There’s a lot of debate about how many reps of a given exercises you should do to maximize your muscle-building ability. This is a tricky component in your bodybuilding journey because there’s so much conflicting information.
Suffice to say, your muscles will only get big through progressive overload. So there’s no such thing as doing low reps for mass and high reps for definition… your body will perform according to its genetics regarding how its shows off the growing muscle, and how much bodyfat you’re carrying.
Till Failure
When you get down to it, how many reps do you need to build muscle is really a question of when do your muscles fail?
The key to successful muscle building is setting your poundage at a respectable level, so that when you’re doing your sets somewhere between 8 – 12 reps OF ANY EXERCISE will induce Concentric Muscular Failure.
Concentric Muscular Failure is when you cannot execute another positive repetition while using proper form; proper form is key, because you might be able to cheat out another rep or two with garbage form and… possibly hurt yourself.
Also, if you’re not doing proper form then your biomechanics are out of alignment and any true muscle breakdown isn’t occurring evenly or effectively.
You might not be used to doing reps till failure, and if you’re not then the weight you’re currently using isn’t doing your any good to build your body. In addition, doing reps until failure is a crucial means of gauging your body’s recovery pattern.
By this I mean, after you’ve done a knock-down/bang-out workout and took two days off from the gym, when you return to the gym you should notice the 5% gain in strength. If you don’t notice the gain, then two things are afoot –
1) you didn’t use enough weight last time (and didn’t go to failure), or
2) you might need another day of recovery before getting back in the weight room.
Hopefully, it’s the second option, because then you know you did it right. Speaking about recovery, if you notice that you’re not strong enough (or still sore), then get out of the gym immediately and come back the next day. No point in wasting your time and possibly overtraining.
What you should notice — and record in your workout journal — is the poundage that lifted for the first “Till Failure” set, then on your next workout session be sure to increase the poundage by 5% to 10%, this is how your gradually increase your weight, and increase your strength & size through progressive load.
Next time someone asks you, “How many reps should I do to build muscle?” Respond with, “how many can you lift before failure?” If they’re a little confused, you might want to turn them on to Vince DelMonte’s informative and easy-to-understand book “No-Nonsense Muscle Building”.
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