting they're like oh I'm an old man I'm like 78 years old what up I compared to last year when you hurt yourself you're like oh uh yeah much better I'm doing more High Reps now yeah okay shit starts to make sense another downside of going really heavy is really long warm-up time and think about this if you want a good back workout you're very big and strong you might have to do 500 lb for reps in the deadlift like is not simply you you 135
23:00 - 23:30 if you really want a free whe Run and Gun you go to 315 next but if you're not if you're smarter than me you go to 225 315 405 500 for a warm-up and then 500 for work set holy fucking shit I watched Chad Wesley Smith one of the powerlifting greates of all time warm up to hit uh who was doing seven plates and change on a side for reps in the squat for powerlifting High bar squat in aack just by himself and uh you guys no joke I was training with him I was doing my
23:30 - 24:00 workout while he was doing his same gym and we were chatting between sets and Chad moves like he doesn't just fucking sit around like it's he's loading plates he's chilling for a second he's doing uh a set he's chilling a little bit he's loading plates again it's not just Lolly gagging I swear to God you guys it took 330 minutes before Chad did his first work set I was fucking halfway done with my workout in powerlifting weightlifting strong men there is no way around that
24:00 - 24:30 that's just part of the game you cannot warm up as much and get fucked up or you can take a lot of time to warm up and lose a lot of time but gain a lot of awesome strength but when you're bodybuilding and someone's like did you know that if you did higher reps you would have to do half as much time warming up and still be safe from injury because higher reps aren't that dangerous you be like no no no no no that's nonsense I want to spend half of my time in the gym warming up starts to be a little weird on the other hand High Reps have their distinct disadvantages as well remember the advantages here is
24:30 - 25:00 that they all grow Muscle really well High Reps it's tougher to gauge failure when you stopped at rep number 25 did you stop because you just like smoked the Sig you didn't want the shit anymore like it hurts a lot maybe you're like fuck that or did you stop because you were really two reps in reserve hard to tell two reps five reps in reserve real mystery when you get to really High Reps and for some folks that aren't prone to Serious bouts of mental effort they might not get ideal results from High Reps because they kind of mail it in next downside is the pain that you
25:00 - 25:30 experience near failure can increase your total fatigue that you experience from training if you're doing High repetitions I'll put this another way sets of eight in the leg press let's say four sets of eight I me like it's uncomfortable sort of the last two reps might cause a little bit of a burn sort of but then afterwards you you breathe heavy and then you're fine it fucks you up for sure in its own special way but there's something different about that EXP experience and four sets of 20 in the
25:30 - 26:00 leg press because every rep from 14 to 20 is just going to be a lot of pain and it's an exponentially Rising amount of pain you guys ever get off a leg press or a hack Squat and your your body kind of does this writhing thing just like oh get me out it's just your body's like bro what are you doing to me this hurts and pain is a net addition to fatigue I mean if every
26:00 - 26:30 one of your workouts just kind of feels heavy and hard and you feel accomplished and kind of the muscles just clicking it's easy to have low fatigue and keep getting motivated to come back to the gym if you're doing High Reps all the time for real for real you may be experiencing so much pain in the gym that the gym just becomes a symbol of pain for you and you don't want any more of that shit and it's pain that goes away acutely right away after you know a minute or two but it follows you psychologically for the rest of the week rest of the month rest of the year to the point where someone's like you want to train back you're like nope I quit
26:30 - 27:00 training years ago fuck all that I'm not trying to get hurt not nobody's going to quit training but the sustainability of high rep training may be in question because it's so goddamn painful to get the same results that with low rep training while it's a little more risky uh roll rep training is just not as hard it's just not as hard lastly High Reps do dump a lot of metabolites into the equation and thus you can have some metabolic fatigue and that's a thing really importantly acutely if you do a lot of High Reps you're kind of done with that workout afterwards CU you're just too fatigued to keep going if you
27:00 - 27:30 do a lot of low reps a lot of times you can still do more just by going high rep and doing a few extra sets the reverse usually isn't true and there may be an accumulative form of metabolic fatigue nothing too crazy but it's another way of saying that and higher reps going to fuck you up in their own special way but low reps also fuck you up in their own special way and can get you much more hurt so really some trade-offs here which means you have to choose your approach based on a few different factors first for every single EX exercise that you're using you as a lifter a thinking
27:30 - 28:00 lifter want to find the rep range that gives you the best stimulus to fatigue ratio roughly which means what you have to find rep ranges for whatever exercise you're using that you can perceive some good tension in the Target muscle that give you some combination of that tension and a high degree of burn so if it's High Reps you get a crazy burn out of it if it's low reps you get crazy tension perception if at High Reps or low reps you're missing the tension and or burn entirely so for example if you're doing High rep rows
28:00 - 28:30 and someone's like getting a good burn out of that you're like no I just get tired you're sure shit not feeling tension maybe High Reps for rows aren't for you but if you do low rep rows you don't feel any burn but the tension is crazy it's just tearing your fucking back apart every rep hey that's really good on the other hand you can do Low Reps sometimes and someone's like do you feel tension on that curl you're like I just feeling in my elbows to be honest it can't really feel my biceps in it at all but if you switch that same curl and do High Reps that's a 20 your biceps burn like crazy crazy in the last five reps and you're like trying to fucking
28:30 - 29:00 wiggle out the lactic acid like oh my God bro this is fucking nuts then that's good then biceps probably something you should train in higher rep range in that exercise than lower so that's how that tension and burm tradeoff there's also the pump which reps uh rep ranges give you the best pump it's not always the answer but it's part of the answer so if you have a rep range that gives you similar pump sets of 5 to 10 then 15 to 20 it doesn't kind of much matter where you do on this metric but a sets of 5 to 10 give you better pump which for very fast ttch muscles is true then sets a 15
29:00 - 29:30 to 20 for my chest for example if I do a straight set of 18 Reps for my pecs in a press in many cases my chest just gets tired I'm just like I don't know I don't know what the fuck that was no pump no deep fatigue but if I do a hard set of eight bro my shit blows up like crazy some people will say pumps are something you can get better for higher reps and I that's not categorically true yes you do get more pumps in sets of I would say 10 SL 12 to30 than you would get normally
29:30 - 30:00 in 5 to 12 reps but if you have a great pumps from one but not great tension they kind of balance out so pump is absolutely a factor and if you just get absolutely psychotic pumps from slightly higher reps and from slightly Low Reps you get not really much of a pump at all but the tension feel of those Low Reps isn't also that great he maybe Low Reps aren't as good of a stimulus for you another one is perturbation if you can do a bunch of low reps and just jump hop skip out of the gym run around and you're fine I don't know man I don't know if you got all that stimulus that
30:00 - 30:30 you needed but if you do low reps and you have trouble like getting up and down the stairs good things are happening that means you might be a responder to low rep range in that exercise the other thing is for High Reps if you do High Reps and your your muscles are shaky and weird and crampy hey awesome if you do High Reps and you're kind of just like my bicep are just tired it's all I can say it's like if you're a pretty decent Runner and you run a few miles people are like your legs pumped like no they feel wet wet and wobbly no what do they feel like
30:30 - 31:00 they're just tired like w that's not really growth promoting is it no so if you get really good perturbation like your muscles get really messed up in a deep way uh cramping trouble with coordination massive decline in strength if that happens for low reps moderate reps or High Reps whichever reps they happen best at are probably the Reps that you should be doing for that exercise and of course soreness if one rep range causes crazy delay on outside muscle soreness and the other rep just really does not much at all again that's not the whole story but it's part of the story and if one rep range convincingly fucks you up way more than the other
31:00 - 31:30 yeah 65 35 you should probably be doing a little bit more of that rep range on the other hand you have to account for fatigue so that's the stimulus side of the stimulus to fatigue ratio the fatigue is things like axial fatigue if you're doing High Reps in the squat then your back's not being crushed but if you're doing Low Reps your back is being crushed and then your deadlift and rows are going to get affected to a huge extent no bueno part of the trade-off but it's a trade-off another thing is systemic fatigue some people do low reps and it beats them up so much neurologically that they're just like
31:30 - 32:00 defeated for days after I used to train with some powerlifters and after doing hard sets of five to eight reps they would just get done they checked out the rest of the day in a way that when these same folks did higher reps the High Reps are harder during the workout but an hour or two later you're like chipper again you can study you can work you do everything Low Reps take something out of you sometimes that you can't really replace right away so systemic fatigue can be higher for higher reps or lower reps but based on the exercise and based on the muscle you're going to feel that fatigue a little bit less or more in
32:00 - 32:30 some cases with higher low reps and you should be picking the ones at which you feel the fatigue less and lastly in this one's really simple joint and connective tissue fatigue which means acute like right at the time how your joints feel and also chronic after weeks of going heavy how do your joints feel sometimes for some movements some muscles people go heavy fucking day in day out their joints feel great some folks will go heavy and their joints will feel like they're made of paper or sand or something like that and they're like okay this is a bad idea and if you're one of those folks so which heavy doesn't do great things for the joints
32:30 - 33:00 you're going to bias more of your rep ranges on average to the higher rep range and vice versa so for every single exercise that you use try to optimize for stimulus to fatigue ratio through rep range which means you're going to come up with a lot of different answers once you come up with okay I think for me for barbell row sets of 15 to 20 seem to be like checking most of the boxes for me in the best way and the fewest of the bad boxes do most of your work in that range that you figured out for that exercise for example but consider a little bit of variation how should you introduce this
33:00 - 33:30 variation at least one set in an exercise or one exercise in a week's worth of training for that muscle group work outside of your typical rep range because there is at least one good study and a little bit of compelling physiological rationale to see that rep range diversity having some low rep and some High Reps May optimize gains may this is very tentative but it might be worth a try and maybe it boosts overall growth by
33:30 - 34:00 attacking multiple Pathways at once you're attacking the metabolite and pathway and the uh pump pathway but also the tension pathway maybe higher reps and Low Reps in combination attack all those better than just by themselves I wouldn't like this isn't something really to invest into for sure for sure but what I would say is if you find that rows do best for you in sets of you know five to 10 don't just always ever do horizontal pulling movements 5 to 10 maybe in the four horizontal pulling movements you do
34:00 - 34:30 all week spread over two or three training days maybe in three of them you go roughly 5 to 10 in the rep range but in one of them try 15 to 20 or something like that you may actually enjoy the results and just the psychological diversity of that variation can be something that enhances your experience in the gym always doing sets of five to 10 fucking wear on you but you throw a little 15 to 20 in there and all of a sudden it's it's really kind of cool next as you evolve over time as a lifter
34:30 - 35:00 you want to play around with rep ranges in each exercise even if you already have a rep range that you think this is my best you have to play with it over and over it's good advice on many grounds isn't that right Scott's video guy what are we talking about the RP hypertrophy app comes with dozens of pre-made programs from 2 days of training per week all the way up to 6 days of training with specialized programs included for shoulders arms chest back legs abs and glutes each one with male and female options you get
35:00 - 35:30 them all and can use them as often as you like even building off of them to make your own customized versions for only about a dollar a day click on the link in the description of this video to get started so for example let's say that the last time you did hack squats 5 to 10 reps was your jam but you've done leg presses and split squats since then and it's actually been months since you tried the hack Squad when you try the hack Squad again is the Smart money to go sets of 5 to 10 yeah sure but also if you're in an offseason maybe not a high
35:30 - 36:00 pressure training phase where it's not a lot dependent on that you can explore a little bit and as an intermediate lifter especially this is exactly what you should be doing with your time try sets of 10 to 15 on the hack Squat and you may find that because you got bigger because you got stronger because your Technique is better because your mind muscle connection is better and maybe because you're leaner and your cardiovascular fitness is higher all of a sudden sets of 10 to 15 are just fucking unreal whereas before when you thought 5 to 10 was your best it turns out you were just not in good enough cardio shape for cardio not to be a limiting factor in sets of 10 to 15
36:00 - 36:30 things change your body changes your Technique changes the same rep range isn't always going to be the right answer on average it's the better guess but things change to try different stuff if you're feeling another rep range lean into it give it a try for a little while and then have some diversity over the long term and by that I mean literally the years three to seven of your intermediate lifting career you're going to have tried so many things that you're going to really start to know what on
36:30 - 37:00 average good things are for you and on average not so good things are for you and then you're Advanced and then you can do a much better job of organizing your training next consideration is I would say really give some thought to going slightly higher rep than normal in the tail ends of fat loss diets especially bodybuilding contest rep but really any fat loss diet when you're in a fatigued State you are less athletic you are less free and mobile and you tend to make more mistakes in Gross movement p patterns and thus that jacks up your probability of injury so if
37:00 - 37:30 you're training heavy and your coordination kind of sucks compared to usual because you're so godamn fatigued uh it's not a really good outcome for you maybe potentially but if you go lighter H you can't really get hurt as much and so your lower coordination lower athleticism and higher proclivity to injury any anyone given rep or set really kind of muted by the fact that you're going lighter so that might be something to think about here's another thing as you go through a fat loss diet your intramuscular mtor Pathways a kind of
37:30 - 38:00 central pathway that regulates growth that promotes muscle growth starts to take a bit of a hit it's getting a lot of stimuli into it that says hey like we don't have enough food we're too goddamn tired stop growing all this muscle you're going to get us killed but the ampk and its related Pathways this is a pathway that's the central regulator of endurance adaptation inside muscle cells it really gets a boost it gets a boost ampk gets a boost when you do hypocaloric dieting which is exactly what a fat loss is gets a boost when you do more cardio and it gets a boost of
38:00 - 38:30 overall long uh uh runs of high training volume so as ampk pathway is able as it upregulates its activity it makes you a lot better at reps but doesn't make you a whole lot better at uh adding weight to the bar so when you are in high rep training phase and potentially adding reps every week or two rather than adding a lot of load this could fit the mode of you already being so reliant on that ampk pathway and not being able to
38:30 - 39:00 rely on the mtor pathway nearly as much in other words yeah you're still trying to hit the M pathway as much as you can with as much growth as possible but because ampk is going to be like in there mucking up the works you might as well ride the wave and say okay mpk reduces my ability to grow muscle it adds fatigue it sucks but it does let my endurance go up a little bit so I'm going to use my Endurance by leaning into higher reps and be able to hit some PRS versus leaning into lower reps and then I'm just categorically weak and that at least from a psychological perspective makes fat loss dieting way
39:00 - 39:30 more fun when you can lighten up your loads do some High Reps and still hit many PRS all the way into the end of your fat loss phase versus if you just keep going heavy you just get weaker all the time and it's really kind of fucking disappointing what about calorie burn people say look you know when you do higher reps you burn more calories that's technically true but the difference is insanely small and because you have such huge ability to vary your calories based on just diet man you're just never going to notice it's not going to make a big difference and here's another thing we have to know why we're in the gym very specific task
39:30 - 40:00 we're in the gym lifting weights for hypertrophy training exclusively to grow muscle and prevent muscle loss same Pathways really we are not in there to burn extra calories calorie burning is something you adjust with your diet and your level of physical activity which could be cardio or could be step I wouldn't want to mix the two so when I'm in the gym I'm trying to get fucking jacked and if I have to toast my normal workout just to do higher reps just to burn 27 more
40:00 - 40:30 calories that work out that's not going to work so I would say stick to just muscle growth training whatever that is High Reps Low Reps whatever at the tail end of a fat loss phase and let the diet and the activity take care of the magnitude of calorie deficit which is what gets you lean in the end and lastly if for you tons of rep ranges work well that's a good thing because some people say look trying to find out what rep range works well for my body works best okay but uh they all just seem to work about the same and people
40:30 - 41:00 feel like they're missing something but this is the ultimate example of feeling like you're missing something but in fact everyone else is missing something which is to say if tons of rep ranges work super well for you then you can just vary them every few mesos just for some cool psychological variation and have amazing long-term results people are like hey man you know hack squats what do you do for hack squats rep set wise you're like uh 5 to 10 10 to 15 15 to 20 and then I'll just m around my way up to 30 every now and again and they're like okay wow no wrong answerers yeah I would love for every machine and every
41:00 - 41:30 muscle group to have a broad spectrum of ranges at which it grows roughly the best because then I can at least have a lot of fun and do a lot of variety and training and look if I like my tricep feels kind of weird kind of injury-prone then I can do pull Downs for High Reps instead of Pull-Ups for low reps and mitigate the risk of pulling my tricep but also still get great gains whereas if you're one of these people that you know their lats only grow from Low Reps or grow mostly from Low Reps more than they would for High Reps you kind of like have to take one to the dick on that one like okay tricep a little bit can't do heavy pulling I guess I just
41:30 - 42:00 have to do High Reps but they kind of suck for me so when folks get into this High rep versus low rep debate and they're like well I think for me I can't really tell the difference amazing you won the trump card just vary that situation over time do some high-ups here some low reps here different muscle groups different exercises no wrong answers unbelievable all right let's wrap this whole thing up chatting about what beginners intermediates and advanced folks can take away from this beginners first as a beginner you want to train with mostly sets of 5 to 10 reps to
42:00 - 42:30 master your Technique sets of fewer than five reps are too heavy to train technique well and they don't give you enough practice doing the actual technique because every rep is practice and your nervous system is learning a lot if you're doing much more than sets of 10 the fatigue towards the end of those sets is so dellarious to your Technique like beginners when they start getting hurt in the squat not uh injury hurt just like quads and lungs they start doing all kinds of shit that doesn't look like a squad anymore just kind of surviving grinding out reps and
42:30 - 43:00 you don't want to train beginners with shit technique because they learn shit technique and they have to unlearn it later unlearning uh technique is really really difficult even if it's bad technique so sets of 5 to 10 usually in the compound heavy Basics are really ideal for beginners so none of this rep R shit even applies to you guys amazing for intermediates I encourage you to use a wide variety of rep ranges on all muscles and movements staying between five and 30 reps on average though you can get away from that a little bit on the margins explore away and note to
43:00 - 43:30 yourself either in a log book or RP hypertrophy app or just you know intuitively what best responses from stimulus to fatigue ratio seem to occur at what rep ranges for what muscles and what movements you might have two back machines at your gym one of them you love for heavy and the other one like kind of sucks for heavy but for High Reps it's great and vice versa so something to note so when you program this machine you're going to be like ooh oh yeah this is the heavy one I'll go heavy great I'll put it early in my workout so I have tons of energy whereas the machine that only really works well
43:30 - 44:00 for High Reps only feels good for High Reps you go I got that machine better put at the end of my workout cuz High Reps after that I'm not going to do anything and if I did High Reps earlier it would just Tire me out for the rest of my workout so definitely a lot of logic you can use there as an intermediate you learn a ton about the relationship between your body and the gym and you get all these inroads and all these go this way versus that way kind of like a probability map and that's you learning the craft which is a big deal when you become advanced you should Center your rep ranges around the best sfrs because you're less in an
44:00 - 44:30 exploratory phase and more of a I have to milk the last of my gains kind of phase and then like you just don't bet against High stimulus to fatigue ratio exercises they're like objectively the ones you should be doing the most and you've already explored a bunch so now you know this is really my core of the shit that works hey dope fucking awesome and you want to include some variation in there uh especially when that Safar is still high so for example if ideally you do curls for sets of 15 but sets of 12 is still pretty fucking good and sets
44:30 - 45:00 of 18 are still pretty fucking good you know do some sets of 12 earlier in the week sets of 18 later in the week for a few months that's awesome versus just going to 15 which is your best best sfr so if the sfr is still very good competitive variation can overcome some of that disadvantage and all of a sudden yeah you're sticking mostly to the rep ranges that you like but you're varying a little bit as long as the variance isn't just like someone comes up to you and like sets of eight today in leg proc New York uhhuh how's it feel like like shit I fucking hate it why you doing it variation what does this variation have like a limit you know um to make an
45:00 - 45:30 awful terrible analogy is I guess a gift my gift from God is um you know like uh what kind of stuff is fun to do with consenting adults in the bedroom and the answer is uh the kind of stuff that Everyone likes and if you're doing stuff that you're not uh into at all you really just hate it you wish you weren't there it's time to say something you know so Scott the video guy you can tell your Monday orgy group listen I don't like it when you guys bring the toaster into bed I don't understand it though the electricity scares me and thus turns me on I um last time I put my hand in
45:30 - 46:00 the the hot area it just didn't go well for me oh you put your hand in it that's what you're supposed to do oh you've been missing the whole orgy concept haven't you we'll talk after this in any case it's one of those things where a variation is great as long as you like everything think of another less less uh insane analogy you go to a restaurant people are like what food do you order here you're going to tell them I order this I order that I order this and that they're like why don't you order this up thing CU I don't like it like yeah but it's variation like I know but I don't
46:00 - 46:30 like it so it's a great to do variation as an advanced person if the variation still checks the major boxes but as an intermediate you should be trying everything so someone could be like why are you doing s of eight and a leg press do you love it as an intermediate you're like no I don't really like that much okay why you doing it you're like well maybe I'll like it in a few weeks or months because you can change your Technique you can change your Cadence you can just grow into liking the movement that shit happens but after fucking 5 years of your intermediate career and trying different stuff as an advanced person you're not going to want to SED really far off the map of shit you definitely like and as an advanced
46:30 - 47:00 person you should also consider focusing on higher repetitions with less weight towards the end of a foul loss diet just to reduce your chance of injury and keep the uh the good high performance coming along in any case yeah is it true that low reps are better than High Reps for muscle gain uh we have no reason to believe that's the case we have multiple reasons to believe that they're roughly equally effective but on different scenarios and different margins different trade-offs four different people in different times one or the other higher reps or lower reps could be
47:00 - 47:30 the better answer in any case I hope you guys learned stuff if you learned a lot please send this video to other people so we can become more popular on the internet uh because that will make us happy Scott video guy I don't I don't know about happy but uh anyway send people a video anyway maybe it'll make them sad isn't that nice huh what see you guys next time he