There Is A Method to the Madness
This is a podcast where I will be discussing all aspects of physical fitness. I am an exercise physiologist and personal trainer and owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs for the last 25 years. My passion is health and fitness and I am excited to share my views, some stories, interviews and much more with you.
There Is A Method to the Madness
Maximize Your Workout: Mastering Rep Ranges for Optimal Fitness
Unlock the secrets to maximizing your workout gains with Rob Maxwell as we tackle the intricate world of repetition continuums in fitness programming. Ever wondered how the number of repetitions and the load you lift influences your strength gains? We'll guide you through the complex landscape of rep ranges, from building maximal strength with heavy weights and low reps to boosting endurance with lighter loads and higher reps. Understanding these principles is vital for tailoring your workout to achieve your unique fitness goals. We'll also dig into the role of tempo, consistency, and the sweet spot for muscular hypertrophy, aiming for that coveted muscle size increase in the most efficient way possible.
Switching gears, we'll shift our focus to the explosive realm of power training, where speed takes precedence over weight. Perfect for younger athletes looking to amp up their power or seniors seeking to keep their fast-twitch muscles engaged, our insights will show you how to harness acceleration for your benefit. With tips on how to adjust your rep ranges for different objectives, this episode is all about crafting a personalized fitness program that works for you. Join us to transform your workout routine with actionable strategies that align with your personal fitness aspirations.
Welcome to there's a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I'm the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really works and, most importantly, why things work. Hence the name. There is a Method to the madness, and that there is.
Speaker 1:Today, I'm going to talk about the repetition continuum, which is part of the acute program variables, and what that really means is how many reps should you be doing? Before I get to that, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gildan Group at Realty Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales and they have all of the reviews to back that up. So why don't you give them a shout and figure out how much your home is worth? How much your home is worth All right. So last week I talked about how heavy we should make our loads, our resistance training, so our load qualification. It's all important. As I've said before, it all comes together to make a good workout program. What exercises you choose, how many exercises you choose. How many sets you do, how many exercises you choose, how many sets you do, how many reps you do, what load, what rest time, what tempo. It all comes together to make a great workout program, and everybody is individual, so there's not one size fits all for any particular group. It really comes down to individuality. So let's talk about the reps today.
Speaker 1:Now I'll give you what is called the rep continuum first, and what that essentially means is that they've shown that there is progress made, anywhere from literally one repetition all the way up to 25. And you know, 25 is a little bit of a arbitrary number because so much of it comes down to load percentage, as I said the other day, versus really how many reps. So, in other words, it's the load that determines the reps. Now, the reps can determine the load, but it's really the load that determines the reps. In other words, let's say you're starting out working out and I put a hundred pounds on the chest press machine and I tell you to do 15 reps. Well, you can't. Maybe you end up pushing it and you get it three times. Why? Because the load determined the reps. So the most important thing we have to always consider, as I talked about last week, when we're starting out, is how heavy should we make this? So they come together. There's a correlation between how heavy the load is and how many reps you should do, and between the two, between that dance, you should figure out basically what you're going to do on each exercise.
Speaker 1:So the rep continuum says that you can get results anywhere from, say, one repetition. Not a lot of results there. That's probably not enough stimulation to push things up. Push an exercise up just one time, but you are going to get a stimulus, and all the way as high as 25. And I've seen some studies that show even higher reps, like 30. But again, that depends on the load. It also depends on the tempo. It depends on quite a few variables.
Speaker 1:But what the continuum, the most important thing the continuum tells us is it's not an all or nothing proposition. The lower the loads, the lower the reps that we use. With the heavier loads for example five or six reps, which is pretty heavy in comparison to, say, 15 to 20 reps you're going to get more maximal strength out. So in other words, being able to push a load one time rep maximum is going to improve more when you do lower reps like that with heavier weight, but you're still going to get some muscular endurance in there and then at the far other end of the continuum, let's say around 25 repetitions, you're going to really improve your muscular endurance more, but you're still going to get some strength benefits. So it's more of a continuum versus an all or nothing proposition, nothing proposition. Now you may be wondering where does muscular size come in? Because that is one of the adaptations, along with strength, endurance and power. It really is most beneficial to train for muscular size somewhere in between the two. So that's why we commonly use 8 to 15 repetitions for that, because you're going to get the great combination of strength endurance which leads to what we call hypertrophy or muscular size. Bigger muscles is muscular hypertrophy. So that really happens more, ideally in that medium rep range.
Speaker 1:But we have to remember that a lot of this depends on the tempo involved. So if you're doing your repetitions really fast and you eke out 10 repetitions in, like maybe 20 seconds, so two seconds per rep, and then somebody else does 10 repetitions but they're doing it in six second repetitions, so 60 seconds, that's a different stimulus too. So when we're talking about reps we have to compare apples to apples. It has to be the same tempo consistently if we're really getting to accurate numbers that we need to be using and, of course, the load is huge in that as well. So there's all of these different variables. But if we want to really, really really get a good understanding of how many repetitions we should be doing, let me give you the main things you need to consider.
Speaker 1:First, what is your goal? Is your goal to be able to maximize your muscular endurance? Like I worked with a kid for a while who was trying to get into West Point, and he actually did get into West Point, but he needed to hit some better numbers in his muscular endurance area, such as pull-ups and push-ups and sit-ups and crunches and things like that. That's all muscular endurance. So how many repetitions you can do at the same load is the definition of muscular endurance. So we had to spend the majority of his training training for muscular endurance. So we did high rep sets. Basically anywhere from, say, 15 to 25 is where we spent most of our time. Again, it's a continuum. He's still getting stronger, but because the loads are less and remember they have to be less to be able to do more repetitions we focused more on doing high reps because ultimately, that's what he needs being able to do more push-ups and pull-ups and sit-ups is almost the epitome of the definition of muscular endurance.
Speaker 1:Now, if your goal is to become a powerlifter and you want to enter these competitions and be able to bench press as much as you can, you know, like many of us in high school thought was the most important thing? We'd walk around, how much do you bench, how much do you bench. What was the most important thing? We'd walk around, how much do you bench, how much do you bench. So if that is still your goal, then you're going to want to do low repetition sets when I mean low reps, we typically call that six reps and under and you're going to have to use maximum loads to do that, because there is such a thing as sport specificity. So the closer you get to what you're trying to measure, the more ideal your workout is going to become. Now, with that there's some safety risk, of course, because that's very heavy loads, so you better have a good spotter.
Speaker 1:I can remember not knowing any better, but at least having, I guess, common sense to say that if I want to get stronger at my bench press, I had to try to bench press more weight every time I lifted. Now I was 13 years old, so probably wasn't the brightest at this, but at least I knew that. But how I tried to carry that out probably wasn't the greatest method. I had an old plastic cement weight set, like probably a lot of us had as kids, and it was set up in my garage and it had, you know, the bar going across and it had two of the heavier plastic cement plates on and I would get home from school and I don't even know if I would do a warm-up set, who the heck knows.
Speaker 1:I just know that I would try to throw on more weight than I did the day before and at least once, if not two times, that weight got stuck on my chest and you know I was looking over at the dog and the cat and they're staring at me like a idiot. There's nothing I can do. You're gonna have to figure your way out of this. And I rolled it down my chest almost, almost breaking my sternum, being able to sit up and then pull the weight off of me. So you know that's not the best way to measure our strength all of the time. There's better ways to do it. So the long and short of that is if you are going to train heavy, do it in the right facility and make sure you get spotters.
Speaker 1:Now for everybody else, which I think is 95% or higher of the population, you're probably not seeking to be able to do 20 pull-ups because you're trying to get in the West Point and you're probably not trying to bench press 500 pounds or whatever your goal is. You're probably trying to get stronger, increase your tonicity, your muscle tone, increase your adls and all that. Well, most people should really be training in that eight to say 16 repetition range, because the 16 is a little magical, because we find that around 16 repetitions you should be using 60% of your load and I talked about that on the load day and if you're using 60% of your one rep max load, then you are having enough of a stimulus to get stronger. So I think 16 is a good number. To cap it at at your high end, nothing wrong with going a little higher. Again, your muscles aren't going to just basically look at you and say I'm going to give you no more benefits because you did two more reps. That's not the way it works. We're just trying to make this ideal as possible and I just believe that somewhere around the eight repetition mark is heavy enough, even if you're really trying to get strong, strong, strong, strong. So somewhere around 8 to 16 rep range is a great rep range for most people to train in, because in that range you're going to get stronger, you're going to get hypertrophy and, remember, because of the continuum, you are going to get endurance. So you're going to get all of it and it's also safer to do that moderate rep range and you're going to feel it more. You're going to feel like you have a great workout.
Speaker 1:Now, the last adaptation is power. So remember there was four. There is four endurance, strength, hypertrophy and power. Power is force times distance divided by time. In other words, it is how fast can you move a load.
Speaker 1:Power matters, but it really only matters for certain athletics. For example, it's more important to have a powerful running back than a strong running back if you're talking football. A strong running back if you're talking football, because strength is defined as being able to move a load one time and you typically move that load very slowly, right? If you're maxing out on a bench press, I guarantee you you're not pushing that weight up very fast if you're really maxing out. That's not what you want your athletes to do. You want them to be explosive, you want them to be powerful, you want them to be quick. That's what power is.
Speaker 1:So when training for power, it's more about how quickly you can move the load versus how heavy the load is or even how many you are doing. Now, again, most people don't need to worry about this, even though for some seniors it doesn't hurt to do some movements a little bit faster, especially lower body-wise, to work on some of those power components, just because it helps the fast twitch muscle fibers. But if you are a younger athlete training for power, the reps don't really change a whole lot. They're still going to be in that 8 to 10 ballpark for most people, in that 8 to 10 ballpark for most people. But again, we learn to move the load quicker versus doing more or going heavier.
Speaker 1:All right, so it's about the speed of movement. So, really, all the rep ranges tend to stay relatively the same. And, look, you can't go wrong with 10, right, as I'm talking about this 8 to 16,. If you're like looking for one, say, number how many reps to do and you're just being super, super, super anal about it and you want one number, you really can't go wrong with doing 10 reps, but the range, the best range, really is going to be in the 8 to 16 ballpark. All right, hopefully that clears some things up. Now let's clear up where you should be shopping for your garage door, which is Overhead Door of Daytona Beach. They have the best product and the best service in Volusia County. I will be passing along their phone number to call. They have a special phone number for our listeners, but for today please check them out at overheaddoordaytonacom.
