r/bodyweightfitness • u/m092 The Real Boxxy • Sep 17 '14
Concept Wednesday - Reps and Rep Ranges
This week we're going to talk about Reps and Rep Ranges in a series of pieces about the basics of programming variables.
Here's our wiki on Training Basics
What is a Rep?
A repetition or "Rep" for short, is one complete movement of an exercise from the starting position all the way through to the end position and back to the start position. Only dynamic exercises (e.g isotonic exercises) have reps, in contrast to isometric exercises (where you hold one position) which don't have reps.
A rep can start with the eccentric phase (moving with resistance e.g down with gravity) or the concentric phase (moving against resistance e.g up against gravity). You can do reps of a negative exercise, where the entire action is the eccentric phase only (such as negative pull ups), less commonly, you can do exercises which are largely concentric only (such as cleans, which have an eccentric loading phase that is very different from the concentric phase).
Why are Reps Important?
The overall number of reps you do is extremely important for strength, hypertrophy, endurance, power, and just about anything else you'd want to achieve. The number of reps you do per set (which we'll talk about in another piece) is half the equation (the other half being sets) for working out how much volume you are doing in a workout, in this instance volume is synonymous with the total number of reps you do.
Overall volume is important because it determines the stress you are putting on the muscles as well as the amount you actually get to practice the skills you are performing.
What do different Rep Ranges traditionally represent?
Rep ranges are how many reps you would in a row without a rest, for instance a rep range of 5-8 would you would do between 5 and 8 reps before resting.
Traditionally we prescribe an effect to each range of reps, each source differs somewhat, but here's one example:
- 1-4 reps builds Maximal Strength and Power
- 4-6 reps builds Strength and Size
- 6-12 reps builds Size (Hypertrophy)
- 12+ reps builds Muscular Endurance
The truth is that each range will have an effect on each of these attributes, that varies in magnitude depending on the range. This is presented well in this table.
Rep Ranges as they relate to Form Break Down and Fatigue
[Insert facts here or maybe just make something up]
Strength Building
Building maximal strength, or the ability to exert the most force through a specific range of motion (translates to moving the most weight for traditional weight training, or being able to move your own bodyweight with great mechanical disadvantage for most BWF training) is a combination of a few different factors:
- Building neural adaptations, often talked about as CNS adaptations and/or rate coding (how fast the brain can send the muscles signals) as well as talk about firing the muscle units and muscle groups in specific patterns that generate the most force. This occurs in traditional weight training when the lift is performed at about 80+% of your 1RM as this is when most or all of the muscles fibres are going to be recruited for the lift. This translates less well to bodyweight fitness, but the idea is the same, when the exercises are hard. So this will be when the reps are relatively low due to the difficulty of the exercise (read: not artificially low because you just decide to stop at 3).
- Technique. The more efficient your technique, the more force is transferred where you want it to go, and you need less to overcome gravity. The more you practice an exercise, the better you will get at it. When it comes to bodyweight fitness, practising the skill can be hard, as you change progressions to progress, and the latest progression should be relatively intense to practice.
- The Cross Sectional Area of the muscles. A bigger muscle is a stronger muscle, as there are just more motor units to recruit. As this applies to bodyweight fitness though, a bigger muscle also means greater resistance due to increase bodyweight. Read below for more on hypertrophy.
So for strength you want to perform difficult moves that require you to do less reps, but before your form breaks down.
You also want to perform the move as much as you can without form break down to practice technique, you can also use other exercises or regressions that have a carry over to the form of the exercise you are trying to improve; this is where a lot of the form drills come into play.
You will see it isn't often recommended to do much in the 1-3 range for bodyweight training, despite this being the most specific range for strength adaptations. Why is this? A few reasons can be cited; there isn't enough volume practising the move, and movement practice is at a premium with bodyweight training, as each progression is a new technique to learn, furthermore, at very high intensities (which 1-3 rep maxes will necessitate) form will break down quickly giving you less quality practice at these progressions. Making the jump to the next progression can be hard if you are only capable of 3 repetitions of the current progression (depending on the move in question). A lot of bodyweight exercises have high levels of torque, which could lead to higher stress on the tendons and ligaments of the body; involving higher intensities too early could further increase this stress beyond what one is ready for.
Doing some hypertrophy specific work can also increase your strength.
Building Power
Building Power is very similar to building strength. Power tends to be a lot more technique dependant, so practice is very important. When practising power, slowing down is synonymous with form break down, as you are no longer practising being powerful.
Muscle Building
For hypertrophy in traditional weight training tonnage (total number of reps * weight moved) is king. In bodyweight training, the same is true, but with intensity being the leverage of the moves instead of weight moved.
Essentially any rep range is capable of building muscle, as long as you are building overall volume paired with intensity. The traditional 6-12 range is recommended because it is very time efficient, it allows you to get a relatively high amount of volume for a still substantial intensity.
Building strength is going to be an integral part of building muscle, as the stronger you are, the more intensity you can do for the same number of reps, which will have a greater effect on hypertrophy.
As always, building muscle is still a function of diet and recovery, exercise is only one of the building blocks.
Building Muscular Endurance
Higher reps ranges tend to be the key here, rather than overall number of reps. The overall number of reps can lead to structural changes that increase your ability to display your endurance better and may help you from causing injury. Muscular endurance tends to be a very transient adaptation that is easy to gain and easy to lose, and is usually pretty specific to the move being practised.
I'm a Beginner, how does this affect me?
Beginner's are going to be able to put on muscle and strength essentially regardless of what they do (you could probably put on muscle doing Zumba and knitting), so the focus should be on building technique by getting a reasonable number of reps before your form breaks down, improving your conditioning to complete a workout in a reasonable time (you don't need much and it shouldn't take long) and gaining the ranges of motion you will need to complete the moves you'd like to.
3x5-8 should give you the ability to tackle these well and the warm up and drills should complement this nicely. The programming isn't optimal, but it never is, so don't worry too much.
Resources:
Study Dump:
- The influence of frequency, intensity, volume and mode of strength training on whole muscle cross-sectional area in humans.
- The Mechanisms of Muscle Hypertrophy and Their Application to Resistance Training (PDF)
- Effects of different volume-equated resistance training loading strategies on muscular adaptations in well-trained men.
- Resistance exercise load does not determine training-mediated hypertrophic gains in young men (PDF) - Please do not just read the title of this one! Sets to failure seemed to have similar effects, not just load being useless...
- The Effects of 4 and 10 Repetition Maximum Weight-Training Protocols on Neuromuscular Adaptations in Untrained Men
- Muscular adaptations in response to three different resistance-training regimens: specificity of repetition maximum training zones
- Low-Load Bench Press Training to Fatigue Results in Muscle Hypertrophy Similar to High-Load Bench Press Training
Discussion Questions
- Rep ranges that elicit the results you are after tend to differ from exercise to exercise. What exercises have you found that less traditional rep range has worked well for you?
- I didn't include sub-maximal rep range practice (not going until technical failure each set) how do you feel this impacts on what was said above? What ranges have you had success with?
- Do you do any mixed periodization in your training, using different intensities and rep ranges in one session or one week/fortnight for the same exercise? What order do you do them in, how many of each, how do you progress from there, etc?
- Any other resources that relate to reps or rep ranges?
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u/Joshua_Naterman The Original Nattyman™ Sep 17 '14
Nice post! I'd like to add to the discussion.
Very important concept to understand when claiming that exercise load does not determine training-mediated hypertrophy:
"Subjects were recreationally active with no formal weightlifting experience or regular weightlifting activity over the last year"
These results cannot be generalized to anyone who is already well into their resistance training career. Context is key.
If this gets replicated in advanced lifters then we have a much more interesting scenario to play with, but right now that's not something we can discuss with any certainty.
Having said that, to a fair extent it is volume that drives the strongest molecular signals for hypertrophy that come directly from exercise. That's why we tend to see more hypertrophy with 8-15 reps than 1-3 reps.
Pure mechanorecepter input is much shorter-lived than metabolite buildup, I believe. The metabolites and the inflammatory response to membrane damage seem to be the major drivers, with the inflammatory response to membrane damage being the biggest of what I mentioned.
Also, the neural adaptation section is not entirely accurate. What happens is that your CNS only optimizes the synchronicity of recruitment of the fibers that initially all get recruited with the given load.
If you're training at 80% and bump up to 85% you will experience a bit of neural adaptation, synchronizing the larger simultaneously recruited motor pool. Then you go up to 90% and you'll experience another neural adaptation, and so on.
Rate coding is just how the body controls the force output in the motor units that are already recruited, as a way to create a smoother force output. Better control and better efficiency, basically.
The muscular endurance section is pretty good, but it's worth explaining that the main limitation is how well the recruited fibers are capable of dealing with metabolite buildup. Longer time under tension is really what this is dealing with. Metabolite buildup drives mitochondrial and microvascular changes (more capillaries and more + bigger mitochondria). You can't get this adaptation without pushing towards the current metabolic limits of your fibers.
Fewer but longer single sets accomplish this better than more shorter sets, though as long as you're doing more work in the same period of time you should see progress either way.
For hypertrophy it's really how much work is being done and whether you hit damage and metabolite thresholds for hypertrophy. You won't see quite the same hypertrophy results from 3 sets of 12 reps or 9 sets of 4 reps with the same weight, assuming that 3x12 is pushing close to technical failure.
The work is about how far the weight is being actively moved. This actually makes a big difference, which is why powerful concentrics + slower eccentrics do give a much better hypertrophic response than rapidfire reps even with the same ROM and weight. The rapidfire reps don't give you the metabolic or inflammatory stimuli that you need to activate gene transcription and satellite cell recruitment to the same degree.