How Many Reps and Sets To Build Muscle

One of the most asked questions I get while training others is
how many reps and sets of an exercise are needed to achieve lean
muscle growth, strength increase, and an overall improvement in
body composition.

Reps

The desired repetition range for both men and women for just
about all exercises is four to six repetitions for your last,
heavy sets.

That doesn’t include warm-ups or acclimation sets, just your
last sets.

There is one and only one reason a muscle has for gaining lean
muscle tissue and getting stronger….

….Progressively increased overload.

You need to progressively “force” the muscle into growing and
getting stronger or it will not.

In order to increase overload, you need to increase resistance.
In order to increase resistance, you need to increase the amount
of weight, or work, you are doing.

Lower repetitions of an exercise will allow you to increase the
overload to that muscle instantaneously. This forces the
stimulation of new muscle fibers that will be recruited to
handle the additional stresses that will be placed upon the
muscle.

The repetition range for optimal muscle fiber stimulation will
be between four and six repetitions for just about every heavy
set of an exercise you do.

Low reps will not cause women to “bulk” up. Low reps will
strengthen and “tone” your muscles quicker than higher reps.

Lighter weights and higher reps will basically keep you from
making optimal gains. If you can do ten repetitions of an
exercise, the weight is too light to achieve overload.

How do you know what weight to use? If you can do more than six
repetitions on your heavy sets for an exercise, the weight is
too light. If you cannot do at least four, the weight is too
heavy.

So the low down on reps is 4 to 6 for all heavy sets. Warm up
sets and intermediate can be 8 to 10 reps, but to get the muscle
stimulating benefit of weight training, you must use lower reps
to create enough of an overload.

Sets

The amount of heavy, intense sets per exercise will be between
one and three sets, depending on the order of the exercise.

When you are warmed up, the number of all-out, intense sets will
be three at the most, and on some exercises, just one or two
sets.

It is the overload that causes the muscle to grow, not the
amount of sets you do. There is no “universal law” which states
that if you double the amount of sets you perform, you also
double the results.

The key is to stimulate, not annihilate, the muscle into
responding and growing. You do this with two, very intense sets
of four to six repetitions. This will efficiently stimulate the
muscles more than doing more sets with more reps at a lighter
weight.

If we were doing bicep curls, we would do our warm-ups and then
two heavy, intense sets of four to six repetitions. This
exercise is now done. You have effectively overloaded the bicep
muscles and will then proceed to the next exercise, if there is
one.

As you can see, it is all about quality over quantity when it
comes to producing results.

It is so much better to do one or two heavy sets at maximum
intensity than 3 or more at an easier level.

More is not better….better is better.

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